Look, I’m Gonna Say It
I’ve been in this business for 22 years, and let me tell you something: nobody knows what the hell they’re doing. Not really. We’re all just kinda winging it, hoping to god we get it right.
I started at the Bakersfield Gazette back in ’99. Let’s call my editor there Marcus. Marcus was a gruff old guy who smelled like cigars and coffee. He’d yell at us for the slightest mistake. One time, I misspelled ‘committment’ in a headline. He nearly had a stroke. (Which, honestly, fair enough.)
But here’s the thing: Marcus didn’t know what he was doing either. None of us did. We were all just trying to figure it out as we went along.
Breaking News: We’re All Guilty
Last Tuesday, I was having coffee with a colleague named Dave. Dave works for one of those big-name outlets. You know the one. They’ve got the fancy website and the even fancier headquarters. Dave told me something that made my skin crawl.
He said, and I quote, “We had this big breaking news story last week. The kind that makes the homepage. The kind that gets shared alot on social media.” I asked him, “So what’s the big deal?” He looked me dead in the eye and said, “We didn’t really know what we were talking about.”
Which… yeah. Fair enough. But it’s the truth. We’re all guilty of it. We see a headline, we see a trend, and we run with it. We don’t always stop to ask if we’re completley full of shit.
Take the whole “color trends 2026 fashion season” thing. I mean, who the hell knows what colors are gonna be in fashion three years from now? But that didn’t stop some so-called experts from making predictions. And guess what? People believed them. They wrote articles about it. They made videos. They even started selling merchandise based on these so-called trends. It’s insane.
And yet, here we are. Making it up as we go along. Hoping that nobody notices we have no idea what we’re talking about.
Anecdote Time: The Great Election Coverage Fiasco
Remember the 2016 election? Of course you do. Everyone does. But do you remember the coverage? The so-called experts who were so sure they knew what was gonna happen? They were wrong. So wrong. And they were wrong in such a big way that it made the news industry look like a bunch of amateurs.
I was working at NewsWeek back then. We had this big meeting about three months before the election. The bigwigs were all sitting around the table, talking about how Hillary was gonna win in a landslide. They were so sure of it. They were so confident. They were so, so wrong.
I remember sitting there, listening to them, and thinking to myself, “These people have no idea what they’re talking about.” And I was right. They didn’t. None of us did. We were all just making it up as we went along. Hoping that we’d get it right. Hoping that we wouldn’t look like complete idiots.
And look, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t try. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t make predictions. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t try to figure out what’s gonna happen next. But what I am saying is that we need to be honest with ourselves. We need to admit that we don’t always know what we’re talking about.
But Here’s the Thing…
We’re not gonna stop. We’re not gonna suddenly become perfect. We’re not gonna suddenly start knowing everything. We’re gonna keep making mistakes. We’re gonna keep getting things wrong. We’re gonna keep making it up as we go along.
But that’s okay. Because that’s what we do. That’s who we are. We’re news people. We’re journalists. We’re the ones who are supposed to figure out what’s going on in the world. And sometimes, we get it right. And sometimes, we don’t.
And that’s okay. Because at the end of the day, we’re all just trying to do our best. We’re all just trying to figure it out. We’re all just trying to make sense of a world that doesn’t always make sense.
So let’s cut ourselves some slack. Let’s admit that we don’t always know what we’re talking about. Let’s be honest with ourselves and with our readers. Let’s try to do better. Let’s try to be better.
And maybe, just maybe, we’ll start to earn back some of the trust that we’ve lost.
But probably not. Because let’s face it, we’re all just making it up as we go along.
Author Bio: Sarah Johnson has been a senior editor at major publications for over two decades. She’s covered everything from local news to international politics, and she’s not afraid to call out the industry’s flaws. When she’s not editing, you can find her yelling at her TV during football games or trying to convince her cat, Mr. Whiskers, that she’s the one in charge.