Year-End Reflection

It’s been a long semester, and I’ve had the chance to do a ton of writing. Not just the usual essay writing, or the creative writing I do in my spare time, but blog writing, something I’d briefly tried out back in high school but never really took all that seriously. I didn’t know what to expect. Though I served briefly on my school newspaper, I was not a journalism student, and upon learning that we would be writing columns and editorials (which I didn’t even know were different things), I was a little unsure how everything would go.

Turns out, it went pretty well. I enjoyed writing these posts, even if the workload got on my nerves sometimes. While there were some posts with strict requirements around them, I felt like I had a fair amount of freedom most of the time to talk about what I wanted to talk about, and that’s usually what I ended up doing. I’d sit in my room, with a glass of water next to me, and I would write what I thought about something. My early “free posts” were more cautious. I was trying to project some kind of statement about the world, because it’s much easier to write about what’s wrong with everything else than it is to write about what’s wrong with yourself. As I got more comfortable with both the medium and the class, I started opening up a little more. I talked bout my car breaking down, almost losing my cats, my neighborhood getting older, and a lot of other things I usually wouldn’t get a chance to talk about in such detail.

I think I’ve definitely learned some new things about myself as a writer, and not all of them are positive. Rarely did I go back through my blog posts and do revisions, which is sort of strange because I’ll rewrite the same paragraph in one of my chapters five or six times. That’s not to say I fired these posts off without thinking; I always had a plan of what I wanted to write before I started, and I would spend some time on each and every sentence as I wrote them. But there’s plenty to be said for proofreading- I know I’ve made some pretty stupid errors with my “one draft” attitude. My favorite post from this entire blog, “The Worst Week Of My Life”, has one of the most elementary mistakes a writer can make- switching tenses. I can’t recall ever making that error before, and I’m honestly embarrassed I let that slip through. That one’s still my favorite because it was one of the few where I felt like I really tapped into my more creative side. I think I built some excellent tension using the speedometer as a framing device, and that was a really fun thing to write at a time when I wasn’t having much fun anywhere else.

As I’ve said on here before, time allotment has become something of a problem for me. When I wasn’t outright late, I would come close, pushing the deadline until I only had about an hour or two left. I used to think I work well under pressure, so putting things off actually helped me, but this semester has changed my mind. Maybe I should set aside a little more time for planning and getting ideas down. I know a lot of my classmates have a far better and more consistent work ethic than I do. I’m amazed at the amount of posts some of them put up, and the fact that a lot of them were willing to put personal stories on here honestly convinced me to do the same.

I think I’ve always had a pretty consistent voice in my writing, but of the journalists we looked at in the class, I found myself drawn most to columnist Mike Royko. Reading him made me realize that I didn’t have to adopt some whole new style for this blog. I could tell narratives like how I wanted to and was familiar with, rather than adhering to some formula. While I wish I could’ve given these posts the finish I give to my fiction pieces, I can honestly say I’m happy with how this all turned out.

Admitting Defeat

Would you look at that, I’m late on another blog post.

It’s a running theme this semester, getting things done late. I’m not proud of it.

I used to always be on top of deadlines, up until this year. I could blame the workload, but I don’t like that. Even valid excuses always feel shameful to me. I’m doing more than I ever have, but it’s just not enough. I need to do more.

I still get that spike of anxiety when I see an assignment marked missing. It doesn’t stop at the assignment, either, it seeps into everything I do, even after it’s turned in I still feel like there’s something I need to do but can’t. I get so mad at myself from two days ago, if he had just done the damn work I could be stressed over something else.

For one of my classes I’m writing a paper about this old medieval poem called Sir Gawain And The Green Knight. In the story Gawain is put through several tests of his moral code, and eventually he is forced to admit that he failed. It turns out this was actually the true test, and for his humility he is forgiven and rewarded and later made a knight.

I’m not expecting a reward, but maybe writing it out like this will help in some other way.

Journalism Movie Review/Reflection

So recently in class we had the opportunity to see two highly regarded journalism movies, 1976’s All The President’s Men and 2015’s Spotlight. Now, these happened to be the exact two movies I voted for in the class poll, so going in I had some fairly high hopes, and I’m pleased to say both films lived up to expectations. They function both as dramatizations of real events and as their own stories. One could watch either of these movies without knowing hardly anything about Watergate or the Catholic church abuse scandals and probably still follow along and be entertained. That’s not discourage anyone from looking further into these events- there are a lot of smaller details in All The President’s Men especially that you need a certain level of background knowledge to fully appreciate.

Now part of why I was so eager to watch All The President’s Men was because I’m something of a political history nerd, so I was on board as soon as I heard “Watergate”. I was familiar with the political side- the 1972 election, the cabinet firings, the various trials, but not so much the tireless work of the press to expose the truth. The film does a good job gradually raising the stakes, starting with the low-level burglary and slowly peeling back the curtain to reveal the full scale of the conspiracy. You get the real sense that it’s Woodward and Bernstein against the world, with every piece of information they uncover feeling like a tremendous accomplishment. They’re met with skepticism and rejection at every turn, and yet they persist. I was initially unhappy with the montage ending; it felt to me like the story had been cut off arbitrarily. But now I’m starting to see the creative merits to that choice. The movie isn’t about Watergate itself as much as it is about the Washington Post, and its relentless pursuit of the truth. The paper standing by Woodward and Bernstein despite their errors in their initial story is the culmination of that arc. What I found most interesting about the movie was its precision: it isn’t overly dramatized, or bogged down in side details. There’s just a single laser-focus on the plot, in both senses of the word.

That brings us to Spotlight. There are plenty of similarities between the two movies, and it’s easy to see that Spotlight took inspiration from All The President’s Men, even recreating certain moments like the one-shot car scene across town. Now granted, a lot of that similarity stems from the films’ subject matter- both are true, if dramatized, stories of newspapers exposing cover-ups, after all. But I think the key difference between the two films is the sheer emotional weight that Spotlight brings. It gives us character moments with the different journalists on the Spotlight team, and makes us understand why this matters to them. This movie is also less glorifying of the press, recognizing that they had all the pieces at their disposal to report on the Boston Catholic Church’s pattern of sexual abuse years ago, they just didn’t do anything about it. While technically smaller in scale, the “corrupt system” in Spotlight feels more omnipresent, with the courts and even the press falling under the Church’s thumb. It isn’t the kind of movie you walk away from feeling good or even hopeful, but it’s not supposed to be. Honestly, I would place this movie above All The President’s Men, and I did not expect to say that.

Both of these movies I absolutely recommend, not just for their quality, but for what they say about the role of the press.

Current News Story- North Omaha Business Park

https://www.wowt.com/2025/12/02/omaha-inland-port-authority-plans-120m-investment-north-east-omaha/

This is something I was only made aware of in the past week, but I’ve been following the story ever since. Just today, it was reported that the Omaha Inland Port Authority is moving forward with its 120 million dollar revitalization plan in Northern Omaha, which has long been the most impoverished and neglected part of the city. If you’re going to the airport, you drive past North Omaha, never through it. But with this new project, all that’s supposedly going to change, as the stakeholders and city officials would tell you.

I read a couple news stories on this topic, including a more in-depth report by the Nebraska Examiner, but what drew me to the piece from WOWT was that it actually showed the perspectives of the North Omaha residents who could potentially have their entire lives upended by this project. They’re highly skeptical, and understandably so- promises of revitalization are nothing new in cities across the country, and when they are fulfilled they often come at the expense of those original residents, pricing them out of their own neighborhoods. Yes, the city officials are saying they’ll do it right this time, but isn’t that what was said another time in another city? I would love to be proven wrong, but for the time being I unfortunately have to share in their cynicism.

Still, if you live in the Omaha area or go there frequently, this is something to keep an eye on. If nothing else, you should at least watch out for the massive several-block traffic nightmare on the horizon if they actually get started with this thing. Downtown Omaha is already infamous for the endless construction projects, but this is going to be a different beast entirely. Don’t get too worked up over it though- a decade from now you’ll have something pretty to look at as you drive by.

Thanksgiving With A Crowd

Well, Thanksgiving is almost upon us, a sign that yet another year is coming to a close. Growing up I always thought Thanksgiving was underrated, but now I’ve realized part of why I liked the holiday so much was because of how overlooked it was. You weren’t blasted relentlessly with Thanksgiving-themed media or forced into some big ridiculous thing, you just sat down and ate a lot of food.

At least that’s been my experience. Most Thanksgivings at the Andrews house were modest affairs with maybe one or two guests. Even when it was at someone else’s house, it tended to be a one-table deal. Last year was an exception- my parents and I got roped into this extravaganza hosted by my uncle (dad’s brother) Tim, and his wife Lisa at their home in Overland Park, along with another one of my dad’s brothers and probably every living relative Lisa had. With that many extended relatives along with the simmering tensions among my dad’s siblings ever since the family matriarch, Grandma Shirley, passed away and showed that she was really the only one who could bring all her children under one roof, let’s just say I was thanking God I was twenty-one.

It wasn’t so bad, even if I got the feeling my dad really needs to stand up to his brothers more. I don’t know if they were always like this around him and I just never picked up on it, but they really don’t treat him with the respect they should. I guess he got off easy- none of my dad’s sisters even got to come. Granted, two of them live hours away, but the third lived just blocks away. She always was something of a black sheep though in a family of rigid suburban Catholics, so I guess I shouldn’t have been too surprised. Nobody breathed a single word about politics, thankfully, but it seemed pretty clear which side most of the attendants were on. Really, there were no arguments at all, unless I missed something, the most heated conversation I recall was between me and my cousin over the country singer Jelly Roll. We weren’t fighting, we weren’t laughing, we were all just talking or sitting quietly. It felt like a lot of things were waiting to be said, but nobody wanted to say them.

But I still had a good time. The food was great. The drinks, better. One thing was missing though, and this was actually my biggest complaint at the time. There were no butterhorns. What kind of an Andrews family gathering doesn’t have butterhorns? I remember thinking as I stared at the inferior roll in front of me.

If you don’t know, a butterhorn is a type of roll where you wrap strips of dough around a slab of butter and then bake them. Simple, yes, healthy, no, but if you do it right, they come out absolutely delicious. For the longest time I thought these things were some Andrews family specialty, no you can just look up recipes for them and get tons of results. In fact you can probably order them pre-made. But for the Andrews family, they were tradition, and when great-aunt Rosemary grew too old to make them herself, I asked to learn how to make them. Me and my mom for the past couple years would make them from scratch in the kitchen and bring them to all kinds of family gatherings, and I’d figured we’d do the same for Thanksgiving (with some help, of course, given the massive crowd we’d be expected to feed), but no. We were told to bring nothing. At the time, this felt like a slight, and today it still feels like one. It felt like a departure from family etiquette: the expectation always was that if you showed up to a big family event, your party brought at least one side. And I know for a fact that Tim and Lisa didn’t prepare all that food themselves, so plenty of other people were asked to bring sides, so what gives? I remember pointing this out at the table (in much more polite language), and they said we could bring them next time. That was the only mention of any “next time” that whole evening.

All that said, I’d do Thanksgiving 2024 over again this year and every subsequent one. I want even more people in there, more unspoken tension, more strained dynamics for me to pick up on. Most people watch football on Thanksgiving, but I’m more interested in the game in the living room and around the dining table.

Billboard’s Paywall Is A Massive Mistake

You’ve probably heard of Billboard, the long-running music publication, for one thing and one thing alone: the Billboard Hot 100 chart, designed to keep track of the biggest songs in the U.S. each week. This has been their main appeal for decades- other competitors like Rolling Stone tried to debut chart systems of their own, but they folded after only a couple years. They have a ton of more specific charts too, filtering for things like genre and listening medium, as well as charts for other countries, all data that would be interesting to see, and that’s not even mentioning their news articles and all the other stuff they have on their site. Sounds like the place to go for anyone interested in the world of music, right?

The weekly Hot 100 chart is the only thing on the Billboard site not locked behind a 15 dollar a month subscription fee. Anything else, you have to pay. Not even the annual year-end list of the biggest hits is available to the general public anymore. Wanna see if that one semi-hit from earlier in the year actually made it into the coveted top 100 of the year? You better have the money. Trying to find out what songs are making moves in a specific genre? Oh well, guess they don’t matter until they hit the main chart. Not from America and you want to see the most popular songs in your home country? Too bad. See an exclusive interview with your favorite artist? Better hope they didn’t say anything too important.

Now Billboard have made more than their fair share of poor decisions in recent years- letting Christmas music overrun the Hot 100 every December, moving the cutoff for their year-end hot 100 all the way to early November, and enforcing their own recurrent rules, designed to keep the same songs from clogging things up, so selectively that it feels like they aren’t even keeping track sometimes, things that just don’t make any sense to the people watching. But this paywall has to be one of their worst ideas yet. People want to see these charts, yes, but not that much. All that’s come from this is a whole cottage industry of social media accounts that post the data from these paywalled charts. Recently there was a Youtube channel that started uploading all these charts, complete with the songs playing and statistics on screen for anyone interested. At that point, who would ever go and check the website when they can just have all the information played for them?

When Billboard caught wind of this channel’s existence they did what they couldn’t bring themselves to do to the average song dodging the recurrent rules and cracked down hard. The channel was terminated and as of now no replacements have popped up.

I have to ask the Billboard executives: what do you think is going to happen? Do you think all those tens of thousands of subscribers are going to start paying fifteen dollars a month just to see what the top 10 in Portugal looks like? That”s just not happening. The most dedicated chart-watchers will just find someone else leaking the data, and everyone else will just move on with their lives. And what’s stopping another competitor from doing the exact same thing, just with a slightly different formula, and posting it for free? There are entire forums out there full of people who track hings like music streaming and radio airplay in their free time, imagine if one of them decided to make a business out of it?

Look, Billboard’s a long-standing company, and I’m sure they’re not going anywhere anytime soon. But I think they’re making a huge miscalculation. Most people aren’t parting with nearly two hundred dollars annually just to look at some charts that someone else can just post to their page on X. If I could give them any advice, it’d be to drop this air of exclusivity and importance and just run some ads like a normal site.

What You Don’t Expect From A Class

When you walk into class on the first day of the semester, you expect a lot of different things, good and bad. What you probably don’t expect is to find love- Keegan Peterson certainly wasn’t when he took a journalism class in this year’s spring semester. But the most pivotal moments of our lives are always the unexpected ones, and ever since he first met his girlfriend, Keegan’s life has certainly charted a new course.

It was the first day of class, and Keegan was there early, taking one of the best spots in the front of the class. Since it was a small class, everyone else started filling in the remaining seats, trying not to sit next to anyone if they didn’t have to. As class started there were only a few empty seats left, all next to someone, and one missing student. She arrived two minutes late, he recalls, and faced with several different options, she chose to sit next to him.

That setup might sound right out of a movie where two people fall in love at first sight and jump right into a romance, but in real life, these things need time to grow, and in this case, it took a whole semester.

For their first few classes together, they didn’t even talk to each other. As Keegan himself said, he’s not exactly the outgoing, strike-up-a-conversation type. It wasn’t until the teacher started pairing people up to talk about their projects that the two actually got to talking with each other, and from there it slowly blossomed. One time she couldn’t make it to class and asked him to take notes for her- that was how he got her number. They would keep texting back and forth, first about school, then about life. Another time he walked her to her car, even though it was on the other side of campus and he had a class in fifteen minutes to get to, and they talked about video games the whole way. Their relationship kept building as the months passed, and as the academic year was coming to a close, he finally asked her out.

She said yes, of course. They kept in touch over the summer, and they’ve been together ever since, about six months now. They both have busy lives, but he appreciates every moment he can spend with her. He told me some of the things they’ve done lately- decorating pumpkins for Halloween and going out for dinner on Veteran’s Day, and said how happy he was that everything worked out the way it did. He wasn’t looking for a relationship when he came to class that day in January, but he wouldn’t have it any other way now. He’s glad he worked up the courage to ask her out, because he can imagine a world where he let the chance slip away.

So he has a message for everyone out there: take that chance. It’s not going to be easy, but that nervousness will leave a lot quicker than regret. It’s not the most groundbreaking advice out there, Keegan himself called it cliche and corny. But his story demonstrates that there might actually be something to those words after all.

*apologies for the low picture quality

I Never Leave Pills Out In The Open

I always keep my medicine bottles closed, hidden and nearby. If I need to take a pill, I’ll take it quickly and put the bottle away. And not for one second would I let that pill leave my hand on its way to my mouth. If someone else is around I might even ask them if I dropped one by accident, then check to be sure anyway. It’s an obsession, I’ll admit that, but I wouldn’t call it a problem, and I wouldn’t get over it if I could. That’s because I have every reason to be afraid of what happens when pills get left unattended.

Four years ago, I was a senior in high school. My schedule worked out nicely so every other day I didn’t have class until the afternoon so I could sleep in. I’d only realize long after the fact just how important this detail was, but that day it just meant I was slow to wake up. Now back then I had a few different medications, still do, but I used to have a pretty poor track record of actually taking them, so sometimes my mom would set them out to remind me. Looking back, that’s entirely on me and I should have just taken responsibility for my own medication, and I certainly learned that lesson from this experience. What experience? I’m getting there.

I have two cats- well, three, but two that are relevant to this story. Two boys, brothers, named Loki and Frey. They’re fully grown and mellowed out now, but back then they were about five months old, just these sweet little guys full of energy, always running around and, yes, getting where they weren’t supposed to. And usually it wouldn’t be a big deal, you’d just pick them up and put them someplace else, laughing. But when I saw Frey with his head in my pill bowl, and noticed that two pills were missing, I was panicking.

I grabbed him, of course, and his brother who had watched the whole thing happen and done nothing about it, and I went straight to my mom. I told her plainly “we need to take them to the vet”. And she resisted at first. Apparently the pills that got eaten were vitamins, so she didn’t think they’d be harmful. I had to read out the effects of vitamin D poisoning in cats before she agreed. I wanna make something clear, my mom loves these cats as much as I do. I think she just thought I was overreacting, that it really was harmless, and she just wanted me to calm down. In the moment I was furious with her, though, and I still wish she’d have responded the same way I did. I also insisted on taking both of them even though I only saw one eat the pills, which in all likelihood wasn’t necessary. I lied and said they were both up on my desk, when really Loki was on the ground. Part of it was me wanting to make absolutely sure both of them were okay, part of it was just not wanting either of them to be alone, as dumb as that sounds. I never admitted that last part before because I know I’d get in hot water for unnecessarily doubling the vet bill.

The first call from the vet wasn’t good: neither cat threw anything up. That meant they would have to move to the next level of treatment, and they would have to keep them both overnight. That 24-hour period was probably the worst I’d ever experienced, so much worse than any of the car stuff over this past week. I remember just sitting at my computer that night, screen off, with my head in my hands. All I could think was I couldn’t take this. That year, I’d said goodbye to another family pet, as well as my grandma who I’d known my whole life. And both of those tore me up, but at least I’d been prepared. I’d known what was coming, and I’d had the chance to say goodbye. Those were at least natural, this just wasn’t supposed to happen. Kittens, puppies, kids, they aren’t meant to die. That’s not something you should even have to worry about happening, but there I was, thinking about how something had gone horribly horribly wrong in the world and I’d been at the center of it. My mom felt horrible too, I remember she apologized to me with her voice almost breaking. My dad kept trying to reassure us, in the way he always does when he’s trying to keep himself together. If Frey hadn’t gone to the vet, if I hadn’t been around all morning yelling at my mom to help me bring him there, I don’t know what would have happened.

We picked them up the next day. They were fine, just woozy and wobbly from their ordeal. They fell asleep on top of each other and hopefully forgot. Cats move on fairly quickly, don’t they? I’d say I wish I could forget, but I’d be lying. I don’t want to let my guard down like that again.

As I said, both Loki and Frey are doing great now. They live with my parents, and in all likelihood that’s where they’ll stay. It’ll be hard leaving them for good when I finish college, and I’ll keep worrying about them like I always have, but I’ll at least know they’re safe.

Here’s a picture I took of them over fall break. Frey is the one curled up and Loki is the one in a loaf:

The Worst Week Of My Life

“I still have my car”

I wrote that about a month ago, in a blog post titled “Perspective”. I thought my car had been towed, and I was so grateful to find out I’d just parked it somewhere else. In that moment, I couldn’t imagine anything worse. What could be worse than having my car towed and having to pay that fee?

Right, what could be worse? I’m staring down nearly a thousand dollars in repairs and another full week essentially stuck within a one-or-two-mile radius. I’m losing my mind from stress and I’m falling behind on my schoolwork. I want to at least work to make back some of that money but my job requires me to be able to driver. I’m pretty sure that was the only qualification they asked for looking back.

You’re never ready for something like this. At least I wasn’t. As I recall it, Sunday was going pretty good up until that point. I was coming off of a great weekend, one of the best I’d had in ages- had a great Halloween with some good friends, just finished up my Sigma Tau Delta paperwork, and I was ready to start tackling the week’s assignments. I just had to go put some gas in my car first. Nothing wrong there. It was a beautiful afternoon, perfect weather. I decided to overshoot a little bit. Enjoy the wide open space.

I had my foot on the accelerator. I watched the spedometer climb. 55. 60. 65. I went over a hill, I lost a little speed. No big deal.

I never got it back.

50. 45. 40. My foot was level with the floor. 35. 30. 25. 20.

I try to pull over. Turn the car off. Restart the engine. 20. 25. 20. 15. 10. 5.

I’m pulling over again. The thing can barely even start now. I’m stuck. Completely stuck. Weirdly I’m not panicking. I’ve had car trouble before, and I had a silver card in my wallet that’s supposed to get me out of situations like this. I try calling but I don’t have all the insurance information so I can’t complete the call. Whatever. Fine. I’ll just text my parents and ask them for the information, then I’ll call the Triple A guys and they’ll get everything taken care of.

Well a couple hours later and I haven’t heard back from mom or dad. A Sunday afternoon, and neither one of them are getting my text messages. Or my calls. I left a lot of calls on both their phones. I’m starting to worry about them but I have to get my own mess cleaned up first. Eventually I call Triple A again and get in touch with a customer rep, only to hear, get this, my family’s Triple A membership expired months ago. I’d find out later we’d switched providers, and my parents had just forgotten to tell me. Oops. Thankfully the police officer who’d pulled up behind me was nice enough to wait with me until I could get ahold of someone, and when I couldn’t he drove me back to campus. It took a while for me to accept, though. I hated the idea of leaving my car stranded just off the highway, but there wasn’t anything else I could do that night, at least not until I could get ahold of my parents.

The next day I got it towed. Communication with my parents was still spotty, come to find out my dad’s phone had somehow shut off all notifications from me specifically, but through the new insurance company I arranged to get towed all the way to Midas, just walking distance from campus. Everything started to seem okay again.

Well the day after, I hear from Midas that it’s trouble with the catalytic converter, and they don’t fix catalytic converters. They refer me to another place, Exhaust Pros of Kearney, which they tell me I should be able to get to in my condition. And for some strange reason, I trusted the car guys to give me solid advice on what my car was capable of, so I set off. I didn’t get far. I almost stalled out on the damn train tracks, and from there I had no choice but to call the same tow truck as before to get me the rest of the way. At least Midas didn’t charge me anything.

So now Exhaust Pros is waiting on a part to arrive before they can get to work. They tell me a whole system might have to be replaced, and that could cost as much as a thousand dollars. I guess it’s great that this all happened early in the month when my family still has money in the bank, but I’d rather avoid this kind of expense in the first place. I was also told, by both shops and the tow truck driver that a car can run without a catalytic converter, it’s just illegal. Oh, and it’s also illegal to heat them up and break them with a hammer to get all the gunk out. Don’t ask me why, probably some safety hazard, but it’s enough to make me want to become one of those anti-government guys who live off the grid.

But hey, things still could be worse, right?

Yeah, I guess. I could’ve been rear-ended in the middle of the highway and splattered all over the road. My parents could’ve not been answering their phones that night because they’d been killed in a home invasion. Neither I nor anybody I care about is dead, so I should celebrate that, right? Everybody’s been understanding of my situation, I’ve gotten extensions on all my papers. I’ll probably have my car again, at some point, hopefully before Thanksgiving. There’s something to look forward to, at least, right?

Maybe some situations just suck. Maybe some times are just going to be really, really hard. Maybe it’s good to go through stuff like this while I’m still young. It probably is.

Doesn’t mean I have to put some positive spin on it.

David Carr Reaction

Prior to looking into his columns, I knew only two things about David Carr: that he was a renowned column writer, and that he engaged in multiple types of abuse, a fact that he was very open about from the excerpts I had seen. So when I clicked on one of his columns, “Twitter Is All Good Fun, Until It Isn’t”, I had a vague idea of what to expect: someone with a high level of rhetorical awareness, but who wouldn’t pull any punches either. That was more or less what I got, but what caught me off guard was how timeless the situation and commentary felt. There’s something fascinating about reading an analysis like this from all the way back in 2012., when social media was still massive, yes, but the market hadn’t been entirely overrun.

So what was happening on Twitter in 2012? Some public figures were getting themselves in hot water over social media posts. While I’m tempted to say nothing’s changed, I’ll acknowledge that back then social media was more in its “wild west” phase, where it hadn’t quite occurred to users that other people could actually see the spur-of-the-moment thoughts they were putting out there. That was likely the case with the subject of the article, CNN analyst Roland Martin, who tweeted out an insensitive joke that could be read as advocating violence against gay people. Carr writes that while he initially believed that CNN suspending Martin for his joke was an overreaction, he decided to ask several friends what they thought about the situation, he got a better understanding of why Martin’s joke was received the way it was by so many people. He remarks that while he still believes in the right for people to tweet whatever they like, that doesn’t mean the sentiments expressed in those tweets should be dismissed out of hand. Tying everything back together, he says that this sort of nuanced perspective is something a social media platform like Twitter doesn’t allow for.

I thought it was interesting how David Carr took us from his initial perspective on the incident to his more well-rounded conclusion. It’s another testament to his transparency as a writer that he’s willing to admit the flaws in his own thinking. I also like how the whole piece functions as a reflection on and a critique of social media and its limiting nature, even if this isn’t explicitly the main focus. The issues addressed here are still around today, but they’ve morphed and expanded significantly, and if David Carr were still around I’m sure he would have a lot more to say about the current state of communication via social media.