The End of Journalism--and Civilization

While I'm on the subject of caregivers (see yesterday's post), I'd like to rant for a moment about journalism. I didn't get to see Barack Obama's State of the Union address last night--I was too busy putting Julia to bed again and again, she having decided that she would stay up until Ralph got home at 11 p.m. 

Nonetheless, I'm almost certain from reading today's papers that while the president talked about Wall Street and the Big Three in Detroit, he failed to mention the demise of journalism. We are small potatoes compared to other industries, and we will never get a bail-out. But we are dying all the same. On Monday, the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News declared bankruptcy. They join the Seattle-Post Intelligencer and the Rocky Mountain News, which are for sale, and scores of other papers and magazines that have had lay-offs and/or involuntary furloughs. The Christian Science Monitor, of course, has already moved its operations to the Web. Ditto with U.S. News & World Report, where I used to work, which now puts out a magazine only once a month.

But it's not just a question of where we will read our news: we can all get used to reading the newspaper on a computer. It's what will be lost in the translation. I have one very good friend who's a devotee of the obituaries in the local paper, not because she's morose but because of the tidbits of humanity they reveal about the people who died. 

That's exactly what I've been thinking about that New York Times piece on child caregivers that I cited yesterday. If I were reading the paper online, I would scan the headlines about the economy and Iraq and Afghanistan and probably not take the time to read anything I don't have to. And having read the caregiving story, it's not as if I--or anyone else--can do anything to change the grim circumstances it lays out. Those kids will go on giving up their lives for their parents whether it becomes public knowledge or not. 

But journalism is about more than headlines; it's about more than keeping the government honest or being the whistle-blowers for big business. Its equally important role is to hold up a mirror to society; to tell us who we are. It's about the texture of our daily lives.

Few, besides my fellow journalists, seem to think that much will be lost by losing this. Journalists are reviled--lower, I'd bet, than lawyers on the food chain. Sarah Palin spoke for many Americans when she said during the campaign and afterward that we got in the way of telling the story.

But I can't help but think that what's being lost is of larger moment than a Saturn minivan, say. I think it's more a cornerstone of civilization that is crumbling.  

Caregivers Are Too Young for the Job

Yesterday's New York Times has a story about children taking care of their ailing parents. It's not about the sandwich generation; not about people in mid-life like me and my sisters caring for our mom and dad. It's tweens and teens who have to give up soccer practice and seeing friends and, in some cases, school, to dispense insulin and migraine meds and take their charges to doctor's appointments--people, in other words, who should still be receiving the care, not doing the heavy lifting, sometimes literally.

The newspapers are not filled with the cheeriest stories right now, it being a critical time for us both at home and abroad. But of all I've read lately, this was surely the most depressing. 

I felt bad enough last week when I read about Bristol Palin's interview with Greta Van Susteren on FoxNews in which she explains that the mom thing is unexpectedly hard: 

"Well it's not just the baby that's hard. It's just, like, I'm not living for myself anymore. It's, like, for another person, so it's different." 

But at least her situation is the result of a hormonal romp (although based on who the father is there must be mighty slim pickin's up there in Alaska). And at least that baby will grow more independent, not less, as time passes. 

That's why, even though Julia woke up whining this morning and never stopped until she walked out the door except to cry "I'm done being in a bad mood!," it is easier for me to deal with the details of motherhood than those of daughter-hood right now. At least it feels like I'm operating in the light of day.

From my experience, illness is a long, black tunnel. And even though I'm so lucky that I still have both of my parents, I have also lost them to the tunnel.