Even now, it's amazing how different the experience of reading a print newspaper is, in my opinion. I love that I find some interesting things I wasn't looking for. Despite the vastness of the internet, it happens a lot less online.
I have not watched TV news since the election, and only sparingly gotten my new from print since then. I definitely feel better. But I also worry about becoming an uninformed citizen. I'm struggling with what I have control over (in the news) and what my responsibility is, as a citizen.
Absolutely, Heather, I feel that exact same tension. That's one reason while I do vacations and not eternal news banishment! When I come back from these vacations, the main change seems to be that I don't get sucked into doomscrolling news and news reactions as readily. Over time, I start to get sucked in again, and then each vacation is sort of like a reset.
German literary giant Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) had an agonizingly ambivalent relationship to news which seems similar to our news addiction and doomscrolling today: he was an avid reader of the two contemporary magazines / newspapers Le Globe and Le Temps, and at the same time they bogged him down and hindered his writing. Thus, in the process of writing his magnum drama opus, Faust, he put a ban on himself and stopped reading them. "Since I have stopped reading the newspapers, I have a much freer mind", he wrote in a letter in 1830.
And, at another time in another place, "When you have stopped reading the newspapers for a few months and then come back and read them all in one go, you realize how much of your time they ruin."
And, following this, an absolute preshadowing of our current filter bubbles on social media and the internet: "The world has always been divided into factions, especially today, and during each doubtful condition the news writer more or less woos one or the other party and feeds one's inner inclination or disinclination day by day until at last a decision occurs and what has happened is stared at in wonder as a deity."
I think our current news practices do not serve us well in the global condition the world is in today, in what many call a polycrisis or metacrisis. Negative news are broadcast everywhere and on every channel, good news much more seldom - "bad news are good news" in our monetised society, also because we are evolutionary wired for remembering catastrophes rather than good times.
You once wrote about feedback loops in organisations, David. News are one kind of a feedback loop, I think, and we could really make do with a new sort of news to help us get out of our current troubles, individually and collectively. Not almost exclusively broadcast local and global catastrophes and bad news, but also, and probably in equal amount, local and global good news. If all that we see and read on the news is bad news and catastrophes, we gradually lose our capacity and drive for problem solving and crisis management and can't share the multitude of best practices already in use and being developed in manifold locales on the planet. And if most of our news is global - locally untethered, so to speak - we also lose our sense of community, which weakens us so much more in tackling current challenges.
Anne, this is an amazing and wonderful comment for many reasons, one of which is that if I'd known this I obviously would have included it! Also, I'd never seen "preshadowed" used before and I love it. ...I don't know what to say other than to thank you for this erudite and eloquent comment, and you hit some of the same points that Amanda Ripley made in her column about the news. I feel like in this comment you're channeling a mix of her and Robert Putnam. Thanks so much for this little (and extremely well written) gift in the comment section.
You're very welcome indeed, David – this is a topic I feel strongly about, so I thought I'd jot down some of my thoughts on it. I am really happy now to find you and others resonating with them. I think altering some of the feedback loops currently in place in globalised society could help so much in getting our act together in view of the global challenges we're facing.
A happy new year to you and all! I'm looking forward to what you'll put on your Substack this year ...
I've been doing more book reading recently and feel a lot better. I love history and find that everything we see nowadays has some parallel in the past, just with different names (and different technology).
Chris, I'm with you. I wasn't a big history reader until somewhat more recently...probably a bit before my last book, and now I can't get enough. And I agree, I'm constantly struck by how familiar at least the structure of various challenges and innovations feels.
I've never been a devotee of the news by any means, but there are two key points in my timeline where I think if data had been gathered there would have been a sharp decline.
First was when my daughter became aware of tv/radio - I can't remember exactly what age but I realised she was listening to them as opposed to them being on in the background and I didn't want her to be exposed to it.
Second was during pretty early days of the covid pandemic - here in Aotearoa New Zealand we had to respond hard and fast because we were going into winter and have a particularly vulnerable population of elderly and pacific island people to protect. The global response and subsequent infinite reactions and hot takes were chaotic and overwhelming. I now follow The Spinoff (a local online newspaper) and a couple of podcasts that I trust and thats my entire news diet. As a result I notice when the people around me are becoming overwhelmed by the news they are consuming, the vibe is as strong as the scent when a smoker walks into the room, and I'm so relieved to not be stuck in that cycle.
Estelle, thanks so much for this detailed account! I love when people share in these comments, in detail, a slice of life I wouldn't otherwise have insight into. The "stuck in that cycle" really gets at the feeling I was thinking of. I do wonder if everyone found a local source to turn to, if the national and global stuff might not be as attractive and constantly overwhelming. Not that some of it isn't extremely important, but, to steal an adage from toxicologists, "dose makes the poison," and I think we're way overdosed.
I'm going to take some of these recs too;) ...Not really dystopian, but I really enjoyed Jade City (the first in the Green Bone Saga), in case that appeals.
This was a really good recommendation. At the conclusion of book 1 my heart rate literally spiked into the 90’s. I’ve read a lot of books and I’ve never felt my heart rate spike to the point where I choose to measure it to see what it was.
I especially enjoyed the first part, when you learn what they are, or rather don’t know yet. That’s something a book can show/hide much better than a movie.
A neat game: Baba Is You. You progress by changing the rules.
One of my favorite parts of video games is smashing pots and taking stuff from people’s drawers and closets. Dragon Quest XI fills this urge nicely. Plus the story has a really neat twist. You can play it in modern 3D, which makes me sick, or classic pixell top-down 2D. It has strategic battles where you pick your moves from a list, so it’s good for people like me who are poor at aiming and otherwise get stressed by fighting all the time. It was my gateway into all the other DQ games, the stories of V and VI are my other favorites.
In Dragon Quest Builders (1 & 2), you do have to aim (2 is a lot easier), but you get to build!! With beautiful graphics, unlike Minecraft. Poor fighters like me can make battles easier by building traps.
Gorogoa is a cool puzzle game. There are 4 pictures like a matrix. You can zoom into a picture, manipulate it, zoom out, and it’s changed. Or rearrange the outer 4, and a person might be able to walk across into the next picture. For me it was like paper, but wow, things you can’t do with paper. And it’s pretty.
Zelda. I like classic top-down Zelda games. When you get new tools, you gain abilities and also access to new areas. The dungeons are cool puzzles. My favorite is A Link Between Worlds. You gain the ability to not only traverse the top-down 3D world but also merge into the walls and walk 2D around them, through slits in the windows. This game gave me new abilities in my dreams. It’s on a now-retro console, 3DS. Link’s Awakening on Switch is also neat. Echoes of Wisdom is even neater for me, though, because now it’s Zelda saving Link, but without really being able to fight. I like the way you can get through battles and puzzles by spawning objects or monsters you’ve encountered along the way and seeing what they’re capable of, what their strengths are. Breath of the Wild brought so many people to gaming, but it makes me sick so I couldn’t get into it. Tears of the Kingdom tweaked the camera just so that it’s doesn’t. This game gave me the ability to ascend through ceilings and solid objects above me not only in the game but in my dreams. I like the puzzles and exploration and discovery. It seems a bit weaker for when I want a story though.
I’m currently playing Lair of the Clockwork God. You constantly switch back ans forth between your *two* characters. One is a plattformer, like Mario, and can only run ans jump and collect collectibles. The other is an adventurer, cannot jump, but can examine and combine and otherwise manipulate objects. And talk. It’s funny. In a 90s teenager now in their 40s sort of way.
Mother 3. Not available on a console in the west but thorough a fan translation online (where the translators pledged to let Nintendo use their translation or whatever, if only they make the game officially available in the west). Neat story, music, graphics, also battles. The game before it, Earthbound, is available and also neat. The main maker played Dragon Quest and wondered what it would be like in a modern world instead of a medievalish place.
Well said David, I appreciate the reminder. I also think the experience of getting the news 24-7 in social, family, and work settings etc is not only distracting but disorienting. Regretfully, most of the time we are receiving it alone versus as part of a community. Good luck with final stages of your book!
I've been reading the Calendar of Wisdom this year! I think I found out about it here. While I'll disagree with Tolstoy about which of his contributions was greatest (I think Anna Karenina, in my opinion), I have found a few of the entries powerful and timely.
Paul, I'm always extremely happy to hear when someone ends up reading anything I mentioned and enjoy. I also disagree with Tolstoy...and [gasp] I haven't even read Anna Karenina. I have one staring daggers at me from my bookshelf, though, and it's on the shortlist for as soon as I turn in my book draft.
A tangent: Do you find that reading great books, content, prose, and all, inspires you when you are in the middle of your own book project? Or is it demotivating because you get the feeling you will never write like that?
Dave! Thank you for including my thing! It was so fascinating to learn about the history of the news vacation, especially that it was helpful to people even in a time long before the "24/7 feeds of catastrophe."
Love this idea, and it's one I wholeheartedly agree with. When I've slept well and feel my most system two-y, I feel in control of any urges to read the news (except maybe articles about the Dodgers) and it makes a world of difference. What would your wife say if you asked her to try? Also, I just finished her book! I was extremely impressed with how well she can write a profile. I guess she's had a bit of experience, but still. If I ask a question, can you pass along a question for me? And finally, what are the chances we get some more Range Widely year end awars??
"system two-y" ...haha, love that. And I think you probably hit the main point here, which is sort of the feeling of control. And that's a good question about Elizabeth. She's not a national news junkie by any stretch, actually, and I think she doesn't really lose control of her consumption habits. I've been much more prone to doomscrolling than she's ever been. In fact, her biggest problem is probably me when I'm doomscrolling and talking about it, rather than her own behavior. And, in general, her response to pressing public problems is to start stuff (hence Votebeat and Healthbeat that came after Chalkbeat). So I guess that's a probably a pretty handy impulse! Overall, she's very much an ideas person, and she doesn't get bogged down in the details of news. The flip of side of that is that details don't seem to stick with her that well, so she's not a first round draft pick for family Trivial Pursuit. I'll pass along as many questions as you want, just lemme know. ....And I'd totally forgotten about the year end awards! I know, amazing that I could forget such a famous event;) Lemme think on that. In the meantime, pass along as many questions as you want for Elizabeth
Just reading this, hi again! Yes, this is a true description of me. I really have never in my life been a traditional news junkie. Even back in the 90s when I was falling in love with journalism and the news felt less scary in many ways, I still gravitated only towards specific kinds of news. I know this is funny for someone whose life mission is journalism but for me it makes sense. What drives me is learning things, and the best journalism leaves me feeling like I learned something, but not all journalism does that. Specifically I most love reading accounts by people who have really gotten close to the thing they are reporting on. Local news and issue experts and magazine journalism and essays all are more likely to do that in my experience so that’s what I read and consume the most.
Huh, that's interesting to hear. It sounds like you complement each other well. Okay amazing! There are too many questions I want to ask her, so I'll give her a choice. If she wants an easier one to start: She has such a strong understanding of what it takes to train a teacher and to help them improve. I'm curious–how does this early-career learning curve compare to that of journalism?
If she wants the question I really want to ask: one of my favorite moments in the book is about a teacher who describes a radical shift in her practice after having met/worked with another educator named Deborah Ball. Green wrote that the first teacher considers Deborah Ball's influence on her own work to be so great that the first teacher starts referring to things in the past as "Before Deb Ball" (page 99). I'm curious: has Elizabeth had any people or moments that have transformed how she thinks about her own work where she might call it "Before [person/thing/idea]"? How has it changed her work?
Thanks for passing it along! Also, let me know if it's annoying to be the currier and if I should instead hop into her own comments section.
Wow these are great questions! My fast answers are on 1, I think learning the craft of journalism has a ton in common with learning the craft of teaching. I think of David Cohen’s argument that teaching sits in a family of “human improvement” professions, which also includes clinical psychology and the clergy, among others. He didn’t include journalism on his list that I recall but I think there’s a strong case that it belongs there. Common features include the work is often practiced in private (especially interviewing but also writing), and the fact that measurement is very challenging. And so learning to do journalism well can be challenging for similar reasons to the challenges in teaching.
On 2, I think I have many influences like that. Deborah Ball herself influenced me a ton, as did her own mentors and collaborators Magdalene Lampert and David Cohen. I never looked at teaching the same way again, nor at education policy, so they changed a major part of my work. My cofounder of Chalkbeat Sue Lehmann also changed me forever because she saw my skillset and career path differently than I did, but in a way I eventually came to embrace (I now accept that I am as much of a “social entrepreneur” as I am a journalist, if not more). And I took a class by Jennifer McCrea that changed the way I thought about fundraising (from asking people to help me, to inviting them to do good with me) and thereby changed my relationship with it. If there is a through line in these it is probably that these people helped me see the world and myself differently in a way that dropped a curtain down in the story of my life so that before was totally different than after, or at least felt that way.
Very interesting. On 1, that's inspired me to bump Cohen's book up on my TBR. None of my college friends are teachers, so it can feel a bit lonely sometimes, but I think it might be interesting to try and find some community in those other professions (in addition to my teacher friends).
On 2, I appreciate you being so reflective. It's cool to hear you've had multiple influences like that, and it's interesting that each time they didn't so much as transform you or give you some new tools but rather helped you understand yourself or the skills you had more clearly. I'm only 26, so I haven't had as many (yet), but one does stand out: in my first year of teaching, my teacher residency program placed me and 29 other grad students in different classrooms. I was placed at a small charter school with a co-teacher named Mandy, who has taught for 2 decades and is widely regarded as the best teacher in our school. Mandy has been such an excellent teacher, mentor, and friend. Even now that I have my own classroom, she does so much to make my life easier, and I'm sure she does even more that I'm not aware of. Most of my grad school classmates weren't so lucky. Most had placements with either no co-teacher or teachers stretched very thin, and as a result more than 20 of the 30 of us are now out of teaching just a few years later.
So Mandy has been that influence for me so far, but it scares me a bit to think that there are more potential professional influences like this waiting for me that I might never find or come across. (In other words: I might miss out on some Deborah Ball's.) How do you think you've come to have so many? Do you have any tips on how to make sure I don't miss any that might be out there for me?
Hi Matt! So cool that you know both Dave’s work and mine. On the news, obviously I’m terribly biased, but my own experience is that I feel much better when I read reporting from Chalkbeat, Votebeat, and now Healthbeat than when I read daily national news headlines. I think the difference is local news about issues leaves me feeling a sense of agency & also complexity, whereas when I open my Apple News app or scan the New York Times I do often leave with a feeling that everything is a calamity that is impossible to stop.
I think that’s because getting closer up into any issue will almost always reveal the leverage points ordinary people do have to fix problems, as well as the kernels where inside bad news there usually is some good news, or at least opportunities to solve a problem.
So my own personal approach as news reader is to seek out news that goes deeper, by knowing more about the issues or going more local on them or ideally both. And my approach as a news publisher is to create a different set of economic and technological incentives than the ones that prevail right now and tilt us all toward fear and loathing.
I'm sorry for a delay in my response! Things got a bit busy between the end of the semester and the holidays, but thankfully they've calmed down a bit now. This is a really thoughtful approach, Elizabeth. Thank you for sharing. I think I'm most interested in your last thought there. What are the different economic and technological incentives you work to create as a publisher?
I have never been a fan of, "the news", so to speak, and I have never liked the ever growing trend of news people giving their opinion on any topic. I prefer to hear the news reported as known facts and form my own opinions. That being the case, I have rarely paid attention to news and/or politics, always preferring to get information from books. I know I am an "n" of one, but I have found this to make me a happier and more positive person on the whole, and in general find that the daily news and politics have no effect on my daily life at all.
Hi Christopher, thanks for this comment, and you're obviously in good company with Tolstoy and Jefferson! Also reminds me of a "What war?" joke that James Joyce supposedly made, referring to the fact that he was focused on writing Ulysses during World War I.
I also reduced my news consumption (especially national news) starting early this year, and it has been for the better.
This bit you quoted from Tolstoy made me think: “All our education should be directed to the accumulation of the cultural heritage of our ancestors, the best thinkers in the world.”
It’s like our best thoughts, writing, art, that stands the test of time, versus the news, is like comparing “evergreen” content against “trending” content.
And it’s definitely not good for us to only be taking in trending content.
William, that "especially national news," is interesting, as I definitely find that local news doesn't have that same enervating effect on me. It also isn't the same constant onslaught, I don't think. In any case, I love how you framed that: evergreen versus trending content.
Yeah the national news feels like a lot more of it is froth designed to try to keep attention or rile people up. Lots of things that people get angry about that they’ve never actually come in contact with personally.
Completely. In really life, I only rarely come upon something I find extremely enraging or morally reprehensible at the highest level, etc., but if I'm following a lot of national news it's a constant barrage. I feel like we're not built for that. At least I'm not!
I so miss the days of just the morning paper and the evening news, which had primarily local and some global items.
The constant barrage of consumable 'news' and readers' reactions is definitely not human progress.
Even now, it's amazing how different the experience of reading a print newspaper is, in my opinion. I love that I find some interesting things I wasn't looking for. Despite the vastness of the internet, it happens a lot less online.
YES - totally agree...it's such a different experience!
I have not watched TV news since the election, and only sparingly gotten my new from print since then. I definitely feel better. But I also worry about becoming an uninformed citizen. I'm struggling with what I have control over (in the news) and what my responsibility is, as a citizen.
Absolutely, Heather, I feel that exact same tension. That's one reason while I do vacations and not eternal news banishment! When I come back from these vacations, the main change seems to be that I don't get sucked into doomscrolling news and news reactions as readily. Over time, I start to get sucked in again, and then each vacation is sort of like a reset.
German literary giant Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) had an agonizingly ambivalent relationship to news which seems similar to our news addiction and doomscrolling today: he was an avid reader of the two contemporary magazines / newspapers Le Globe and Le Temps, and at the same time they bogged him down and hindered his writing. Thus, in the process of writing his magnum drama opus, Faust, he put a ban on himself and stopped reading them. "Since I have stopped reading the newspapers, I have a much freer mind", he wrote in a letter in 1830.
And, at another time in another place, "When you have stopped reading the newspapers for a few months and then come back and read them all in one go, you realize how much of your time they ruin."
And, following this, an absolute preshadowing of our current filter bubbles on social media and the internet: "The world has always been divided into factions, especially today, and during each doubtful condition the news writer more or less woos one or the other party and feeds one's inner inclination or disinclination day by day until at last a decision occurs and what has happened is stared at in wonder as a deity."
I think our current news practices do not serve us well in the global condition the world is in today, in what many call a polycrisis or metacrisis. Negative news are broadcast everywhere and on every channel, good news much more seldom - "bad news are good news" in our monetised society, also because we are evolutionary wired for remembering catastrophes rather than good times.
You once wrote about feedback loops in organisations, David. News are one kind of a feedback loop, I think, and we could really make do with a new sort of news to help us get out of our current troubles, individually and collectively. Not almost exclusively broadcast local and global catastrophes and bad news, but also, and probably in equal amount, local and global good news. If all that we see and read on the news is bad news and catastrophes, we gradually lose our capacity and drive for problem solving and crisis management and can't share the multitude of best practices already in use and being developed in manifold locales on the planet. And if most of our news is global - locally untethered, so to speak - we also lose our sense of community, which weakens us so much more in tackling current challenges.
Anne, this is an amazing and wonderful comment for many reasons, one of which is that if I'd known this I obviously would have included it! Also, I'd never seen "preshadowed" used before and I love it. ...I don't know what to say other than to thank you for this erudite and eloquent comment, and you hit some of the same points that Amanda Ripley made in her column about the news. I feel like in this comment you're channeling a mix of her and Robert Putnam. Thanks so much for this little (and extremely well written) gift in the comment section.
You're very welcome indeed, David – this is a topic I feel strongly about, so I thought I'd jot down some of my thoughts on it. I am really happy now to find you and others resonating with them. I think altering some of the feedback loops currently in place in globalised society could help so much in getting our act together in view of the global challenges we're facing.
A happy new year to you and all! I'm looking forward to what you'll put on your Substack this year ...
I've been doing more book reading recently and feel a lot better. I love history and find that everything we see nowadays has some parallel in the past, just with different names (and different technology).
Chris, I'm with you. I wasn't a big history reader until somewhat more recently...probably a bit before my last book, and now I can't get enough. And I agree, I'm constantly struck by how familiar at least the structure of various challenges and innovations feels.
I've never been a devotee of the news by any means, but there are two key points in my timeline where I think if data had been gathered there would have been a sharp decline.
First was when my daughter became aware of tv/radio - I can't remember exactly what age but I realised she was listening to them as opposed to them being on in the background and I didn't want her to be exposed to it.
Second was during pretty early days of the covid pandemic - here in Aotearoa New Zealand we had to respond hard and fast because we were going into winter and have a particularly vulnerable population of elderly and pacific island people to protect. The global response and subsequent infinite reactions and hot takes were chaotic and overwhelming. I now follow The Spinoff (a local online newspaper) and a couple of podcasts that I trust and thats my entire news diet. As a result I notice when the people around me are becoming overwhelmed by the news they are consuming, the vibe is as strong as the scent when a smoker walks into the room, and I'm so relieved to not be stuck in that cycle.
Estelle, thanks so much for this detailed account! I love when people share in these comments, in detail, a slice of life I wouldn't otherwise have insight into. The "stuck in that cycle" really gets at the feeling I was thinking of. I do wonder if everyone found a local source to turn to, if the national and global stuff might not be as attractive and constantly overwhelming. Not that some of it isn't extremely important, but, to steal an adage from toxicologists, "dose makes the poison," and I think we're way overdosed.
Life Hack: replace news scrolling with video games. On a dedicated console.
It’s like reading a book but fulfills screen urges too.
I bought a kindle and am reading a lot of dystopian fiction which is more entertaining than dystopian reality….. ;)
Any good recommends? The Hunger Games and Divergent were my staples in 2019. The Giver. Matched. This year I read The Book of Koli.
I really liked The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells, the Silo series by Hugh Howey, which then led me to the YA Bern Saga by Howey.
I'm going to take some of these recs too;) ...Not really dystopian, but I really enjoyed Jade City (the first in the Green Bone Saga), in case that appeals.
This was a really good recommendation. At the conclusion of book 1 my heart rate literally spiked into the 90’s. I’ve read a lot of books and I’ve never felt my heart rate spike to the point where I choose to measure it to see what it was.
Haha, I love it. So glad it was a winning recommendation! Right when I first started a (very infrequent) newsletter, I used it as an excuse to talk to the author. Here it is, in case it's of interest: https://davidepstein.com/from-nike-corporate-strategist-to-award-winning-novelist/
I’m so happy when things are available in kindle unlimited! I’ve added and look forward to reading.
Thanks! I remembered one more that a friend told me to read without finding anything about it in advance: M.R. Carey, The Girl with All the Gifts
Ok, I enjoyed this book, not the happy ending I expected though!
There is a sequel, The Boy on the Bridge. Not the same characters for the most part, but same world.
I especially enjoyed the first part, when you learn what they are, or rather don’t know yet. That’s something a book can show/hide much better than a movie.
Just got it from my library, thanks for the rec.
Ha, love this idea. I may try this in 2025
If you need any video game recommendations 😉😉😉
Waddya' got??
A neat game: Baba Is You. You progress by changing the rules.
One of my favorite parts of video games is smashing pots and taking stuff from people’s drawers and closets. Dragon Quest XI fills this urge nicely. Plus the story has a really neat twist. You can play it in modern 3D, which makes me sick, or classic pixell top-down 2D. It has strategic battles where you pick your moves from a list, so it’s good for people like me who are poor at aiming and otherwise get stressed by fighting all the time. It was my gateway into all the other DQ games, the stories of V and VI are my other favorites.
In Dragon Quest Builders (1 & 2), you do have to aim (2 is a lot easier), but you get to build!! With beautiful graphics, unlike Minecraft. Poor fighters like me can make battles easier by building traps.
Gorogoa is a cool puzzle game. There are 4 pictures like a matrix. You can zoom into a picture, manipulate it, zoom out, and it’s changed. Or rearrange the outer 4, and a person might be able to walk across into the next picture. For me it was like paper, but wow, things you can’t do with paper. And it’s pretty.
Zelda. I like classic top-down Zelda games. When you get new tools, you gain abilities and also access to new areas. The dungeons are cool puzzles. My favorite is A Link Between Worlds. You gain the ability to not only traverse the top-down 3D world but also merge into the walls and walk 2D around them, through slits in the windows. This game gave me new abilities in my dreams. It’s on a now-retro console, 3DS. Link’s Awakening on Switch is also neat. Echoes of Wisdom is even neater for me, though, because now it’s Zelda saving Link, but without really being able to fight. I like the way you can get through battles and puzzles by spawning objects or monsters you’ve encountered along the way and seeing what they’re capable of, what their strengths are. Breath of the Wild brought so many people to gaming, but it makes me sick so I couldn’t get into it. Tears of the Kingdom tweaked the camera just so that it’s doesn’t. This game gave me the ability to ascend through ceilings and solid objects above me not only in the game but in my dreams. I like the puzzles and exploration and discovery. It seems a bit weaker for when I want a story though.
I’m currently playing Lair of the Clockwork God. You constantly switch back ans forth between your *two* characters. One is a plattformer, like Mario, and can only run ans jump and collect collectibles. The other is an adventurer, cannot jump, but can examine and combine and otherwise manipulate objects. And talk. It’s funny. In a 90s teenager now in their 40s sort of way.
Mother 3. Not available on a console in the west but thorough a fan translation online (where the translators pledged to let Nintendo use their translation or whatever, if only they make the game officially available in the west). Neat story, music, graphics, also battles. The game before it, Earthbound, is available and also neat. The main maker played Dragon Quest and wondered what it would be like in a modern world instead of a medievalish place.
Well said David, I appreciate the reminder. I also think the experience of getting the news 24-7 in social, family, and work settings etc is not only distracting but disorienting. Regretfully, most of the time we are receiving it alone versus as part of a community. Good luck with final stages of your book!
That's a great point, Eoin. The thought of each of us in our own overlapping but algorithmically tailored world of nonstop news makes me dizzy.
I've been reading the Calendar of Wisdom this year! I think I found out about it here. While I'll disagree with Tolstoy about which of his contributions was greatest (I think Anna Karenina, in my opinion), I have found a few of the entries powerful and timely.
Paul, I'm always extremely happy to hear when someone ends up reading anything I mentioned and enjoy. I also disagree with Tolstoy...and [gasp] I haven't even read Anna Karenina. I have one staring daggers at me from my bookshelf, though, and it's on the shortlist for as soon as I turn in my book draft.
A tangent: Do you find that reading great books, content, prose, and all, inspires you when you are in the middle of your own book project? Or is it demotivating because you get the feeling you will never write like that?
This post spoke to me David. Thank you.
Thanks for the kind words, Peter!
Dave! Thank you for including my thing! It was so fascinating to learn about the history of the news vacation, especially that it was helpful to people even in a time long before the "24/7 feeds of catastrophe."
Aha, the star of this post checks in;) Really enjoyed your piece!
Such a useful piece. Thank you.
Thanks for reading, Brad.
Amen to this!!!
Thanks for reading, Terrell!
You’re welcome! I’m a big fan of ‘Range,’ by the way! Excited to hear more about your next book.
Love this idea, and it's one I wholeheartedly agree with. When I've slept well and feel my most system two-y, I feel in control of any urges to read the news (except maybe articles about the Dodgers) and it makes a world of difference. What would your wife say if you asked her to try? Also, I just finished her book! I was extremely impressed with how well she can write a profile. I guess she's had a bit of experience, but still. If I ask a question, can you pass along a question for me? And finally, what are the chances we get some more Range Widely year end awars??
P.S. If you don't want to share your questions for Elizabeth here, just let me know...
"system two-y" ...haha, love that. And I think you probably hit the main point here, which is sort of the feeling of control. And that's a good question about Elizabeth. She's not a national news junkie by any stretch, actually, and I think she doesn't really lose control of her consumption habits. I've been much more prone to doomscrolling than she's ever been. In fact, her biggest problem is probably me when I'm doomscrolling and talking about it, rather than her own behavior. And, in general, her response to pressing public problems is to start stuff (hence Votebeat and Healthbeat that came after Chalkbeat). So I guess that's a probably a pretty handy impulse! Overall, she's very much an ideas person, and she doesn't get bogged down in the details of news. The flip of side of that is that details don't seem to stick with her that well, so she's not a first round draft pick for family Trivial Pursuit. I'll pass along as many questions as you want, just lemme know. ....And I'd totally forgotten about the year end awards! I know, amazing that I could forget such a famous event;) Lemme think on that. In the meantime, pass along as many questions as you want for Elizabeth
Just reading this, hi again! Yes, this is a true description of me. I really have never in my life been a traditional news junkie. Even back in the 90s when I was falling in love with journalism and the news felt less scary in many ways, I still gravitated only towards specific kinds of news. I know this is funny for someone whose life mission is journalism but for me it makes sense. What drives me is learning things, and the best journalism leaves me feeling like I learned something, but not all journalism does that. Specifically I most love reading accounts by people who have really gotten close to the thing they are reporting on. Local news and issue experts and magazine journalism and essays all are more likely to do that in my experience so that’s what I read and consume the most.
Huh, that's interesting to hear. It sounds like you complement each other well. Okay amazing! There are too many questions I want to ask her, so I'll give her a choice. If she wants an easier one to start: She has such a strong understanding of what it takes to train a teacher and to help them improve. I'm curious–how does this early-career learning curve compare to that of journalism?
If she wants the question I really want to ask: one of my favorite moments in the book is about a teacher who describes a radical shift in her practice after having met/worked with another educator named Deborah Ball. Green wrote that the first teacher considers Deborah Ball's influence on her own work to be so great that the first teacher starts referring to things in the past as "Before Deb Ball" (page 99). I'm curious: has Elizabeth had any people or moments that have transformed how she thinks about her own work where she might call it "Before [person/thing/idea]"? How has it changed her work?
Thanks for passing it along! Also, let me know if it's annoying to be the currier and if I should instead hop into her own comments section.
Excellent! I will pass these on... and if you think of others in the future, I'll pass those on as well
Wow these are great questions! My fast answers are on 1, I think learning the craft of journalism has a ton in common with learning the craft of teaching. I think of David Cohen’s argument that teaching sits in a family of “human improvement” professions, which also includes clinical psychology and the clergy, among others. He didn’t include journalism on his list that I recall but I think there’s a strong case that it belongs there. Common features include the work is often practiced in private (especially interviewing but also writing), and the fact that measurement is very challenging. And so learning to do journalism well can be challenging for similar reasons to the challenges in teaching.
On 2, I think I have many influences like that. Deborah Ball herself influenced me a ton, as did her own mentors and collaborators Magdalene Lampert and David Cohen. I never looked at teaching the same way again, nor at education policy, so they changed a major part of my work. My cofounder of Chalkbeat Sue Lehmann also changed me forever because she saw my skillset and career path differently than I did, but in a way I eventually came to embrace (I now accept that I am as much of a “social entrepreneur” as I am a journalist, if not more). And I took a class by Jennifer McCrea that changed the way I thought about fundraising (from asking people to help me, to inviting them to do good with me) and thereby changed my relationship with it. If there is a through line in these it is probably that these people helped me see the world and myself differently in a way that dropped a curtain down in the story of my life so that before was totally different than after, or at least felt that way.
Do you have examples like this for yourself Matt?
Very interesting. On 1, that's inspired me to bump Cohen's book up on my TBR. None of my college friends are teachers, so it can feel a bit lonely sometimes, but I think it might be interesting to try and find some community in those other professions (in addition to my teacher friends).
On 2, I appreciate you being so reflective. It's cool to hear you've had multiple influences like that, and it's interesting that each time they didn't so much as transform you or give you some new tools but rather helped you understand yourself or the skills you had more clearly. I'm only 26, so I haven't had as many (yet), but one does stand out: in my first year of teaching, my teacher residency program placed me and 29 other grad students in different classrooms. I was placed at a small charter school with a co-teacher named Mandy, who has taught for 2 decades and is widely regarded as the best teacher in our school. Mandy has been such an excellent teacher, mentor, and friend. Even now that I have my own classroom, she does so much to make my life easier, and I'm sure she does even more that I'm not aware of. Most of my grad school classmates weren't so lucky. Most had placements with either no co-teacher or teachers stretched very thin, and as a result more than 20 of the 30 of us are now out of teaching just a few years later.
So Mandy has been that influence for me so far, but it scares me a bit to think that there are more potential professional influences like this waiting for me that I might never find or come across. (In other words: I might miss out on some Deborah Ball's.) How do you think you've come to have so many? Do you have any tips on how to make sure I don't miss any that might be out there for me?
(And if email is easier for her then mine is mattrobthomas1@gmail.com)
Hi Matt! So cool that you know both Dave’s work and mine. On the news, obviously I’m terribly biased, but my own experience is that I feel much better when I read reporting from Chalkbeat, Votebeat, and now Healthbeat than when I read daily national news headlines. I think the difference is local news about issues leaves me feeling a sense of agency & also complexity, whereas when I open my Apple News app or scan the New York Times I do often leave with a feeling that everything is a calamity that is impossible to stop.
I think that’s because getting closer up into any issue will almost always reveal the leverage points ordinary people do have to fix problems, as well as the kernels where inside bad news there usually is some good news, or at least opportunities to solve a problem.
So my own personal approach as news reader is to seek out news that goes deeper, by knowing more about the issues or going more local on them or ideally both. And my approach as a news publisher is to create a different set of economic and technological incentives than the ones that prevail right now and tilt us all toward fear and loathing.
I'm sorry for a delay in my response! Things got a bit busy between the end of the semester and the holidays, but thankfully they've calmed down a bit now. This is a really thoughtful approach, Elizabeth. Thank you for sharing. I think I'm most interested in your last thought there. What are the different economic and technological incentives you work to create as a publisher?
I have never been a fan of, "the news", so to speak, and I have never liked the ever growing trend of news people giving their opinion on any topic. I prefer to hear the news reported as known facts and form my own opinions. That being the case, I have rarely paid attention to news and/or politics, always preferring to get information from books. I know I am an "n" of one, but I have found this to make me a happier and more positive person on the whole, and in general find that the daily news and politics have no effect on my daily life at all.
Hi Christopher, thanks for this comment, and you're obviously in good company with Tolstoy and Jefferson! Also reminds me of a "What war?" joke that James Joyce supposedly made, referring to the fact that he was focused on writing Ulysses during World War I.
I also reduced my news consumption (especially national news) starting early this year, and it has been for the better.
This bit you quoted from Tolstoy made me think: “All our education should be directed to the accumulation of the cultural heritage of our ancestors, the best thinkers in the world.”
It’s like our best thoughts, writing, art, that stands the test of time, versus the news, is like comparing “evergreen” content against “trending” content.
And it’s definitely not good for us to only be taking in trending content.
William, that "especially national news," is interesting, as I definitely find that local news doesn't have that same enervating effect on me. It also isn't the same constant onslaught, I don't think. In any case, I love how you framed that: evergreen versus trending content.
Yeah the national news feels like a lot more of it is froth designed to try to keep attention or rile people up. Lots of things that people get angry about that they’ve never actually come in contact with personally.
Completely. In really life, I only rarely come upon something I find extremely enraging or morally reprehensible at the highest level, etc., but if I'm following a lot of national news it's a constant barrage. I feel like we're not built for that. At least I'm not!
Getting your news should be more like going to the gas station and less like a movie theater.
As a great lover of analogies, I really appreciate this comment