The Fourth Estate Rubble

No one outside of journalism seems to care about the implosion.

For us, it's a twin kick in the backside. We're seeing and experiencing, from the inside, the critical value our country is losing--and I do mean critical--with the collapse of newspapers. (You can't tweet Watergate).

And meanwhile we're watching our livelihoods, our means, get wiped out. Snap, just like that.

Yea. I get it. Not every journalist is a Woodstein. I write essays about my dog, for chrissakes.

But we live and breathe journalism. It's like a safe roof over our heads.

One of the times I was in Ukraine, I was working with a group of local journalists to plan a media law conference. We got into a heated debate about the range of the conference, because I was sticking to my guns about not promoting the legislation of ethics. This tug of war went on for more than two hours. But it was important. I was worried they would end up being hung by their own rope--creating a protection law which ends up being used against them.

Who's hanging by the rope, now?

I said to one of them later in the week that journalism was like a religion. It's a belief system, a way of living our lives.
She looked at me, stunned. "Patricia, you are so right. This is our religion."

So not only is there the horror at the risk to our democracy, but more personally, the loss of our religion and how we perceive our lives. Cloudy lenses now.

And more immediately, our jobs--and the uncertain future of our ability to make a living. My friend and colleague Amy Green writes eloquently about her experience of this free fall. In some ways, what she expresses gives me hope--in these tough times, we are pulling together for each other, trying to help each other through the storm. For me, one of the gems in the rubble is the graciousness I've found among fellow journalists during these dark days.

But I can't help but come back to the larger picture, the greater concern: who has time to fight for the fourth estate when you're fighting to keep food on the table? We need bread now, more than we need beliefs. And how utterly, tragically sad is that?