A few months ago I did an AMA on what it's like to work in mainstream local news in the US. TL;DR: It's not great.

Now I'm back to tell you it's only getting worse.

Part of working for a mainstream news outlet is understanding, even if you can't articulate it, that you write for boomers. This is true for the big corporate stations like Fox and MSNBC, but also for the podunk community papers like I work for. And as boomers get older and more stubborn and more terrified of everything that moves, the already-tight restrictions on actual journalistic inquiry in this shitstain country are only getting tighter. The range of acceptable viewpoints, hell, even what's acceptable to write about, is shrinking by the day.

Editors in the newsrooms are contemptuous of the far right but terrified of even the center-left. This morning I was reprimanded for re-tweeting a twitter take pointing out the hypocrisy of the US' condemnations of Russia, given its own imperial history. A coworker almost got fired last week for saying on my station's podcast that reporters deserved a union.

The monopoly on public thought is slipping from news CEO's hands and from the hands of their lapdog star reporters-turned-overpaid editors. Expect ever-more boogeymaning of socialists and even progressives from MSM as it lets out its long death rattle.