NOVEMBER 2017

in my VIEW
It’s about TIME
As far back as I can
remember, Time
Magazine came
to our house addressed
to my dad once a week.
That had to be the mid
1970’s. It was coming to
the house for years before
then. When I moved to
Philadelphia for graduate
school, I got my own
subscription. That was
1991. It’s been with me
ever since. Lansing, East Lansing,
Farmington Hills, Detroit, Novi and
back to Farmington Hills. Twentysix
years in all, not including my
childhood when I had dibs on it after
my dad.
A couple of weeks ago, I received
the issue below with addition of the
wrap announcing that “This could
be your LAST ISSUE.” I had been
ignoring successive renewal mailings
for months. Why? I barely pick my
Time Magazine up anymore. By the
time I get the weekly publication,
several news cycles have already
come and gone. The Time writers
are sprinkled throughout cable news
television. They blog. They tweet.
By the time they type their last letter
for each week’s Time Magazine, their
analysis is already outdated.
The news cycle has been evolving
for years, even decades. But social
media has completely upended
the way most Americans get their
information. The dawn of the Trump
era and his presidential Tweets have
accelerated this trend in ways we
could not have imagined. Trump’s
tweets have the ability to change
MICHAEL G.
SARAFA
SPECIAL TO THE
CHALDEAN NEWS
the topic of discussion in a
matter of minutes. This is
not just going around the
traditional media. That’s
been going on for decades.
Even President Reagan
reduced news conferences
and preferred direct addresses
to the American
people.
What Trump is doing
is controlling the news cycle.
He has accomplished
this by successfully expanding the
bounds of what is considered news
worthy. He has made the outrageous,
normal; the politically incorrect,
acceptable; the obscene, unremarkable.
Trump has achieved what
former U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick
Moynihan once ominously warned
about: the notion of “defining deviancy
down.” As standards and expectations
fall, this new, lower level
eventually becomes normal.
Hence, while social media has exploded
and redefined the way news
is gathered, and disseminated, so too
has public discourse declined. In the
process, the traditional news outlets
have been devastated. Combine these
facts with the decline of print media,
and my history with Time Magazine,
regrettably, is near the end.
While all good things do often
come to an end, this situation
presents a conundrum. How does
one gather information on current
events in this day and age? There
is no one answer and no good answer.
One could take the Trump
approach which simply makes the
news his enemy; unless of course its
good news for him, in which case,
it’s okay. In other words, just make
the news yourself, the way you want
it to be.
Another idea is to just forget
about it. Life is busy enough without
the news. One could confine news
content to life and death matters
only. These days that might include
the weather or threats from North
Korea. I think this option seems to
be in vogue. Today, nobody talks
about the news much for fear of offending
people and, frankly, because
it is perceived not to matter. Being
informed is less important than we
were probably taught. There are
forces larger than the idea of the
informed citizen that will fix things
eventually.
I hope this is not the case. But
as I contemplate letting my Time
Magazine subscription expire for the
first time in a quarter century, I keep
wondering if it’s about Time?
Michael Sarafa is Co-publisher of the
Chaldean News.
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