Fitz (Jonathan D. Fitzgerald)

@jonathanfitzgerald.bsky.social

1373 Followers 707 Following

Associate prof of English. Author of "How the News Feels: The Empathic Power of Literary Journalists". Teaching and writing nonfiction, mostly. Bylines: NYT, Boston Globe, Atlantic, etc. Let’s talk about restoring local journalism. jonathandfitzgerald.com

Though great political work and useful debate about ideas and ethics is happening over social media, much of the time we spend together (or in solitude) has been replaced by the time we spend online, in arenas not conducive to subtlety or complexity. We have shifted to short declarative statements, to thinking in headlines, binaries, catch-all categories, to viewing words as pieces in a game of checkers rather than, say, gestures in a ballet.
If you're confident that everything not black is white, discussions about shades and hues seem beside the point. This absolutism presumes that our only position on those with whom we don't have complete agreement is complete disapproval, and also that agreement is simple, past which there is no nuance, strategy, possibility to explore.

Mos Def & Talib Kwelie are Black Star album cover

Cover of What We Teach When We Teach DH

A couple pages from the graphic novel Dog Man making fun of the news media’s tendency to elevate the importance of clicks over truth