Shallow, Grave

The place I work is not perfect by any stretch. In fact, I'm in a semi-active phase of trying to find another job, but to be fair, it's the same semi-active phase I've been in for most of the 12 years I've worked there. Like all frustrated endeavors, the emphasis is on the "semi."

They do allow me a lot of flexibility with my hours, meaning if I have to leave early for some middle-aged medical bullshit involving my reproductive organs beginning the process of betraying me by atrophy and apathy, for example, I'm allowed to make up the lost time on other days instead of burning my precious, precious leave hours. My actual days off I reserve for skipping work to play newly released video games for a whole day. Or, like, I guess spending time with family.

My doctor's appointment was Wednesday afternoon,* so this morning I left at pre-dawn to claw back one of the hours. I live in an area that's slightly elevated, on the southern rim of a wide valley that slopes into the plain around the Santa Ana River. In glimpses between tract houses or no-longer-commercial orange groves, I can see most of the valley, a not-insignificant portion of which was glowing angry yellow-red in the darkness. Jesus, is there a lot of stuff out here that's actively on fire at the moment. I'm safe, my family is safe, the structure I use to store said family and all the kick-ass stuff we've bought, all of that is currently not actively burning. Not everyone in the area can say that.

Some people outside the area are struggling with a more pressing type of climate-derived crisis, but of a more metaphorical form. On top of everything else, yet another venerable... well, a notable institution of journalism, one of the both pioneers and stalwarts of the online form, has been driven into a ditch and exploded by a private equity firm. It's happening so often now that the only question is whether or not it's people unqualified flailing their way toward public failure or intentionally running something old episodes of The Sopranos tells me is called a "bust out." This time they got Deadspin, a daily read for me. In the culture of modern journalism, in the post-Fox for-profit model and the collapse of advertising revenue for print outlets, the currency has largely been access, meaning the coverage is always dependent on the magnanimity of the corporate partners of the outlet, either in, say, cranked-out sponsored content or an obvious, beholden deference (see: ESPN and the NFL). Deadspin was special as it operated specifically without access, written right in to its mission statement. As a result it could be irreverent, critical, crude, sometimes juvenile and sanctimonious, but always with a clear and projected voice carrying a self-realized point of view unclouded by "partnership considerations."

Naturally something like that can't really last forever. The staff there has been vocal about editorial independence and union organization (for themselves and covering it as a topic across the country and the world in a way that nakedly veered into advocacy for collective bargaining), so when it was bought by a non-journalist equity firm, the writing was kind of on the wall. And in the end, the inciting incident was predictably editorial interference by people not qualified to interfere. How many people are in a position to act on principle to stick it to the man? And how many people in that position are absolutely NOT willing to act? It's total self-immolation, but I can't help but be impressed by it.

So on the one hand, fuck yeah, solidarity! On the other hand, fuck, that's like 45 minutes a day at work worth of blog posts about topics ranging from who won what sports thing to actual literal life and death that I am going to have to burn maybe actually working. What else am I supposed to do now during the extra hours I'm working?

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*I didn't have to use the chair with the stirrups on it, so I consider that a considerable urology win.