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Gnoment's avatar

"But I also want to nominate this dynamic, of never knowing if you’re in trouble but sensing that you are and facing career consequences because of it, as a ubiquitous feature of professional life in media."

This is how I felt in academia. Its how I now feel in government.

I think it's a quality in any field where social status and striving are more important than outputs. They want you to feel shame about what you don't know. But, they can't tell you what you did wrong, because you aren't judged by a set a rules, instead the ever changing opinion of the mob.

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David Berreby's avatar

Well said, Freddie. All of it.

I have been in some form of journalism for some 40 years now, and I've had this "rubber room, maybe, I dunno, I think probably yes" experience many times. I think I may be having it again as I type this.

That said, there is a force that pushes against the effects of reputational blobs: Sheer accident. A piece falls through, there is going to be a hole in the next issue, and suddenly *your* piece -- which has been moldering, held for a year -- looks lovely. The editor who always returns your emails goes on maternity leave, and no one else is that anxious about you one way or the other, so there goes that institutional connection. An editor who found you exasperating 5 years ago really wants an article on X, which you can deliver. So, um, that was then, this is now, whatever. IOW even as reputational anxiety dogs us, it's also true that institutional memories at most publications are short, and random events can rejigger our standing.

Medieval Europeans may have been onto something with their image of the Wheel of Fortune. You are bound to it. It takes you up. It takes you down. You glory in your abilities and worry about your standing. But the wheel turns as Fortune pleases.

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