Some of my earliest memories involve walking down the hill to get the newspaper with my Dad and brother. The Register Pajaronian, our source for local news, the obituaries and police reports, was delivered in the afternoon. For a time, the relatively slim rag, rolled up and secured with a rubber band, would be flung into the middle of the base of our driveway. Some years later, it got its own branded tube affixed to the mailbox. Retrieving it, and — once I could actually read— taking turns poring over its contents, was a daily ritual.
On weekends, Dad got in the car and drove a half mile to the market to buy a copy of the San Francisco Chronicle which was meatier and that much more interesting with its news of the nearest big city. I was more acquainted with the Sunset District, where my grandparents lived, and Golden Gate Park, so I was fascinated with Herb Caen’s column with its skyline logo and trademark three-dot journalism about goings-on of a San Francisco I had yet to experience. Same with the pink Datebook section’s entertainment listings and features. In the late 70s, disco was topping the charts, but The Grateful Dead and The Sex Pistols and The Blues Brothers were headlining clubs in SF. There was so much more out there, so much more to learn. Dad handed me that section first, gave my brother the green Sports section, then retired to his office to read the rest.
The internet was just about to enter the mainstream. What actually made it into print, in my world, was still sacrosanct. The Pajaronian and The Chronicle, and the few magazines we subscribed to (National Geographic, Life, and for a few years, California magazine), instilled in me a love of print and a love of nonfiction writing that continued into adulthood. When I started bike racing, I read VeloNews religiously, and had to pinch myself when I got a job at the magazine when I moved to Colorado several years later, and eventually started writing for them. In addition to learning the ropes of writing for publication, I began to understand the finances that publishing required, and the delicate balance that must be struck between advertising and editorial to maintain both a sustainable enterprise and editorial integrity.
As far as daily news, somewhere along the line, I graduated to the New York Times. Up until five years ago or so, I still subscribed to the actual Sunday paper before fully subscribing to online media. Even after #45 was elected in the wake of thousands of headlines about Hilary Clinton’s emails, and the post-election regret that he hadn’t been taken seriously enough by the media to criticize, I kept holding the paper in esteem. Throughout the pandemic it was my go-to. I could count on them for facts, I thought. They were, after all, the newspaper of record. I see now I was in denial.
Still, it took me to the post-debate coverage lambasting Biden and the continual soft-ball coverage of the criminal and misogynistic GOP ticket1 that I finally accepted the newspaper of record was not always so objective. I couldn't fully support them anymore. With regret I canceled my subscription. The disappointment still stings.
Disappointment stings but it also instructs. Usually the lesson of disappointment comes with some newfound knowledge about self-responsibility or hard truth about one’s ignorance — who or what was I leaning on too much? How much had I invested in a certain expectation? What had I come to believe in something so much anyway? — or, simply, bias.2
I’m hardly the only one — and nowhere near the first person — who has been grappling with their lost trust in legacy media. The vacuum created by the absence of NY Times reading has partly been filled by reading news about the news3, as the discussion of the media’s failure in balanced reporting of our presidential candidates amidst this direly consequential election has only grown louder.
Which I’m glad about, up until a point, because, loudness, more noise, is not what I’m after. There’s already enough of that. Which is why anything that simply lays out what happened — clinically, simply, clear-eyed — if I can find it, is of most interest.
"How reliable is your news source?” League of Women Voters
"An absolutely fascinating conversation is going on on Twitter about the failures of the mainstream media…” Rebecca Solnit on Facebook