Good morning. Today’s newsletter opens with some thoughts on existential dread by Poynter managing editor Ren LaForme. Take it away, Ren …

The forecast this year seems rife with “economic headwinds,” which blow in from some dark direction and deface or collapse newsrooms.

Below grim headlines about layoffs or closures are quotes that make grown men — at least this one — shudder.

“It’s easily the saddest time since I got my first job in the business with the Associated Press in early 1980,” retiring NFL writer Peter King said this week on a sports media podcast. “And it continues to be. You just think, ‘Well, we’ve hit the floor.’ And then there’s a lower floor to be hit.”

“I’m not very optimistic about the survival of the majority of newspapers in the United States,” digital media pioneer Roger Fidler told The New York Times in an article dourly titled “How the Media Industry Keeps Losing the Future.” 

The question of whether newspapers will lie down for a final dirt nap and perhaps usher in an apocalypse for the entire news media ecosystem has lingered for decades without a good answer. Even as the industry has better contended with the day-to-day stress and trauma of the job, (in fact, the Reynolds Journalism Institute and research firm SmithGeiger published a study of stress in journalism just hours ago) we rarely talk about the effects of existential dread about journalism’s future.

Will I wake up with a job tomorrow? Will my company continue to exist? Is today the day that the thread that holds the sword of Damocles snaps and decapitates American journalism?

These questions feel unbearable, but we’ve been bearing them for well over a decade.

Dr. Maury Joseph, a clinical psychologist and therapist located outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, told me that simply existing “has plenty of dread baked into it,” with its uncertainty and unknowns.

“What turns out to be important is having a deeper understanding of what you can control and what you can’t control,” he said. “What ends up making people feel sick, usually, is the things that they do consciously and unconsciously, intentionally and unintentionally, to try to exert control over that which is not controllable.”

Dr. Joseph suggested that journalists may respond to existential threats with hyperactivity: overworking, taking on extra tasks, and trying to become the best employee. But no matter how hard someone works, they could still be laid off for reasons outside of their control.

“They’re trying to control market forces, economic forces, that are just much bigger than them and beyond the scope of their potency,” he says. “That’s fine. And it can work for periods of time. In capitalism, it can even be rewarded. But ultimately, the person is going to end up with sort of a deficit of self-care.”

They may also respond with nihilism, which makes for a kind of existential depression. They know that no matter how hard they work, they’re still on the chopping block, so they give up.

The way forward, he says, is “learning to live with the anxiety rather than making frantic or fraught efforts to control the uncertainty. Learning to accept and live with that uncertainty and some amount of anxiety is a part of life, whereas trying to control it omnipotently isn’t impossible and will ultimately deplete you.”

Perhaps the answer then is to focus on what we can change. Maybe this is obvious, but it only struck me a few years ago that focusing on what we can change doesn’t have to involve your job.

A year into the pandemic, after months of 12-hour-plus days and publishing dreadful (but important) things like this, I realized that the 20-minute break I had been taking to cook dinner every night made me feel a little better. So I leaned in. Those 20-minute breaks became longer. I learned how to fix a runny roux and prepare a traditional omelet and make a pasta dish from just about any wayward ingredient in my pantry. It saved my sanity, and my ability to do my job.

And, of course, for those really committed to saving journalism, there is no lack of smaller problems that we could reasonably solve. My personal pet peeve right now is the fact that almost every news website has a terrible user experience.

That might mean that I’ll be in a huddle with my newsroom’s developers, chatting about website code and eating leftover tomato and bean stew when the industry finally comes crashing down. But at least I’ll be doing something productive about it.

Thanks, Ren. And now onto the rest of today’s newsletter with media news, tidbits and interesting links for your weekend review …

• The Associated Press’ Alanna Durkin Richer and Eric Tucker with “Judge holds veteran journalist Catherine Herridge in civil contempt for refusing to divulge source.”
• Last month, The Intercept’s Daniel Boguslaw and Ryan Grim wrote a story that said, and I’m quoting them here, “The New York Times pulled a high-profile episode of its podcast ‘The Daily’ about sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas on October 7 amid a furious internal debate about the strength of the paper’s original reporting on the subject, Times newsroom sources told The Intercept.” On Thursday, Vanity Fair’s Charlotte Klein had this scoop: “New York Times Launches Leak Investigation Over Report on Its Israel-Gaza Coverage.” Klein writes, “Management in recent weeks has pulled at least two dozen staffers, including Daily producers, into meetings in an attempt to understand how internal details about the podcast’s editorial process got out, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter. The investigation, I’m told, is being led by Charlotte Behrendt, the paper’s director of policy and internal investigations.”
• NewsNation’s new Sunday show “The Hill Sunday,” hosted by political editor Chris Stirewalt, will make its debut Sunday. The show airs at 10 a.m. Eastern. The Sunday morning news shows are a crowded field, but Stirewalt believes his show can draw an audience, telling Variety’s Brian Steinberg, “The underserved portion of the American news market are folks who are not looking for an emotional attachment or partisan cues for how to consume their news. They are looking for something that seems like it’s trying to be fair, and I think that it’s a harder way to make a buck in the news business, for sure.” But, he added, “there is a lot left on the table in terms of Americans who have mostly tuned out the news because it’s just too much.”
• Axios’ Sara Fischer with the scoop that Washington Post tech columnist Taylor Lorenz is launching a weekly video podcast with Vox Media. It will be called “Power User” and will focus on Lorenz’s reporting about the online world. Lorenz told Fischer, “Each episode will cover one main topic or story, and will include a quick news rundown where I’ll inform and contextualize big tech and online culture news. It’s fundamentally a chat show between me and interesting, insightful figures shaping the business, media, and political landscape through tech.”
• Mediaite’s Aidan McLaughlin with “‘It’s Like Survivor’: Cable News Braces For The Great Pay Cut.”
• The author does acknowledge the amusing fact that he is writing for a Harvard-based site, but it’s still interesting: Nieman Lab’s Joshua Benton with “Is The New York Times’ newsroom just a bunch of Ivy Leaguers? (Kinda, sorta.)”
• Also for Nieman Lab, Sarah Scire with “The Boston Globe revisits an infamous murder — and confronts its own sins along the way.”
• Pat McAfee, whose popular podcast/show is now on ESPN, went on the “All The Smoke” podcast and had plenty to say about the network, his recent calling out of executive Norby Williamson and his thoughts on his regular interviews with NFL star Aaron Rodgers. Awful Announcing’s Andrew Bucholtz has all the highlights.
• As I mentioned in a newsletter earlier this week, court-storming — when college basketball fans rush the court after their team upsets an opponent — is under scrutiny because two high-profile players (Iowa’s Caitlin Clark and Duke’s Kyle Filipowski) recently collided with fans. Some have suggested that TV networks seem to celebrate court-storming. So The Athletic’s Richard Deitsch has “How should broadcasts handle court-storming? On the line between documenting and glamorizing.”
• The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand reports that NASCAR analyst (and former driver) Dale Earnhardt Jr. is leaving NBC Sports to join Amazon Prime Video and Warner Bros. Discovery Sports. Earnhardt will take this racing season off and then start his new job next year when Amazon and WBD begin their coverage.
• Associated Press Sports Editors, which has an annual contest recognizing the best in sports journalism, is adding a new category. It’s the Billie Jean King Award for excellence in women’s sports coverage. Here are more details, including how to enter.
• The BBC’s ​​Hugh Schofield with “Leap year: French readers enjoy world’s only four-year newspaper.”

More resources for journalists

• Delve more deeply into your editing skills with Poynter ACES Intermediate Certificate in Editing. Start anytime.
• Essential Skills for Rising Newsroom Leaders (Seminar) (May) — Apply by March 26.
• Lead With Influence (Seminar) (June) — Apply by May 6.
• Time for a new job? Your future employer is looking for you on The Media Job Board — Powered by Poynter, Editor & Publisher and America’s Newspapers. Search now!

Have feedback or a tip? Email Poynter senior media writer Tom Jones at tjones@poynter.org.

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