One of my first journalism-school lessons: include in each story a “man on the moon” paragraph. That is, assume some of your readers are unfamiliar with your story’s major arc, and write a brief line or two explaining it.
Example: You’re covering the O.J. Simpson criminal trial, Day 73. It’s the biggest story in America. Your story is about that day’s testimony — let’s say Kato Kaelin took the stand. At some point, maybe six or eight grafs down, even though “everyone” knows it, you’ll want to add a line providing the big picture: “Simpson is accused of murdering his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ron Goldman.”
“Somebody in Turlock just woke from a coma, doesn’t know anything about the O.J. story,” our prof told us. His shorthand came from the notion of astronauts in space, untethered for long periods from world events: “the man on the moon.”
I woke today, spent a couple of hours “doomscrolling” — obsessively clicking from story to story, site to site, feed to feed. It occurred to me, given the pace of 2020 news, that were I waking from a six-month coma I would not begin to understand many of the day’s top stories, much less the “hot takes,” even less the downstream consequences.
For context: On Dec. 31, 2019, the House of Representatives had recently impeached President Trump, who awaited his Senate trial. In China, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission informed the public about a pneumonia outbreak that had affected 27 residents, none of whom had died; the disease’s cause was unknown. Police shot and killed 999 people in 2019, 250 of them Black, more than twice the rate of Whites; while The Washington Post kept tabs, the deaths were considered routine.
Fast forward to June 26, 2020:
The New York Times: “The U.S. suffered a record number of new coronavirus cases for the second straight day on Thursday. The surge led the White House to announce that its virus task force would hold its first briefing today in nearly two months.
"In Texas —one of the Sunbelt states with a major outbreak — Gov. Greg Abbott paused the state’s reopening plans. Abbott, who had been an early proponent of reopening, is now trying to address the crisis without angering conservative Texans or the White House."
The Guardian: “Republican Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s faltering response to soaring new coronavirus numbers in his state is descending into acrimony, after an accusation his administration is ‘cooking the books’ in an effort to hide the true impact of the devastating pandemic.”
The Washington Post: “Physicians, public health experts, advocates and local officials say the crisis was predictable in Arizona, where local ordinances requiring masks were forbidden until Gov. Doug Ducey (R) reversed course last week. State leaders did not take the necessary precautions or model safe behavior, these observers maintain, even in the face of compelling evidence and repeated pleas from authoritative voices.”
Reuters: "A massive plume of dust whipped up from the Sahara desert, dubbed the 'Godzilla dust cloud,' will hover over the U.S. Southeast this weekend, forecasters say, shrouding the region in a brown haze and raising more health concerns in states where the coronavirus crisis is worsening.”
Merrill Brown, CEO, The News Project: “There may be 10 times as many Covid-19 cases as known. This message was delivered in an CDC hour-long phone briefing. News that 20 million people may have the virus merits a nationally televised White House briefing, not a call. An information tragedy.”
Sanjay Gupta, CNN: “We should have been able to figure this out early. We should have been able to test. And now we're still having arguments about whether we should put these Band-aids on the problem, such as masks. Effective Band-aids, but still, Band-aids on this problem. And we're still not even sure we want to do that. We've got a patient bleeding out in front of us, we know what to do, and we are not doing it.”
Journalist Victoria Brownworth: “Remember when Trump said hot weather was going to kill the virus?”
The Daily Beast: “Donald Trump’s reelection campaign manager, Brad Parscale, is one of a group of campaign staffers in quasi-quarantine after he attended a rally in Oklahoma last weekend where eight campaign aides tested positive for the novel coronavirus.”
Peggy Noonan, The Wall Street Journal: “Something shifted this month. Donald Trump’s hold on history loosened, and may be breaking.”
Faces Of Covid: “Aurea Morales, age 8, of Durham, North Carolina, died of complications from Covid-19 in June.”
Journalist Jeff Sharlet: “You hear people say ‘Covid is terrible, but what can I do?’ Stay home, right. But also: mourn. Mourn as an activity, as something you do, every day. ‘That’s not much,’ people say. No. It’s not. But as a nation we haven’t even managed that.
“Denial of death is also denial of humanity—that of the dead & also your own. Mourning, grieving, letting yourself feel the loss all around you—that’s how you embrace life, yours and others’.
“As we’ve seen in the streets, action grows out of mourning. When we reckon seriously with loss—that of George Floyd & Ahmaud Arbery & Breonna Taylor & so many others, that Jameela Barber, 17, & Bill Hollar, 71, and so many others fallen to Covid-19—we can take serious action.”
Jeffrey Rowe: “CHAZ CHOP Seattle. A map of the CHOP zone…”
New York City Councilman Brad Lander: “Ran into a few friends at #OccupyCityHall: @JumaaneWilliams & @tiffany_caban & @NelStamp & so many more of the leaders we need to #DefundTheNYPD and transform how we achieve public safety in our city, with justice & public health & community safety at the core.”
Linda Johnson, CEO, Brooklyn Public Library: “We’ve long known at the library how hard it is to be at the wrong end of the digital divide, but this pandemic has shone a spotlight on it like never before.”
Prof. Gabrielle Foreman: “Harvard’s @HougtonLib will pause all digital project work to spend the year digitizing only #BlackHistory. Why? Because an archivist dared to propose it when undergirded by a movement.”
Reuters Institute/University of Oxford: “As of April 2020, trust in the media’s coverage of Covid-19 was relatively high in all countries, at a similar level to national governments and significantly higher than for individual politicians. Media trust was more than twice the level for social networks, video platforms, or messaging services when it came to information about Covid-19.”
Irene Pasquetto, chief editor of the Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review: “We are receiving an incredible number of studies and solid data showing that consuming far-right media and social media content was strongly associated with low concern about the virus at the onset of the pandemic.”
CNBC: the Anti-Defamation League and five other organizations last week asked companies to withdraw ads from Facebook, observing that an ad for Verizon had appeared next to a video from the conspiracy group QAnon, which uses “hateful and antisemitic rhetoric.” Verizon responded by pulling its ads from Facebook and Instagram until the company “can create an acceptable solution that makes us comfortable.”
Ben Collins, NBC News: “Facebook created a directory of vulnerable people who can commiserate about the unseen powers keeping them down, and for grifters to isolate and take advantage of them.”
David Brooks, New York Times: “The core problem is that the Social Justice theory of change doesn’t produce much actual change. Corporations are happy to adopt some woke symbols and hold a few consciousness-raising seminars and go on their merry way.
“Worse, this method has no theory of politics. How exactly is all this cultural agitation going to lead to legislation that will decrease income disparities, create better housing policies or tackle the big challenges that I listed above? That part is never spelled out. In fact, the Sturm und Drang makes political work harder. You can’t purify your way to a governing majority.”
#BLM protest poster: “We will not tolerate racist, sexist, transphobic, homophobic, biphobic, femme phobic, ageist, fat phobic, classist, xenophobic, or oppressive behavior or language of any kind.
“If you are non-Black be mindful of the space you take up. Are you elevating or repressing? Use your voice to amplify, not lead.”
Caroline Randall Williams, New York Times: “I have rape-colored skin. My light-brown-blackness is a living testament to the rules, the practices, the causes of the Old South.
“If there are those who want to remember the legacy of the Confederacy, if they want monuments, well, then, my body is a monument. My skin is a monument.”
Benjy Sarlin, NBC News: “The future of the coronavirus recovery goes through the classroom. Whether school returns is maybe the single biggest policy question today, with ripple effects across all society. But parents still don't have an answer or a clear national plan.”
Nichi Hodgson, British journalist: “So I've been receiving lots of press releases about single-use pleasure products. I laud the hygiene but worry about the planet. What's the solution?”
Baseball Prospectus: “Can baseball be ethically played in 2020?”
The man on the moon has some catching up to do.
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