Seasons of Grace
“…facts have been replaced by opinions. Information has been replaced by entertainment. Reporters have become stenographers. I can’t be the only one who’s sick of what passes for the news today.”
–Clark Kent
There’s a job opening in the journalism world. After decades in the newsroom at the Daily Planet, Superman quit his job this week. According to a report in CNN, in the comic book series’ latest issue—which hit newsstands on October 24, 2012—Superman’s alter-ego Clark Kent walked out after his boss berated him in the newsroom.
Always the idealist, Kent argued that journalism, as he remembered it, was an honorable career which impacted society for the better. “I was taught to believe,” he exclaimed, “you could use words to change the course of rivers—that even the darkest secrets would fall under the harsh light of the sun.”
But no longer. Veteran comic writer Scott Lobdell, in an interview with USA Today, opined that Kent is not likely to seek employment with another newspaper in Metropolis. More likely, he thought, Clark Kent will follow a trend in journalism and start his own blog—“the next Huffington Post or the next Drudge Report”—rather than accepting assignments and a paycheck from someone else.
Lobdell added, in the USA Today interview: “Superman is arguably the most powerful person on the planet, but how long can he sit at his desk with someone breathing down his neck and treating him like the least important person in the world?”
Clark Kent’s departure from the Daily Planet parallels a trend in contemporary society: According to a Pew Research Center study, only 23% of respondents had read a print newspaper on the previous day—a decrease of 18 percentage points over the past decade. In the same period, there has been a marked increase in readership of online and digital media.
Clark Kent has always set a high standard for responsible journalism. Perhaps he’d write a guest post for Seasons of Grace?
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