Thanks to both of you for a fascinating conversation. Sorry for the bit of cultural meta-commentary unrelated to the news, but something clicked here that I bet other “olds” might relate to:
Even though I knew the polls said that *influencer* was the #1 career aspiration of the youngest cohort in America, I hadn’t fully internalized the o…
Thanks to both of you for a fascinating conversation. Sorry for the bit of cultural meta-commentary unrelated to the news, but something clicked here that I bet other “olds” might relate to:
Even though I knew the polls said that *influencer* was the #1 career aspiration of the youngest cohort in America, I hadn’t fully internalized the obvious implication—that the word *influencer* might carry more trust than the word *journalist* for that group. So much so that Carlos bristles at Adrian’s use of the word to describe him.
I’m pretty sure there’s a generational cutoff above which calling yourself—or aspiring to be—an *influencer* is mostly a punchline. To paint with broad strokes: Boomers either don’t know what it is, or think it’s a made-up excuse to avoid “real work”; Gen X sees it as real, but unserious—ill-defined and hollow; Millennials tend to treat it with impatience or irony, and some probably wonder whether they should’ve spent the past decade vlogging about skincare instead of optimizing LinkedIn profiles.
What I hadn’t appreciated was how far Gen Z’s positive associations with the word go. I’d read those poll responses as more like when high schoolers say they want to play in the NBA or be a movie star—sure, sounds nice, and congrats if you make it, but not exactly a viable career path.
But *influencer* doesn’t just point at aspiration; it also signals who they see as credible—who actually *influences* how they see the world. (You might say “duh, that’s why it’s called that”—and sure—but their relationship to advertisers is also one of being influenced, and they don’t have positive associations with *that*.)
I was a student journalist in college, wrote a regular op-ed column, took a few J-school classes, and have been journalism-adjacent most of my life. And from that vantage, I’ve spent years now—my first notes on this were from June 2015, just around the time of Trump’s golden escalator descent—noodling on a project to try to explain journalism to people whose distrust of “the MSM” runs so deep that I have to wonder whether they’re unfamiliar with the ethical and procedural guardrails that shape professional journalism, or whether they *are* familiar with those guardrails but assume journalists are corrupt regardless.
One example from your conversation: if someone at an LA protest sent both of you a video of shocking police violence, Carlos might feel urgency to get it out fast and help it break through. Adrian, I imagine, wouldn’t *lack* urgency, but wouldn’t let it override journalistic norms—he’d try to authenticate the video, gather context, reach out to LAPD for comment, and look for corroborating evidence.
That difference would make Carlos “not a journalist” by the standards of professional journalism. And that’s fine—advocacy press, activist press, guerrilla journalism (which Carlos might fall under, even if he wouldn’t use the label) all have their place.
But if people don’t understand those additional steps—or why they matter—they might reasonably see a journalist’s version of the story as bloodless and slow, while the influencer’s feels urgent, authentic, and righteous.
Still, there’s a reason we don’t consider PR or advertising to be journalism. The fact that *influencer* can encompass everything from citizen reporting to brand partnerships isn’t inherently a problem. But if a growing share of the public ends up holding journalists in contempt while holding influencers in esteem *across the board*, that poses a serious obstacle to restoring a shared factual reality—one that requires not just agreement on facts, but at least a modest consensus on which sources are more or less trustworthy. And without that, participatory politics doesn’t have much to stand on.
Thanks to both of you for a fascinating conversation. Sorry for the bit of cultural meta-commentary unrelated to the news, but something clicked here that I bet other “olds” might relate to:
Even though I knew the polls said that *influencer* was the #1 career aspiration of the youngest cohort in America, I hadn’t fully internalized the obvious implication—that the word *influencer* might carry more trust than the word *journalist* for that group. So much so that Carlos bristles at Adrian’s use of the word to describe him.
I’m pretty sure there’s a generational cutoff above which calling yourself—or aspiring to be—an *influencer* is mostly a punchline. To paint with broad strokes: Boomers either don’t know what it is, or think it’s a made-up excuse to avoid “real work”; Gen X sees it as real, but unserious—ill-defined and hollow; Millennials tend to treat it with impatience or irony, and some probably wonder whether they should’ve spent the past decade vlogging about skincare instead of optimizing LinkedIn profiles.
What I hadn’t appreciated was how far Gen Z’s positive associations with the word go. I’d read those poll responses as more like when high schoolers say they want to play in the NBA or be a movie star—sure, sounds nice, and congrats if you make it, but not exactly a viable career path.
But *influencer* doesn’t just point at aspiration; it also signals who they see as credible—who actually *influences* how they see the world. (You might say “duh, that’s why it’s called that”—and sure—but their relationship to advertisers is also one of being influenced, and they don’t have positive associations with *that*.)
I was a student journalist in college, wrote a regular op-ed column, took a few J-school classes, and have been journalism-adjacent most of my life. And from that vantage, I’ve spent years now—my first notes on this were from June 2015, just around the time of Trump’s golden escalator descent—noodling on a project to try to explain journalism to people whose distrust of “the MSM” runs so deep that I have to wonder whether they’re unfamiliar with the ethical and procedural guardrails that shape professional journalism, or whether they *are* familiar with those guardrails but assume journalists are corrupt regardless.
One example from your conversation: if someone at an LA protest sent both of you a video of shocking police violence, Carlos might feel urgency to get it out fast and help it break through. Adrian, I imagine, wouldn’t *lack* urgency, but wouldn’t let it override journalistic norms—he’d try to authenticate the video, gather context, reach out to LAPD for comment, and look for corroborating evidence.
That difference would make Carlos “not a journalist” by the standards of professional journalism. And that’s fine—advocacy press, activist press, guerrilla journalism (which Carlos might fall under, even if he wouldn’t use the label) all have their place.
But if people don’t understand those additional steps—or why they matter—they might reasonably see a journalist’s version of the story as bloodless and slow, while the influencer’s feels urgent, authentic, and righteous.
Still, there’s a reason we don’t consider PR or advertising to be journalism. The fact that *influencer* can encompass everything from citizen reporting to brand partnerships isn’t inherently a problem. But if a growing share of the public ends up holding journalists in contempt while holding influencers in esteem *across the board*, that poses a serious obstacle to restoring a shared factual reality—one that requires not just agreement on facts, but at least a modest consensus on which sources are more or less trustworthy. And without that, participatory politics doesn’t have much to stand on.