the news blues.
Reflecting on the death of journalism in December, Virginia Heffernan glimpsed the deeper tidal pulls of desire from which information bubbles up:
All of the fascinating, particular, sometimes beautiful and already quaint ways of organizing words and images that evolved in the previous centuries — music reviews, fashion spreads, page-one news reports, action movies, late-night talk shows — are designed for a world that no longer exists. They fail to address existing desires, while conscientiously responding to desires people no longer have.
It’s a McLuhenesque sensibility, and it feels right: older forms and ideals of journalism are giving way, but we await the new medium that is the message (and, as McLuhen put it, also the massage).