Are you overwhelmed or are you accompanied?
To all my LA folks now one week into these fires and worried about loved ones and communities, homes, things and futures, I'm so sorry.
Most of us living farther away feel we can only pay attention for now. Our relationship with the news can change for the better during acute moments of crisis. It's an incredible opportunity for a changed relationship or disappointment.
As we check the maps and try to fathom the scale of the destruction, we can see a familiar difference in quality and value being cleaved between national and local news sources.
This article will take about 5 minutes to read. Tips I think are more likely to help readers feel accompanied are in bold.
Local sources seem better. The Los Angeles Times has live updates, some of which are high value and some that are not, like an update that UCLA students are leaving campus. The paywall between readers and the most valuable stories in the live feed (not the UCLA story, for example) has been removed. The interactive map of the fires is freely available, too.
The nonprofit LAist is even better. Everything on the site is free. There is a live blog, but pride of place is given to stories with context and explanation. There are also quick guides for everything from returning home after an evacuation, how to help, and a piece that ferrets through rumors and misinformation. Another story reminds readers there are laws against price gouging rental properties in response to the disaster. The listing agent for a rental that went up more than 85% after the fires hung up on the reporter after he asked about the jump, and then removed the listing.
The New York Times has free access to a live blog with stunning visuals and an incredible amount of information, likely too much. There is plenty of room for reports about Elon Musk spouting off, and stories about whether Mayor Karen Bass should have traveled to Ghana, meaning she was gone as the destruction began to unfold.
These stories are too early, too thin, and too divisive to help create accountability, which I feel certain will come. They help us treat this disaster as entertainment. The pace of this coverage is an example of how the press can misunderstand and miscommunicate the stakes, even when we aren't talking about elections. Coverage by the Washington Post feels almost indistinguishable from the Times. CNN is showing ring cam footage of people fleeing their homes, and Fox News was, as of my last check, recently focusing almost entirely on something about Hunter Biden.
Overwhelm or accompany?
I've been thinking a lot about how we can accompany people through information that is challenging, either because it is frightening, complicated or both. Can accompaniment help make the information more valuable? I think so. Of the news sources already mentioned, I would feel most helped and guided by LAist.
Most of their headlines are written as prompts, "How to talk to children about wildfires, evacuations and losing a home," and "This is how you can get help finding pets lost in the LA fires." The stories have plenty of phone numbers in them so that readers are given a next step to take, hopefully one where a human will be at the other end of the line. Even the page design is clean and unstressful!
A chatbot, a text line staffed by reporters, or some way to interact with the newsroom easily and directly would be amazing, but that's aspirational. I'm not criticizing.
The national news sources don't come close to this level of handholding through information. Moving through the live feeds feels like doomscrolling.
One exception to the rule is Issac Saul's newsletter, Tangle. This is a newsletter designed to accompany. There is not much in the way of design, but the format still works to walk the reader through information that might be challenging. It starts with the cacophony of prominent narratives on both the left and the right, but debunks and adds context along the way. It warns readers directly when information might be challenging to understand or accept.
One line in particular stood out from yesterday's newsletter, "Lots of blame is going around, causing a great deal of confusion about what happened in Los Angeles County. The full story isn’t that hard to tell, it just requires that you take the time to understand it."
The implication here is that Tangle's readers, whether they be more drawn to right or left wing narratives, have the ability to navigate tough information and events, and that reporters can help. I hope to be able to talk to Saul at some point about why the format works and what he's learned.
If there are examples of stories you remember feeling accompanied by, either a while ago or more recently, tell me about them! I'll see you next week, and in the meantime, take care.
