This is an on the media podcast extra. I'm Bob Garfield. As an on the media listener, you follow the news, probably more so during the pandemic, and you'll have noted articles filled with compassion for the families of those who have died, maybe cynicism in the coverage of politicians' motives and a ton of data analysis to interpret the numbers

were bombarded with.

Chase Woodruff, a journalist who's recently been laid off from his alt-weekly job in Denver,

Colorado, thinks that's all fine, but not enough.

What's missing from the media's content checklist, he says, is anger.

This is from his website.

Quote, as I spent the last two months trying to keep up with all the ways the world was suddenly

changing, all the pain being inflicted that we couldn't see, it was anger that kept me going. I held on to anger like a lifeline

thrown into a sea of fear and despair that was otherwise going to swallow me whole.

Amid the slow and painful death of newspapers, Woodruff worries that such anger will be a casualty. Righteous indignation has always

been a staple of the Alt Weekly world, that world he until recently inhabited, and as those

feisty Alt Weeklys die off at an even more rapid pace than dailies, he fears that Lost Two will be

vital outlets for resistance and emotion.

Chase, welcome to on the media. Thanks for having me. You begin your essay by citing one of the last pieces you wrote for

Westward, Denver-based alt-weekly. It made you mad to write, and it made you mad to think about it weeks later. Why?

The story was about a woman who worked at a Walmart here in suburban Denver and her name was

Sandy Coons. She was 72 years old. She was on oxygen because of a lung condition and was forced to work throughout a deadly pandemic in a low-wage job.

She was a cashier. That's the highest risk job in the store. And she passed away. She contracted the virus.

We don't know exactly how, but the store was later shut down because due to an outbreak there, there were ultimately three deaths connected to this store, including Sandy's

husband, who also passed away.

And it still makes me angry to think about it, to think about, you know, deadly pandemic or not that we are a country where a 72-year-old woman who needs supplemental oxygen needs to work to survive and to make ends meet.

And yeah, it's one of tens of thousands, perhaps by the end of this, hundreds of thousands of stories like this.

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