Still, I worry that with every year that passes, the typical media outlet is staffed and managed by more people who’ve never worked a traditional shoe-leather beat. I worry because, to counter cratering public trust in the press, we might need to be less online—not in our distribution model, but in our outlook. While no one will argue against the value of in-person reporting for foreign correspondents or food critics, in-person conversation is underrated, I think, for journalists who do opinion and analysis. It is standard practice to invest in travel to gather facts, but unusual to send anyone out into the world to avert bad takes.
Why? like most internet users, those of us who write, say, political and cultural analysis can easily forget how much social-media platforms distort our reality.
Text mediums deprive us of cues like facial expressions, posture, and vocal inflections. They are especially ill-suited to figuring out what people who aren’t adept at writing actually believe or intend to express. And tech giants put a thumb on the scale through algorithms that prize engagement. So when gathering information online, we see a disproportionate share of inflammatory content. We are shown the dumbest rather than the smartest posts from rival political or ideological factions. Journalists who survey American politics and culture over the web alone probably perceive a darker reality, on average, than journalists who survey the country offline. Commentators are more likely to confuse online trolls and offline normies if they seldom see the latter in person.
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