saving ink

One morning a couple of months ago when I still had a job (a painful 9:15 am to be exact, about five hours before my brain tends to wake up), a colleague and I interviewed one of the trumpeters of St. Mary’s Church (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, I suggest clicking the afore-mentioned link to read about an awesome legend that involves a Tatar warrior with rather unbelievable archery skills). While in general the interview was pretty fascinating (turns out, there are seven trumpeters, and they work in 24-hour shifts that allow, at most, 55-minute catnaps during the night), there was an anecdote he told us after the tape recorder was turned off that seems like an apt parable for today’s news media.

According to the trumpeter (and technically, fire fighter, as every trumpeter is a member of the Krakow Fire Brigade), in the early 1900s there was a watchmaker’s shop on the Market Square, right by St. Mary’s. Every morning, the trumpeter on shift would go to the watchmaker’s and check the time and calibrate his pocket watch, then proceed up to the tower to do his job, which means playing the Hejnał (St. Mary’s hymn) every hour, on the hour, sun or rain or hail or snow or holiday or weekend. One morning, the trumpeter awoke to find that his watch was broken, so he set out earlier than usual to make a longer stop at the watchmaker’s. As the watchmaker was fixing the pocket watch, the trumpeter asked, “Sir, how do you calibrate the clocks in your shop to keep the correct time?” “Well, that’s easy,” the watchmaker replied, “I listen for the Hejnał every hour!”

Perhaps you can see where I’m going with this.

The world of the news media and journalism has become a closed circle of information, feedbacking onto itself much like a guitar pick-up placed too close to a speaker - after a while, all you get is noise. The news agencies have replaced interviewees as primary sources, and the rapid pace of updates has allowed for inexcusable mistakes. All of this has led to a downward spiral of journalistic quality, when one outlet keeps time by the other’s watch, which is simultaneously being wound according to the former’s. 

So what’s the solution? Better quality control at journalism schools? (Does anyone even go to those anymore?) A narrowing of the market? Or perhaps a change in motivation, from ad revenue to direct payment for content? I still don’t know the answer, but I know damn well that a change is necessary, before the rest of the world’s media is swallowed up by the self-referencing American model.