I feel like Eminem at the end of 8 Mile

So, 2015 was the year I learned to hate the media and love myself.

I realized I had to choose one or the other. I realized I was slowly being driven crazy by my obsession with the machinations of media companies, my infatuations with reporters and writers who I eventually realized I actually deeply disagreed with, but only admired their Twitter follower count, how many people lol’d when they made banal jokes. I came to the conclusion that in order to be my full self, I had to be more honest about how I felt about the industry that pays me. And how I felt is that it sucks, a lot.

It sucks in very immediate and tangible ways: I got banned from writing from The Verge because I tweeted something that seems undoubtedly and obviously true: that media companies, including The Verge, should cover the tech industry more critically. I got dropped from a gig at Gawker that was set to put thousands of dollars in my pocket and was not told by anyone — the editors just stopped responding to my emails. Those were the two most dramatic examples of how the media sucked this year. But there are countless others which I’m sure every freelancer can relate to: the endless emails with editors who don’t respect your time, or the fact that this is what you do for a living; the payments departments that can’t do their one job: paying the people who work for them.

It sucks to work in the media, IMHO.

And it sucks in ways that affect me less personally, but which still suck: I was amazed by, then depressed by, then resigned to the fact that so few fellow white, privileged journalists, who have access to so much information at their fingertips, stayed silent as People of Color were murdered again and again this year. Tweets by writers stayed on light topics. Articles remained on-beat. I get it — writers want to keep their jobs. But isn’t it depressing that the industry in which we work, which is supposedly about delivering important information to people, mandates we remain silent on the most pressing issues of our time in order to get paid?

Neutrality is a way to uphold white supremacy. This year I got sick of pretending otherwise. The cognitive dissonance between what’s happening in the world and what those I once admired are talking about was too much. I started feeling like everything was bullshit, hopeless, worthless, until I realized that it was only this very small world that I’d chosen to focus a large chunk of my time on that was bullshit. Everything else was alright.

Through hate comes love. After I’d dropped the idea I’d been holding so tightly onto that I’d find a way to make it work as a normal reporter, find a way to coexist peacefully with these media orgs that stand for much of what I despise, I found freedom for myself and freedom in my writing.

Combine that with the fact that this was a great year for a select few people saying what they felt and getting a lot of praise for it (thinking of people who write deeply about personal experience and prejudice like Ta-Nehisi Coates and Alana Massey), along with some great output from publications that make a point of saying exactly how they feel (especially relative newcomer Jacobin) and I started feeling like a different path was possible.

Now, when I write, I feel much happier. It feels fun again. It feels like I’m contributing a bit less to this pile of crap we call the media.

I still haven’t exactly figured things out: how do I, for example, get paid at the same rate The Verge paid me (it was $1 a word for anyone interested), while being able to stay true to myself? There are so many other media organizations I’d like to be able to criticize. I want to name names. I’ve learned my lesson. I still need to make enough money to live, so I need to learn to be better at what I guess a lot of people are already good at: finding just the right amount of silence to maintain my social and economic status.

I’m sure I’ll never find a perfect solution. But it now feels like I am, in a very personal, small way, working towards one, and that feels good.

With that in mind, here’s some stuff I wrote this year that I feel pretty good about:

Oprah Winfrey Created a Planned Community for Katrina Refugees. How’d That Work Out? — NY Magazine and Amazon

This Kindle Single, which was excerpted by NY Mag, made me feel like a good reporter. It’s just a crazy story that no one else was telling, and it felt like finding a box of gold when I found Angel Lane.

How One of Katrina’s Feel-Good Stories Turned Bad — BuzzFeed

This is also a crazy story IMHO! And it hits all the right pleasure points for me as a writer: it’s about something no one is talking about, it’s emotional, and through its narrative it indicts the U.S. government, the media, and white complacency! Also, this article was one of the most popular longform pieces on BuzzFeed at the time — so it made me feel like people care about things more than we give them credit for.

How Two Billionaires Are Remaking Detroit in Their Flawed Image — Gawker

I like yelling at rich people. This article allowed me to do that. And it got a lot of hits.

I Hope the Mets Lose Because I’m Queer — Hazlitt

I often feel like I’m exploiting people’s emotions for clicks when I’m reporting, so I figured I should turn that same process inwards at some point.

The App Around the Corner — The New Republic

I feel like this is some of my best writing this year tbh, and it didn’t involve much reporting. I spoke from an emotional place within me and that felt good :).