This is quite a personal article, as it pertains to the craft and business of writing. I was always a fiction writer first, but as a fan of Hunter S. Thompson’s Gonzo Journalism, which could allow whatever fancy to pop in the real world story, was an enticing idea to me. It wasn’t fake news, but it was still entertaining. Real world serious journalism is quite a boring effort, as it’s a laborious process that requires sources, notes, and searching for a story. As Hunter S. Thompson searched for the American Dream in Las Vegas, as his book, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: The Search for the American Dream (1971). Granted it’s part fanciful, but still rooted in a twisted reality Thompson could only uncover. What makes this article so painful for me is trying to parse where the fuck it has gone.
I would love it if I could be in the camp of “We need more Journalists” but I can’t because they have essentially lost their credibility, and maybe they never had it. To understand Hunter S. Thompson is to understand the amount of leverage the man had, and if he spotted something wrong, he would report on it, and it would be true. Granted, there are lizards and people are feeding them booze, but the answer is, Journalism became a personal outlook rather than a professional outlook.
There are bad journalists who would write a smear story on any little person they could find. Taylor Lorenz, a fat middle aged woman who resembles a Crone from Greek Mythology, regales about how the LA Times is dying, and Tim Pool makes fun of the picture of empty desks saying, “This would be improved if we had a grilled cheese machine.” Emphasizing that the LA Times massive layoffs, according to the Guardian’s Lois Beckett, “was laying off 115 journalists – or more than 20% of its newsroom – the day after members of Congress warned in a letter that sweeping media layoffs could undermine democracy in a high-stakes election year.” And something inside me has to ball up the courage and laugh at this ridiculous statement. The way the Guardian pretends they are covering US politics with “journalistic” intent is rather humorous yet stupidly hilarious.