Thrive Out of Spite
There’s a song by Charlotte Sands called Spite, which pops into my head every now and again when I’m feeling a little down. And honestly, I think spite can be a powerful motivator and an essential tool to drag yourself out of the doldrums of depression to get back up and do the things you know you can and want to do. I also didn’t think I’d be talking about Kendrick Lamar for two newsletters in a row, but my man’s been busy, and let’s be honest, GNX is a masterpiece—truly the kind of music that reminds you to get up, dust off, and make something of yourself. Even if you’re not a hip-hop head, give it a listen.
I’m Alan Henry, your humble master of ceremonies, and this is Productivity, Without Privilege, my whenever-I-feel-it’s-necessary newsletter about media and thriving in your career as a marginalized person. If you don’t remember, I’m the author of Seen, Heard, and Paid: The New Work Rules for the Marginalized, a book you should definitely read, and if you have read it, (thank you!) buy a copy for a friend. ‘Tis the season!
But let’s talk a little bit about spite. It’s the end of the year, and while I had hoped months ago that this would be glad tidings for better times, we all know that’s not the case. If you’re a marginalized person in America, you’re probably already struggling under the weight of what’s coming in 2025. You’re probably also already tired of the people who have been newly empowered to make your life more difficult than ever, both locally and nationally. But just because the odds are openly against us doesn’t mean the odds haven’t always been against us. So don’t be afraid to lock eyes with hatred and stare it down while you work for a better life for yourself and those around you.
First of all, I’ve been spending a lot of time over on Bluesky these days. Come follow me there!
Also on Bluesky, Rebekah Weatherspoon said back in November that more of us need to think about thriving out of spite:
She’s right, and I totally agree. And we’re not talking about activism, although your activism and attention will be more needed than ever. She means your life. Make the plans you’ve been meaning to make. Make the changes in your life you’ve been wanting to make. Take that trip, write that book. Get that new job, get your passport. Write that weird story you’ve been meaning to write—maybe it’ll turn into a novel. Make some new friends. Expand your horizons. Let it be known that when the chips were down and the world was coming for you, you found a way to carve out love and joy. I’ll try to do the same in the coming year, too.
And that’s my wish for all of us: May we all find it in ourselves to make ourselves proud this coming year, not just for surviving it, but for thriving in it.
For example, I’m still working on what I hope will be my second book, and I’m getting my Canadian passport. Not because I plan on fleeing the country or anything, but because I would like to have it, and I’m entitled to one. Plus, as my friend Kendra Pierre-Louis told me a while ago, make sure you get your papers and documents during the good times, because when bad times come, suddenly getting those documents from their respective authorities gets very difficult. The freedom of time and movement you enjoyed when times were good are gone. So go do the thing, yeah?
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Next, because I’m not the best with segues, let me call your attention to Tom Scocca’s newsletter, Indignity.
Tom is one of the best editors I’ve ever worked with, and in one of his most recent missives, he tackles a topic that’s very important to me: echo chambers and information silos.
A New York Times journalist took to social media with an opinion (not the kind that would get him into trouble internally, of course, that only happens to people of marginalized groups at NYT) that Bluesky is becoming an “echo chamber” for progressives, and that this is a problem that needs to be rectified. Of course, Tom rightfully tears this notion apart for its intellectual dishonesty, as he so often does when rock stars at The Times pretend to be intellectual while they’re actually just showing their asses. I urge you to read it, partially because he deconstructs the “issue” so cleanly. Also, I can piggyback off of the conversation by pointing out, yet again, that the real problem at play here is mediocrity.
The most mediocre voices in our media landscape have everything to lose when people actively being targeted and harmed by that same media landscape start abandoning it. Especially in favor of spaces that, while they may not necessarily be safe, are at the very least non-violent.
The reason people left Twitter for Bluesky in the first place is because they wanted a non-algorithmic space for communication and news—something people on the internet have been begging for since the demise of Google Reader—something that’s been denied them time and time again because it simply makes more money to build algorithms into your social platform. Those algos steer people away from useful information and actual news, and push them towards towards engagement bait, hate and fear, and controversy under the banner of “free speech,” which to those same platforms somehow means the same thing as “free engagement.” As my good friend Annalee Newitz mentioned on Bluesky, when pundits complain about “echo chambers,” what they really take issue with is people creating spaces for themselves that don’t engage in violence and purposefully exclude those responsible for that violence.
When reactionary centrists say "echo chamber" what they really mean is "non-violent community." Everyone needs a non-violent community, and there is nothing bad or shameful about wanting a place where you won't be harassed, judged, or vilified.
— Annalee Newitz (@annaleen.bsky.social) 2024-12-13T17:52:07.747Z
Violence, in this case, refers to the kind enacted by those of us in the media. The kind that often takes the form of “just asking questions” or “exposing people to different perspectives,” without regard for whether there are actual facts or even a desire for truth behind those questions. Instead, it serves as a self-aggrandizing pathway to platforming terrible people with little to add to social discourse beyond pot-stirring. Their goal is, instead, to do the same kind of engagement farming and rage baiting that you see them doing on social platforms and deriding people who choose to protect their peace instead of purposefully harming themselves by paying for their terrible opinions. Subscription dollars, substack numbers, social media followers, and the self-appointed title of “thought leader” are the end goals here, not the truth, or even some deeper contemplation of social ills.
Working in media, I’ve seen several platforms from The New York Times and The Atlantic focus less on publishing true stories that punch up and afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. Instead, they punch down at the same people those platforms belittle when they choose not to support them with their subscription money anymore. (See The LA Times and The Washington Post, after it became clear the billionaires in charge are eager to enrich themselves while pretending to be journalists rather than actually listen to the journalists who do the work.)
Just this week, big pubs have bowed to the incoming admin, proving they've learned nothing and still don't get media distrust. Others are finger-wagging over the CEO shooter using white supremacist language to shame you for hoping for change. They're terrified. Support independent journalism.
— Alan Henry (@halophoenix.bsky.social) 2024-12-12T21:10:53.951Z
So here’s my takeaway. Protect your peace. Support independent journalism that holds light up to the darkness instead of the fierce defenders of the status quo. Support journalistic institutions that ask the important questions that you feel need to be answered, like “why is health care in America so bad that it would drive a man to kill a CEO of an insurance company,” rather than finger-wag anyone who might even consider that murder as the comeuppance that it was.
Be very careful with your time, attention, and money right now, because the same institutions that have failed us will continue to fail us until they’re forced to change course. And that force won’t come from complaining on social media, it’ll come when you cancel that subscription and subscribe instead to a publication that covers what you care about in a way that makes sense to you. The “view from nowhere” has always been a mirage.
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I remember sitting with a masthead editor that I used to work with at The Times to catch up on how things were going. He asked me what I would do to fix this same problem (because, honestly, it’s an old problem,) and I told him I would shut down op-ed sections entirely.
People don’t subscribe just for them. I’ve seen the data; people subscribe to news publications for the news and reporting that matters to them, not for the of wealthy pundits with no expertise in the fields they comment about. We laughed, but over the past year, I’ve concluded that my idea didn’t go far enough.
Many successful publications have a perspective on the issues they cover. The perspectives of their journalists are clear in their coverage. That’s fine because at least then you know what you’re going in for, and no one tries to pretend that they’re objective on an issue like genocide, climate collapse, or racism.
Climate publications like Atmos, for example, don’t need to both sides an issue like climate change. Their position, as is any sane individual, is that it’s bad and needs to be mitigated, and we as a civilization need to do something about it, even if that something will be difficult and expensive. They’re not beholden to present a bad-faith “other side” representing the interests of powerful companies that make billions of dollars by turning the air we breathe into a poison soup. Nor do they send reporters with connections to those companies to cover them without disclosing it. They also don’t do the inverse, like shaming Palestinian journalists from writing about Gaza or Black journalists for writing about racism in America by claiming they’re “biased.” That hypocrisy simply doesn’t exist in those independent publications. They dare to have an editorial vision and dare to serve the communities they cover.
So here’s my suggestion: Rip the op-ed pages out of the publications entirely. Force them to stand on their own, without the protective shield of the real journalists doing actual work in the trenches. Turn them into standalone magazines or inserts to their associated newspapers. Give them their own domains and websites, completely separate from real journalism.
Let The Times publish their columnists on nytopinion dot com, and only there, and then see if their commentary and analysis is so necessary that people will subscribe to it the way people subscribe to NYT Cooking or NYT Games. Let them sink or swim on their own merits. If they thrive, that’s great: it proves there’s an audience for what they’re selling, and it doesn’t need to leech off the newsgathering capabilities of the paper’s parent newsroom.
If they flounder, well, that should make things clear, shouldn’t it? And if you’re reading this and suddenly worried about whether opinion writing can flourish under such a regime, ask yourself whether it’s even necessary in its current state.
Beyond this, I think there’s a better format for an editorial board entirely. Often, editorial boards are staffed by storied journalists who have had long careers in newsroom leadership and are themselves often decades removed from the beats they used to cover. That doesn’t make them bad necessarily, but it does mean that their input has limited value. So let’s try this: An editorial board that rotates each year, and is exclusively staffed by experts in their fields, with expertise around issues that are current, important, and prescient to a publication’s audience. Said team will be helmed by a small team of editors whose job it is to be largely invisible. Those editors are responsible for editing, of course, but also for fact-checking and ensuring the truth and accuracy of the opinions that those experts produce.
And by “experts,” I mean people who have either covered their beats recently or are scholars in their field. No blind hand-wringing from a political journalist about climate change. Instead, a climate scientist gets a seat on the editorial board because they’re a provable expert in the field and have current, interesting, and useful things to say to a publication’s audience. I know I would much rather read the opinions of a climatologist on how we’re doing with that whole “save the planet from human-induced climate change” than a journalist whose only concern about climate change is how upset they are that activists blocked off their favorite upper east side lunch spot to protest climate inaction.
So the editorial board of the future is staffed with actual experts in their fields. Those fields are chosen by editors who take feedback from their readers on the issues that matter to them. After all, so many economists find themselves on editorial boards because people are generally concerned about “the economy,” but we never drill deeper than that. So, instead of just “an economist,” why not an economist focusing on wealth inequality? Or one who studies consumer spending and spending power over one who spent their career interning for the same billionaires with an interest in the status quo—which, oh, would you look at that, is reflected in their writing.
Then, let’s rotate that editorial board regularly as social issues develop and change. At first I thought annually would be a good place to start, but that would be a big lift. But I fear every two years is already starting to get long in the tooth and may not offer an opinion desk the flexibility to adapt to new issues as they come up. If war breaks out, for example, I would love a historian who’s studied the conflicts between the two warring states at length to step up and help me understand it without having to wait.
Would this mean that opinion journalism becomes more of a service to its readers than a highly-touted plum spot that pays columnists hundreds of thousands of dollars for nothing more than their vaguely relevant ramblings, published on whatever basis required for them to keep drawing their paychecks and pretend they’re representative of the national discourse?
Yes, hopefully. Is it a perfect plan? No, but it’s a starting point for tearing down the current system, which serves no one and only enriches those already awash in wealth and privilege. It’s a beginning to build something more aligned with journalism's actual mission.
[ Read This ]
Bosses admit that return-to-office mandates were meant to make staff quit, by Megan Henney: I’ve always said that a company that wants to force you to come into the office to work but won’t guarantee you a place at the office to do that work, doesn’t care about you or your work at all. They just care about ensuring you understand who’s in charge and who has control—and that’s not you, the worker. We can talk about all of the reasons behind RTO mandates, from corporate real estate to simple mediocrity, but the bottom line is that RTO mandates are designed to target the most vulnerable employees in a way they can’t fight back against, like workers who are disabled, have child care needs, medical concerns, neurodivergent workers, and well, everyone else. They’re designed to force you out and to make room for workplace bullies and privileged leeches to thrive. It’s as simple as that.
National Park Service Awards $3 M. To 13 Tribes and 21 Museums To Aid Return of Native American Remains And Sacred Objects, by Karen Ho: Karen is a friend, but that’s only partially why I wanted to highlight this piece. It’s actually the only place I managed to read about this news. By all accounts, it’s an excellent development. It should be lauded as a great step toward reparations to a group of people that the United States committed a literal genocide against in the name of manifest destiny. It’s a really encouraging development and maybe the last good news we’ll hear from the Park Service for about four years.
A guide to practicing care in journalism, by Joe Amditis: A common complaint about journalism and journalists, in general, is that we often parachute into places where there’s trouble, wring out the stories from the traumatized communities that we cover, and then vanish again with no care or concern for the people we just leveraged for content. This guide hopes to change that. While Joe didn’t write the entire guide himself—it was a cooperative effort by all of the folks at the Center for Cooperative Media—he does a great job teeing up how important it is to practice trauma-informed journalism and community care when reporting on issues that impact real people.
[ Try This ]
At the top of this newsletter, I talked about how you should spend the time and energy to thrive in the coming year, even if you don’t think that thriving is in the cards for you. So maybe you have a experiment brewing in your head, a publication you’d like to start, a book you want to write, or something else along those lines. If that sounds like you, take a look at Funds for Writers.
Funds for Writers is a list of grant and other funding opportunities for people who want to get into journalism. It’s a massive list of fellowships and incubators, opportunities for literary residences or writing programs, and government initiatives to encourage creative writing and the arts. Whatever kind of writing you might be interested in, or that you already do, there’s probably something here for you.
Most of these opportunities are likely competitive and will require you put in a lot of work to apply or to be considered, but that’s certainly better than sitting on your thumbs wishing you had the resources to make your dream come true.
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That’ll be it from me this year. I know it’s been a few months since you heard from me last, and honestly I think that’s okay. I only want to pop into your inbox when I know I have something to say, and my new gig at PCMag has been keeping me pleasantly busy working on some exciting projects (I’m hiring, by the way, if you’re someone who has experience writing about infosec!) But I did want to offer you a lantern to carry with you into the coming year, and wish you all the best from where I sit. Like Kendrick says on Wacced Out Murals (the first track on GNX:)
Yeah, nigga, go and up your rank
Know you a god even when they say you ain't
Yeah, nigga, keep your feelings out the way
Never let no one put smut up on your name
Take care of yourselves, and have the happiest holidays. I’ll be back soon.