Hey there, today's episode is hosted by the poet Samia Bashir.

Enjoy, and I'll be back on February 18th.

I'm Samia Bashir, and this is the slowdown.

Thank you. Samia Bashir, and this is the slowdown. A lot of ink has been spilled about the death of the news.

The olden days when a Walter Cronkite-like figure closed his nightly news broadcasts with the

valediction, and that's the way it is. And the rest of us could nod in agreement at having been

informed about what was happening in the world and drift off into a satisfied sleep are, well, long

gone. In those days, there were only a few news broadcasts. Information in those

days was limited to the things a select few decided were worth sharing, and the majority of

folks moved through the world with the same ideas about what was factual, real, or true.

Now, instead of a media monoculture, we have something

more akin to a mycelial ecosystem, rhizomatic, recursive, and alive, but also prone to

infection, distortion, and runaway growth. Everyone gets to have a say, but no one gets vetted.

This sounds dangerous, and perhaps it is.

But that idea also skips over the question of who gets the right

and responsibility to do the vetting.

This shift has occurred across every form of media.

Television, music, literature, film,

as social media and digital media making

have significantly minimized the cost of entry

while expanding the reach of our own individual soapbox platforms.

For 25 years, between 1980 and 2005, Ted Cople anchored the National Nightly News

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