This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

Atlantic Magazine came up this week with a few new thoughts for journalists as they continue to deal with the unprecedented challenges of covering the current presidential campaign.

I paid attention to this for a couple reasons:

• First, as a former journalist, I still have newspaper blood in my veins.  While journalism these days encompasses social media, newspaper journalists still face stiff challenges to get what they write right.
• Second, the candidacy of the scofflaw Donald Trump who wants to be dictator lends special credibility to the work of reporters.

So, more from the Atlantic:

The writer, Charles Sykes, indicated he had participated in a panel discussion at the International Symposium on Online Journalism where several journalists, he reported, discussed the question: 

“Are we going to get it right this time?   Has the media learned its lessons, and are journalists ready for the slog of the 2024 campaign?”

His answer:  Only if journalists realize how profoundly the rules of the game have changed.

“Lest we need reminding, this year’s election features a candidate who incited an insurrection, called for terminating sections of the Constitution, was found liable for what a federal judge says was ‘rape’ as it is commonly understood, faces 88 felony charges, and — I’m tempted to add ‘etcetera’ here, but that’s the problem, isn’t it?  The volume and enormity of it all is impossible to take in.”

“The man,” Donald Trump, “is neither a riddle nor an enigma,” Sykes writes.  “He lays it all out there:  His fawning over the world’s authoritarians, his threats to abandon our allies, his contempt for the rule of law, his intention to use the federal government as an instrument of retribution.  Journalists must be careful not to give in to the ‘Banality of Crazy.’  There have been so many outrages and so many assaults on decency that it’s easy to become numbed by the cascade of awfulness.”

In a recent newsletter, former White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer added to the context by pointing out a recent example:  “On a radio show earlier this month, Donald Trump bizarrely suggested that Joe Biden was high on cocaine when he delivered his energetic State of the Union address.  It was a startling moment, yet several major national media outlets did not cover the story.”

Further, when Trump called for the execution of General Mark Milley, the miliary Chief of Staff, Pfeiffer says the over-the-top, criminal comment didn’t have nearly the explosive effect it should have.

“I had expected every website and all the cable news shows to lead with a story about Trump demanding the execution of the highest military officer in the country.  If Barack Obama or George W. Bush had said the same, the news media would have been all over it.”

So, what’s to be done?

Sykes says he doesn’t have easy answers “because I don’t think they exist.” 

But, he adds:

• First, we should redefine newsworthy.  Journalists need to emphasize the magnitude rather than simply the novelty of political events.  Trump’s ongoing attacks on democracy may not be new, but they define the stakes of 2024.  So, although live coverage of Trump rallies without any accompanying analysis remains a spectacularly bad idea, it’s important neither to ignore nor mute the dark message that Trump delivers at every event.
• Why not relentlessly emphasize the truth, and publish more fact-checked transcripts that highlight his wilder and more unhinged rants?  Emphasizing magnitude is, of course, a tremendous challenge for journalists when the amplification mechanisms of the modern web — that is, social-media algorithms — are set by companies that have proved to be hostile to the distribution of information from reputable news outlets.
• The media challenge should be to emphasize the abnormality of Trump without succumbing to a reactionary ideological tribalism, which would simply drive audiences further into their silos.  Put another way:  Media outlets will need all the credibility they can muster when they try to sound the alarm that none of this is normal.
• It is far more important to get it right than to get it fast, because every lapse will be weaponized.
• The commitment to “fairness” should not, however, mean creating false equivalencies or fake balance.  An exaggerated report about Biden’s memory lapses, for example, should not be a bigger story than Trump’s invitation to Vladimir Putin to invade European countries.
• In the age of Trump, it is also important that members of the media not be distracted by theatrics. The stakes are simply too high to wallow in vibes, memes, or an obsessive focus on within-the-margin-of-error polls.

Sykes concludes his trenchant article by saying this:

“And, finally, the Prime Directive of 2024:  Never, ever become numbed by the endless drumbeat of outrages.” 

Most of which, inevitably, will be from Trump who will come across as wounded whenever his abhorrent conduct is called into question.

Kudos to Sykes for tackling a tough subject when, literally, the future of America as we know it is at stake.