This was so good! I love the way you sectioned the essay and wove the story of the conversation with Johnny. It’s brilliant! I also read this after reading Eliza Mclamb’s post about writing about internet culture -- it took me reading her piece to realise that my sudden interest in internet culture writing stemmed from the fact that I’m seeing a lot of other women succeeding at internet culture writing, even though previously it was never a subject that drew me in. It took me reading your piece to snap out of it and remember that’s there’s a world outside the internet that needs to be written about, as silly as that sounds.
i love the final paragraph of the piece, the kind of trick you do with the fortune cookie before ending the essay with its actual quote. the intertwining of your experience at the crab mag, the conversations with Johnny, the introspection and analysis, so wonderfully done. thanks for writing!
I read her piece too! It was clear and to the point, which I loved. And I agree, similar topic (which is ironic considering we're both talking about how everyone is writing the same stuff lol) with different angles. I agree w her that nothing one writes/creates will ever be completely original - nothing ever has been and that's the beauty of it, adding to a long history of art. But I do think there's a lot of value in learning from techniques used by people from different eras/places/cultures, and I guess that's why this feels so connected to journalism, since journalism is also a learning institution. There's just so much accessible and enjoyable writing online these days, and it's easy to get caught up reading mostly work that is SO of the time (which often means crafted to perform well on today's iteration of the internet) and forget that there's a million ways to craft a piece of writing. So much to discuss here, honestly maybe I'll start a subscriber chat...
And thank you sm for your note about the final paragraph! That means so much, seriously <3
so true! that reminds me of college in general and getting the experience of brushing elbows with other writers and learning about craft--but at the same time, just living and having fun and learning about other things alongside that. there was a balance between learning about writing in a very structured, intentional way and then stepping away having the space to Enjoy Other Things that was very generative for me.
regarding the trends of algorithmically driven writing, i recently listened to an interview with Kyle Chayka, author of "Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture"--he and a few other folks write the substack one thing https://onethingnewsletter.substack.com, which is doing something fun and small and thoughtful that i find really refreshing amidst the kind of miasma of internet writing. super recommend if you're interested!
I’m binging your articles right now, not sure if you can tell LOL. This was so brilliantly written, in both the ideas and organization, top to bottom I adored it. Your perspective on the Next Frontier of writing and writing online is critical but not without optimism which is very inspiring to me. Looking forward to more!
I’m originally from Columbia and my grandma lived in Baltimore, and I’ve craved crabs every day since we moved. Jane’s rule makes perfect sense. I just started freelance writing covering local music. Because my only journalism experience is a few summers of journalism camp I did in high school, I was worried I’d write the wrong way. But the beauty of local music writing I’ve found is that a lot of the artists haven’t been written about much so you’re forced to tell people they’re here without much research beyond what I’ve been able to gather talking with them. All that to say, thank you for writing this. The revolt is absolutely coming. We’re all witnesses.
This article was great! I just read a medical research excluding something from the get-go from a pool of possibilities based on another research from the other side of the world. that other research said that 50% of patients blah blah. 50%? dude, that's hardly scientific grounds to exclude something without trying it in a specific context. So, when that happens in fashion and pop trends, it's slightly better. I mean, saying that chicken is "in" without proof has less negative effects, considering.
"You know you don’t have to prove it’s already a thing. You can just write it, and then it’ll become a thing." Agh! and the desire for evidence! I feel this all the time - fantastic piece.
"To write about phenomena about which people already wanted to read was the very essence of all journalism bar breaking news..." I think about this in relation to personal essays and how much of the idea that you need so much research despite your personal experience before you can write an essay can be damaging. Thank you for writing.
There are times that I wish I never studied journalism at all. I studied it for three years in high school and have a degree in print journalism (LOL). I suppose there is something to be said for understanding the rules so that you can break them, but at times it feels as though learning the rules broke me. It took the fun out of writing for me, because I up until I earned my degree and started working for local newspapers, I had been someone who sat to write and let my imagination flow. For better or worse. I would have benefitted from having someone tell me that I could just write something and it will become a thing, and I am eternally grateful to have read that at this time in my life. Perhaps this will help me move away from being someone who is so worried about the facts, figures, and scientific evidence into someone who takes them into consideration but writes from what she knows best - her personal experiences and whatever it is that flows through me when I let it take over. Thank you for such a wonderful piece of thought provoking writing!
So well written and incisive! Been thinking about a lot of these ideas with the way Substack transforms the writing process into another kind of social media and what it means for the art we create. Really well said.
Sorry I got interrupted and erased my brilliant rant just when I was about to post it yesterday on my august opinion regarding Creative versus Artistic or perhaps better Creative AND Artistic. I didn’t prune trees in the orchard today so I have the energy to rant again.
These are 2 separate word concepts often used together but representing distinct human actions that can be applied to many human endeavors including art, music, ideas, and many more but for this discussion centers on writing, in particular journalistic writing.
Duke Ellington once when asked what made good music and replied’ If it sounds good, it’s good music.”
Rather than get into a detailed definition of creative and artistic, let’s agree creative and artistic is what we think it is, end of story.
What I want to cut to is how creative and artistic are not necessarily goo d although they are usually associated with good, and I used the creative and great artist Joseph Goebbels who ingeniously introduced beautiful propaganda for an evil purpose he believed.
Cydney Hayes was asked by her editor to write a story about a trend of people eating more chicken. Being young, idealistic, and naïve, Cydney assumed her “journalistic assignment” was to investigate local eating habits and report on a trend toward eating more chicken than say crab.
Instead, she was told to “create” the trend using her artistic writing ability.
Cydney suddenly learned that what is taught in journalism school is not actually how news media functions. I remember the editor of our local newspaper speaking at the Rotary luncheon about the impact of the Internet when it was just starting to become the erode newspaper readership. He summed it up as, “I no longer get to decide what people are talking about at the dinner table.”
That’s why the media is so alluring, the power of persuasion, persuasion of what? The editor’s creative agenda.
Back to the chicken dinner trend. Why did the editor come up with this creative assignment to be reported artistically as news.
If it was idle curiosity or perhaps the desire to expand local gourmet taste or eating health, it may be a good creative and artistic message.
If the editor had a bad crab meal and was using her power to punish crab restaurants or if a chicken processor paid her $1,000 to create an artistic chicken eating trend it could be bad.
What’s my point? I have two points.
American journalism is corrupt with all the news fit to print being what is created to push agendas delivered in an entertaining artistic format.
If you are creative and/or artistic do not be used for evil.
What is evil? In the media, evil are things untrue but don’t let others tell you what is true or false. If you do, you will be twisted into serving evil with your creative and artistic talents.
Thing is I do think science is art. Even though art might not be science. I think the proof of soul thing has been outsourced so much to science that art is now relegated and so what used to be encompassed in mystery through which creativity it was pursued is now simply show and tell. I think this because this is what Black studies or many kinds of non-western ideas of how to be keep trying to say but remain clunky in their telling. Like definitely I wonder what you will think of your ideas when you filter them through Aimé Cesaire’s Poetry and Knowledge and the notion of a “science of the word.” Something has happened to the written word that is spiraling into journalism but might not have begun there nor will it end there? What you did in this essay was so neat because you interpreted the fortune cookie through the lens of culture to ask widely, are we capable of immense creativity?
BTW, I lived in SF in 1970 with oldest son born at Kaiser Hospital on Geary. We too rode the bus and cable cars but back then it was a quarter ride.
I’m 80 now and lived a varied life some by choice but lots by chance. There are 2 sublime themes in your posts, one wonderful and one a poor choice. The wonderful is your open mind quest attempts to understand. My advice on that is that’s the best way to live life but keep in mind your conclusions may change over time and that means what you conclude now is wrong, so don’t be dogmatic, in old age I of course have many regrets. Those who are old and say they have no regrets, never tried to “understand “. My greatest regret is believing things when young I now believe we’re wrong.
The poor choice you exhibit is eating out, Eating is too important to delegate it to the control of others doing it to make MONEY. Cooking in allows you true freedom of eating, and allows your creative imagination to best serve you. Restaurants are only there to make money and to do that they got to churn customers. Ever chef knows the 3 basic rules of their culinary agenda, More SALT, MORE SUGAR, and MORE FAT,
Take a little time and artistic creativity to determine what is stuffed down your gullet.
Yup, journalism is dead in USA but was always used to sway more than report.
Editors used writers as slaves to push their agendas, agendas that pleased the owners they worked for.
Initially the internet opened the world to all but now the outlet control is back with Meta, Google, Twitter and, yes, Substack selecting who is anointed to express their opinions and who is to be placed in the background noise category.
I honestly think there’s variation in the agendas editors push. I definitely don’t think they’re all malevolent. It depends on what publication you write for, what section, etc. There are certainly systemic problems in traditional journalism but I absolutely think there are a lot of smart, creative, thoughtful people who work/worked in it, and that I think was on the whole a good thing.
Basically I think the problem now is that a lot of writers who don’t have the chance to learn from editors/on a staff are stuck in mental ruts, since so much of the content we see is variations of the same stuff. Or maybe they’re afraid of try something different bc it won’t perform well - I certainly feel that way sometimes!
Smart, creative, and thoughtful, yes, in fact to succeed in journalism, they are way up on the bell curve in these.
As to malevolent, I didn’t mean to infer that. The cause is human nature. I, like you, when we communicate attempt to influence those communicated to. We have our agendas and when we write we take time and talent to hone the communication with our agendas. It’s human nature as is quest of power. Take The NY Times, some of the best writers work there and probably most enjoy working there as writers.
They get power of circulation to spread their “words of wisdom” and influence their agendas on others. The corporate owners and their editors leash their writers with the whip of dismissal if they beer outside the inferred line. Every one knows approximately where that line is.
USA journalism has been reduced to a few megalithic corporations with common agendas so the birds of a feather flock together.
Chicken eating the agenda? You don’t report about it, you “create” it.
This was so good! I love the way you sectioned the essay and wove the story of the conversation with Johnny. It’s brilliant! I also read this after reading Eliza Mclamb’s post about writing about internet culture -- it took me reading her piece to realise that my sudden interest in internet culture writing stemmed from the fact that I’m seeing a lot of other women succeeding at internet culture writing, even though previously it was never a subject that drew me in. It took me reading your piece to snap out of it and remember that’s there’s a world outside the internet that needs to be written about, as silly as that sounds.
I read this immediately after reading Eliza McLamb's recent piece: https://substack.com/home/post/p-142401759?r=1c49aw&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web, an accidental juxtaposition that i'm glad i stumbled on. i wouldn't say this essay is a counterargument, but they feel adjacent, and i'll be thinking about both for a while.
i love the final paragraph of the piece, the kind of trick you do with the fortune cookie before ending the essay with its actual quote. the intertwining of your experience at the crab mag, the conversations with Johnny, the introspection and analysis, so wonderfully done. thanks for writing!
I read her piece too! It was clear and to the point, which I loved. And I agree, similar topic (which is ironic considering we're both talking about how everyone is writing the same stuff lol) with different angles. I agree w her that nothing one writes/creates will ever be completely original - nothing ever has been and that's the beauty of it, adding to a long history of art. But I do think there's a lot of value in learning from techniques used by people from different eras/places/cultures, and I guess that's why this feels so connected to journalism, since journalism is also a learning institution. There's just so much accessible and enjoyable writing online these days, and it's easy to get caught up reading mostly work that is SO of the time (which often means crafted to perform well on today's iteration of the internet) and forget that there's a million ways to craft a piece of writing. So much to discuss here, honestly maybe I'll start a subscriber chat...
And thank you sm for your note about the final paragraph! That means so much, seriously <3
so true! that reminds me of college in general and getting the experience of brushing elbows with other writers and learning about craft--but at the same time, just living and having fun and learning about other things alongside that. there was a balance between learning about writing in a very structured, intentional way and then stepping away having the space to Enjoy Other Things that was very generative for me.
regarding the trends of algorithmically driven writing, i recently listened to an interview with Kyle Chayka, author of "Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture"--he and a few other folks write the substack one thing https://onethingnewsletter.substack.com, which is doing something fun and small and thoughtful that i find really refreshing amidst the kind of miasma of internet writing. super recommend if you're interested!
that podcast sounds right up my alley! ty for the rec
I’m binging your articles right now, not sure if you can tell LOL. This was so brilliantly written, in both the ideas and organization, top to bottom I adored it. Your perspective on the Next Frontier of writing and writing online is critical but not without optimism which is very inspiring to me. Looking forward to more!
Thank you!!!! We’ll see if my predictions come true or if I’m totally off - but either way I’m interested to see where the writing profession goes 😯
I’m originally from Columbia and my grandma lived in Baltimore, and I’ve craved crabs every day since we moved. Jane’s rule makes perfect sense. I just started freelance writing covering local music. Because my only journalism experience is a few summers of journalism camp I did in high school, I was worried I’d write the wrong way. But the beauty of local music writing I’ve found is that a lot of the artists haven’t been written about much so you’re forced to tell people they’re here without much research beyond what I’ve been able to gather talking with them. All that to say, thank you for writing this. The revolt is absolutely coming. We’re all witnesses.
Ugh brilliant yet again!!! I learn so much from you and I always leave your work inspired to write 🫶🏼
BRIANA im gonna cry
This article was great! I just read a medical research excluding something from the get-go from a pool of possibilities based on another research from the other side of the world. that other research said that 50% of patients blah blah. 50%? dude, that's hardly scientific grounds to exclude something without trying it in a specific context. So, when that happens in fashion and pop trends, it's slightly better. I mean, saying that chicken is "in" without proof has less negative effects, considering.
yeah lol it gets high stakes when you’re dealing w medicine that’s for sure
"You know you don’t have to prove it’s already a thing. You can just write it, and then it’ll become a thing." Agh! and the desire for evidence! I feel this all the time - fantastic piece.
righttt lol it blew my mind, and here I am still thinking about it years later. Thank you for reading <3
"To write about phenomena about which people already wanted to read was the very essence of all journalism bar breaking news..." I think about this in relation to personal essays and how much of the idea that you need so much research despite your personal experience before you can write an essay can be damaging. Thank you for writing.
There are times that I wish I never studied journalism at all. I studied it for three years in high school and have a degree in print journalism (LOL). I suppose there is something to be said for understanding the rules so that you can break them, but at times it feels as though learning the rules broke me. It took the fun out of writing for me, because I up until I earned my degree and started working for local newspapers, I had been someone who sat to write and let my imagination flow. For better or worse. I would have benefitted from having someone tell me that I could just write something and it will become a thing, and I am eternally grateful to have read that at this time in my life. Perhaps this will help me move away from being someone who is so worried about the facts, figures, and scientific evidence into someone who takes them into consideration but writes from what she knows best - her personal experiences and whatever it is that flows through me when I let it take over. Thank you for such a wonderful piece of thought provoking writing!
So well written and incisive! Been thinking about a lot of these ideas with the way Substack transforms the writing process into another kind of social media and what it means for the art we create. Really well said.
Sorry I got interrupted and erased my brilliant rant just when I was about to post it yesterday on my august opinion regarding Creative versus Artistic or perhaps better Creative AND Artistic. I didn’t prune trees in the orchard today so I have the energy to rant again.
These are 2 separate word concepts often used together but representing distinct human actions that can be applied to many human endeavors including art, music, ideas, and many more but for this discussion centers on writing, in particular journalistic writing.
Duke Ellington once when asked what made good music and replied’ If it sounds good, it’s good music.”
Rather than get into a detailed definition of creative and artistic, let’s agree creative and artistic is what we think it is, end of story.
What I want to cut to is how creative and artistic are not necessarily goo d although they are usually associated with good, and I used the creative and great artist Joseph Goebbels who ingeniously introduced beautiful propaganda for an evil purpose he believed.
Cydney Hayes was asked by her editor to write a story about a trend of people eating more chicken. Being young, idealistic, and naïve, Cydney assumed her “journalistic assignment” was to investigate local eating habits and report on a trend toward eating more chicken than say crab.
Instead, she was told to “create” the trend using her artistic writing ability.
Cydney suddenly learned that what is taught in journalism school is not actually how news media functions. I remember the editor of our local newspaper speaking at the Rotary luncheon about the impact of the Internet when it was just starting to become the erode newspaper readership. He summed it up as, “I no longer get to decide what people are talking about at the dinner table.”
That’s why the media is so alluring, the power of persuasion, persuasion of what? The editor’s creative agenda.
Back to the chicken dinner trend. Why did the editor come up with this creative assignment to be reported artistically as news.
If it was idle curiosity or perhaps the desire to expand local gourmet taste or eating health, it may be a good creative and artistic message.
If the editor had a bad crab meal and was using her power to punish crab restaurants or if a chicken processor paid her $1,000 to create an artistic chicken eating trend it could be bad.
What’s my point? I have two points.
American journalism is corrupt with all the news fit to print being what is created to push agendas delivered in an entertaining artistic format.
If you are creative and/or artistic do not be used for evil.
What is evil? In the media, evil are things untrue but don’t let others tell you what is true or false. If you do, you will be twisted into serving evil with your creative and artistic talents.
That's my pious sermon for Sunday tomorrow.
Thing is I do think science is art. Even though art might not be science. I think the proof of soul thing has been outsourced so much to science that art is now relegated and so what used to be encompassed in mystery through which creativity it was pursued is now simply show and tell. I think this because this is what Black studies or many kinds of non-western ideas of how to be keep trying to say but remain clunky in their telling. Like definitely I wonder what you will think of your ideas when you filter them through Aimé Cesaire’s Poetry and Knowledge and the notion of a “science of the word.” Something has happened to the written word that is spiraling into journalism but might not have begun there nor will it end there? What you did in this essay was so neat because you interpreted the fortune cookie through the lens of culture to ask widely, are we capable of immense creativity?
BTW, I lived in SF in 1970 with oldest son born at Kaiser Hospital on Geary. We too rode the bus and cable cars but back then it was a quarter ride.
I’m 80 now and lived a varied life some by choice but lots by chance. There are 2 sublime themes in your posts, one wonderful and one a poor choice. The wonderful is your open mind quest attempts to understand. My advice on that is that’s the best way to live life but keep in mind your conclusions may change over time and that means what you conclude now is wrong, so don’t be dogmatic, in old age I of course have many regrets. Those who are old and say they have no regrets, never tried to “understand “. My greatest regret is believing things when young I now believe we’re wrong.
The poor choice you exhibit is eating out, Eating is too important to delegate it to the control of others doing it to make MONEY. Cooking in allows you true freedom of eating, and allows your creative imagination to best serve you. Restaurants are only there to make money and to do that they got to churn customers. Ever chef knows the 3 basic rules of their culinary agenda, More SALT, MORE SUGAR, and MORE FAT,
Take a little time and artistic creativity to determine what is stuffed down your gullet.
Sorry for the petty lecture.
Yup, journalism is dead in USA but was always used to sway more than report.
Editors used writers as slaves to push their agendas, agendas that pleased the owners they worked for.
Initially the internet opened the world to all but now the outlet control is back with Meta, Google, Twitter and, yes, Substack selecting who is anointed to express their opinions and who is to be placed in the background noise category.
I honestly think there’s variation in the agendas editors push. I definitely don’t think they’re all malevolent. It depends on what publication you write for, what section, etc. There are certainly systemic problems in traditional journalism but I absolutely think there are a lot of smart, creative, thoughtful people who work/worked in it, and that I think was on the whole a good thing.
Basically I think the problem now is that a lot of writers who don’t have the chance to learn from editors/on a staff are stuck in mental ruts, since so much of the content we see is variations of the same stuff. Or maybe they’re afraid of try something different bc it won’t perform well - I certainly feel that way sometimes!
Much to consider for sure !!
Smart, creative, and thoughtful, yes, in fact to succeed in journalism, they are way up on the bell curve in these.
As to malevolent, I didn’t mean to infer that. The cause is human nature. I, like you, when we communicate attempt to influence those communicated to. We have our agendas and when we write we take time and talent to hone the communication with our agendas. It’s human nature as is quest of power. Take The NY Times, some of the best writers work there and probably most enjoy working there as writers.
They get power of circulation to spread their “words of wisdom” and influence their agendas on others. The corporate owners and their editors leash their writers with the whip of dismissal if they beer outside the inferred line. Every one knows approximately where that line is.
USA journalism has been reduced to a few megalithic corporations with common agendas so the birds of a feather flock together.
Chicken eating the agenda? You don’t report about it, you “create” it.