The Herd of Independent Editorialists

Harold Rosenberg, from 1948, and every word is still true 70 years on:

The mass-culture maker, who takes his start from the experience of others, is essentially a reflector of myths, and is without experience to communicate. To him man is an object seen from the outside. Indeed it could be demonstrated that the modern mass-culture élite, even when it trots around the globe in search of historical hotspots where every six months the destiny of man is decided, actually has less experience than the rest of humanity, less even than the consumers of its products. To the professional of mass culture, knowledge is the knowledge of what is going on in other people; he alone trades his experience for the experience of experience. Everyone has met those culture-conscious “responsibles” who think a book or movie or magazine wonderful not because it illuminates or pleases them but because it tells “the people” what they “ought to know.”

We're still all about telling the people what they "ought to know":

More than 100 publications across the US will publish editorials rejecting Donald Trump's repeated attacks on the press.

The move is part of a coordinated effort by the Boston Globe's editorial board to denounce the president's claim that the media "is the enemy of the American people". Each newspaper involved in the campaign will publish their own unique editorial refuting such criticisms, to arrive on newsstands Thursday, 16 August.

In a statement calling on other newspapers to join the effort, the Boston Globe wrote, "We propose to publish an editorial on August 16 on the dangers of the administration's assault on the press and ask others to commit to publishing their own editorials on the same date".

Put another way, in a stellar example of how Twitter can illuminate:

Blinded by the light

Of course, Trump didn't say the media in its entirety is the enemy of the people. Trump's own tweet calls out some organizations, but certainly not all:

He left out the Star Tribune, much to its disappointment

Never mind that.

"This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." I'm certain Sunday's newspapers will be nothing short of legendary.