Journalists are comically attached to linear narratives

...even when trying to wake up in 2041

Photo by La Victorie on Unsplash

Journalism is a very different profession from writing fiction (as I have learnt, slowly, painfully, from and with the best of them) and thank god for that. You don’t really want journalists making up things and doing so with verve and panache, do you?

That said, the paucity of journalists’ imagination would be funny if it weren’t so sad.

Most journalists don’t have much imagination, find it really hard to — in the cliché — think outside the box, and are almost comically attached to linear narratives. Unlike novelists, journalists don’t generally think of storylines that run in loops or veer off into the distance, never to be seen again, or zigzag back the other way, only to suddenly come to a halt.

When Donald Trump was elected US president, many journalists said they really must try and go beyond the obvious. Then, came the coronavirus pandemic and still more journalists vowed they would be really creative in understanding what they sought to explain to …