The Big Picture –
By Glynn Wilson –

What a difference a day can make?

That’s why you don’t want to go anywhere just yet. Things can turn around overnight. That’s in part what keeps me going, anyway.

Like Joe Biden stepping down from his reelection campaign and passing the torch to Kamala Harris.

Trump is in Trouble: Kamala Harris Just May Be the Game Changer We Need

As you know, I had been dreading covering this election. A Biden-Trump rematch with the polls showing a dead heat for months between two old white guys had turned off many people around the country as well. For months potential voters had been saying they wanted something new.

It’s sort of like the search for new movies and shows to watch on Netflix. Mostly it’s the SOS: Same Old Shit.

Donald Trump is saying the same old crazy shit he was saying in 2015, 2016, and for four years in the White House. That’s why voters dumped him in 2020 in favor of Joe Biden.

And Trump is saying the same old shit now, the same shit he’s been saying for four years out of the White House. Now he wants to come back? That’s like reaching back into the 1950s to produce a remake of an old show. Sometimes it works for a little while, like remaking a Batman movie updated with new technology. But there’s nothing new about Trump. SOS.

Unfortunately, Biden was saying the same things he had been saying for years. Every time he spoke, it was basically the same old stump speech, over and over and over again. He was, and is, an old school pol. His White House staff and campaign staff were trying to get by practicing the same form of political public relations (PR) that Democrats practiced back in the 20th century. It was no longer working.

This is the 21st century, although you wouldn’t know it by reading the same old mass circulation daily newspapers that dominated in the 20th century. Hey, I love the New York Times website. Couldn’t get by without it. But why do they still have a Food section, trying to get clicks to the Google ads by telling people how to cook eggs? I suspect everybody knows how to cook eggs by now, and they probably already know how they like them.

Personally I like scrambled eggs with sharp cheddar cheese, with cheese in my grits and real butter on my biscuits. I also like my bacon crispy. But try finding a restaurant that knows how to make that happen. Some of the short order cooks in the Waffle House know how to do this. Traveling around the country, this is hit or miss.

But we don’t need the New York Times for that. Or The Washington Post for that matter. What we still need them for is their focus on covering public affairs, which is now mostly just called politics. That’s why we have a First Amendment granting special rights for the press. I don’t think the founders wrote that clause so people could learn how to cook eggs.

The Times and to some extent the Post have enough reporters and they still have the sources. And of course they get all the damn leaks. We used to get more leaks, back in the blogging era, before social media came along, and Trump and fake news.

So that’s why, when setting up the interface for the New American Journal a decade ago, I did not include a Food section. We do have a Travel section, because these days I’m traveling around in a Roadtrek camper van modified as a media van and sometimes write about my travels.

It’s still important to cover the Economy as well, but we called it that. We don’t have a Business section, full of PR for business people. That would be so 20th century. When there are changes or trends for good or bad in the economy, we cover that.

It’s still important to cover Science, so we have a section for that. Much of this is also related to the Environment, one of my specialties since the 1980s, so we have a section for that.

Legal Affairs is also still important, although we don’t cover a lot of sensational crime news. There are plenty of places online to find that stuff. I’m not a True Crime fan. It’s the big, important crimes we should all be interested in, like Trump’s crimes against democracy and humanity. And this Supreme Court? OMG.

We also think it’s important to cover the latest breaking news and trends related to the press, the media and social media. And of course we have an Opinion section for columns.

Notice the difference between our categories and the sections still promulgated by the mass circulation daily newspapers. We are a thoroughly 21 century publication. They still have one foot back in the 20th century, and they are still hawking a print edition. That’s why they are stuck. It still affects the stories they write and publish to some extent, and how they issue corrections, for example.

It’s not all bad. Sometimes you still run across a publication that is stuck in the early 21st century. It can be fun to look at. I was talking to an old friend and editor this week named Jim Cullen. He’s still publishing a newspaper called The Progressive Populist. They still do the layout for this in Iowa, and mail it to subscribers twice a month.

They also have an old fashioned html news page online with an early version of the Google search engine you can use to search the archives. It’s mostly made up of syndicated columns left over from the newspaper days. You can still read Jim Hightower, Joe Conason and other lefty writers there. Sometimes I even run them as guest columns myself.

Yet I am operating under the assumption that to the extent there are still people out there who want to read news stories and columns on the web, and got acclimated to doing this online in the early 21st century, they would rather be able to do this without a bunch of wizzy wig popup ads. It’s been clear for a long time that people do not like paywalls either. Some people will pay for the Times or the Post. I do.

But there is a digital divide in this country.

Many people cannot afford to pay for every little dinky newspaper in the heartland that covers very little in the way of news anyway. That’s one reason many have just given up and turned to social media. But now the news links are being buried by the AI bots, so it’s just a world of memes and ads out there now.

Many, many people do not read at all anymore. They listen to talk radio or watch cable TeeVee news talk, talk radio with moving pictures.

So many Democrats wonder how in the world anyone could support a con like Don the con? This is why. Half the people in the country do not read. They listen. They watch. They scroll on their phones.

The latest trend is watching stupid, funny videos on TikTok. Some people seem to believe that this is the answer to getting young people informed and interested in politics. Maybe it is. I don’t know.

I do know that you can’t really learn a damn thing about anything unless you READ about it. All the research shows this.

When people don’t read – and I mean the honest stuff where real journalists are trying to find out the truth and inform people about what’s really going on, with an accurate framing of the issues – it’s easy for ideological authoritarian personalities to manipulate them.

Like Trump.

How Wrestle­ Mania Trumped Intelligence in U.S. Politics

Dinah Washington sang it best: What A Difference A Day Makes

Lyrics

What a diff’rence a day made
Twenty-four little hours
Brought the sun and the flowers
Mm, where there used to be rain
My yesterday was blue, dear
Today I’m a part of you, dear
My lonely nights are through, dear
Since you said you were mine

Lord, what a diff’rence a day makes
There’s a rainbow before me
Skies above can’t be stormy
Since that moment of bliss
That thrilling kiss
It’s heaven when you
Find romance on your menu
What a diff’rence a day made
And the difference is you

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