Saturday I traveled back to my favorite city and spent a long, luxurious afternoon with two friends who also happen to be two of the best young journalists I know. All over downtown the restaurants were crowded, with lines of people clustered in groups, dressed up, smiling, complimenting strangers on their dresses, their haircuts, their shoes.
Gay, straight, trans, bi, non gender, old, young (mostly young), all races, all out for a good time.
It was quintessential San Francisco.
Since the pandemic disrupted all of our lives, I've noticed a lovely new pattern. When we do get together, my friends and I tend to be in no rush. We spend the time to really talk, connect, and catch up on our lives since the last time we got together. It's rare that anyone keeps an eye on the clock, or feels an urgency to move on to the next appointment.
That's how it was in the old days, the ones that are gone.
Maybe over the past 18 months we've learned to value friendship beyond what we did before. To be able to call somebody you friend is a gift, an honor, a prized development in your life.
So see? That scary old pandemic wasn't all bad after all! But as much as some of us are living our lives with new appreciation for each other, I observe that certain others are still shrinking away from contact just like they did at the height of the plague.
They hide behind masks that really are no longer necessary, at least not around here. In the Bay Area, our vaccination rates are so low and our virus-prevention consciousness so high that we've reduced Covid to a mere irritation way far back in the background of our daily lives.
We don't much think or talk about it any more. It's over.
Sure it could come back, some scary new mutant may emerge but we'll deal with that if and when it happens, which it most likely won't.
As I've said many times, everyone should beware of the of the steep cost of isolating and shrinking away from human contact. Dying of Covid is no picnic, but isolation will kill you just as surely as Covid ever could have done.
***
Some people say that old-school style reporters like my young friends represent a dying breed. But I'm not buying that. Every so often during my entire career, there have been those who claim that the golden age for journalism is over and now all that's left are light-weight, celebrity-chasing narcissists.
There may be plenty of fluff out there, but it's mainly confined to TV and the amateurish parts of the Internet.
The news sources I cull day after day are staffed by the legitimate custodians of our best journalistic traditions. They do the work the right way most of the time and you can count on a high degree of accuracy in their reporting.
That doesn't mean that various biases don't creep into the system because they do. It also doesn't mean commercial pressures do not influence coverage because they do. But the reporters I know and work with are honest, hard-working people who know how to recognize patterns in the news, develop sources, interpret documents, interview people, document their pieces and write a good story.
This high-quality methodology is followed by the leading newspapers, wire services, non-profits like CIR and Pro-Public, the entire public media sector (NPR, PBS, CPB, etc.) and a surprising number of smaller outfits scattered around the country.
If I cite them, you can trust them. Today's journalism is as good as it's ever been.
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THE HEADLINES:
* This Is No Way to End a Pandemic -- Getting first shots in arms, globally, is more important than any booster program. (Editorial Board/NYT)
* More men are abandoning college. Professor explains why this is dangerous -- NYU Professor Scott Galloway says the drop in men going to college is part of a growing mating crisis in the US and that the country runs the risk of producing "too many of the most dangerous cohort in the world" if the trend isn't reversed. (CNN)
* WHO Seeks to Revive Stalled Inquiry Into Origins of Covid-19 (WSJ)
* Election fraud, QAnon, Jan. 6: Extremists in Germany read from a pro-Trump script (WP)
* Among Those Who Marched Into the Capitol on Jan. 6: An F.B.I. Informant (NYT)
* Russia says it’s in sync with US, China, Pakistan on Taliban (AP)
* UN and Afghanistan’s Taliban, figuring out how to interact (AP)
* Democrats’ Spending Fight Carries High Stakes for Their Candidates (NYT)
* You may get more work done at home. But you’d have better ideas at the office. (WP)
* ‘Stop the Steal’ Movement Races Forward, Ignoring Arizona Humiliation (NYT)
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