Big if True: The Next Big Thing is Speculative Journalism

This is the post-Four Seasons landscaping media ecology. Ugly, fact-free press conferences held under absurd conditions are ostensibly to be taken as something other than what they are. Reductio ad absurdum is an important mathematical idea — if one reduces an equation to say 2+2=5 or that 2+2 does not equal 4, you know it is wrong. Without a mooring in the not-absurd journalism goes entirely off the rails, becoming bad drama or a full-scale farce.

Finally, I have a real apple computer, not one of those macintoshes.

Of course not all news folks are pretending that the material circulated under such conditions is real or even particularly interesting. What is clear is that organizations that have lest invested in reportage are more vulnerable to devolving into absurd speculation, organizations dependent on opinion journalism have it harder.

How did we get opinion journalism?

Contrary to contemporary notions of the early 19th century as a free speech paradise, it was not. Defamation suits were common, the press was almost entirely partisan, and the postal service was made to censor abolitionist writings. Journalism, and journalism schools, were a reaction against this reality, seeking to create media concerned first and foremost with the truth. This kind of journalism may have even suppressed voter turnout with sharp, non-partisan coverage of elected officials. It…