all the right words
The apps that I use for keeping track of these things tell me I’ll have spent around 30 nights in hotel rooms by the end of this year. A mix of work and personal travel, though often the personal travel becomes shot-through with work.
People ask what it’s like to work in news and I tell them it is often knowing about the worst things happening in the world at any point, and then having to comport yourself as if that knowledge does not affect you in any way as you make decisions, often in real time, about how to cover those events to help audiences understand why they are happening and what they mean for them.
I judge hotel rooms on whether they have bathroom doors that close; on whether the hangers are removable; on whether the mirrors and lighting reflect even a passing awareness of the needs of people who might wear makeup; on whether there’s a desk that is functional for work and a chair that is functional for reading; on whether they permit both natural light and unnatural darkness; on whether the shower takes into account the existence of people with curly hair.
Getting to see the world on your own terms is a privilege.
I judge newsrooms on the strength of their commitments to robust corrections; on the constitution of their editorial and executive leadership; on who gets promoted and who gets failed up; on who we mean when we say “we” and who we mean when we say “the reader”; on how they treat and pay interns; on which campuses are deemed to be worth recruiting efforts; on which sources get the attribution of “expert” and which get “critic” or “advocate”; on whose rights are treated as inalienable and whose rights are “up for debate”; on how they treat and whether they credit their photographers; on how and how for whom they show up in a crisis.
Getting to report on the world is both a privilege and a responsibility.
Sometimes it feels like so many of us who have the will lack the means and so many of us who have the means lack the courage.
Attribution
it doesn’t have to be this way, but clearly knowing the secret isn’t enough. wonder how time will betray this desire to control outcome. look at us wishing on a world that remains unmoved by all the right words. — from This One Goes Out to the Future by Beau Sia