The Way We Write Ourselves Into Things Now
If I don’t mention myself will you drift away?
“Just slip some first-person in there. Doesn’t really matter what, where or why.” -apparently every @nytimes editorpic.twitter.com/o0o2yybYGw
As someone who has gone on record as noting that his least favorite thing about journalism is when the writer has to remind you he’s telling you the story you can probably guess where my opinion falls concerning the increasing encroachment of “I” on news pages, but what do I know? The Times employs lots of people who are there specifically to make sure you stick around long enough that they can tell their advertisers you looked at the products of their in-house content studio; it may very well be the case that the paper’s attention experts have research showing people have become so stupid in our era that the only way you can keep them engaged with a story is by occasionally reminding them there’s someone — someone just like them — who was present at the thing they are reading about.
Is that some crazy conspiracy theory? Sure, it sounds outlandish, but think about just how stupid people — ostensibly literate people! — have in fact become in our era and it makes a lot more sense, particularly when you consider that any decent editor of the last fifty years would have been sure to strike it out as extraneous and distracting and gross. It sucks, but I expect we’re going to see a lot more of it. It reminds me of a story about me I want to tell you.