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Deadening the Noise
These are both things I had done for a decade or more by the time I left them. When I started them, I thought I would likely do them for the rest of my career.
The fates had other plans, as they do.
I left journalism because I was disillusioned with the notion that I was making a difference in the communities I worked in. In moving from daily beat writing to digital journalism and social media management, I felt I was contributing to problems more than helping people understand them. This started right out of the gate at my first job at the Statesman Journal in 2006 and continued through my time at Chicago Public Media.
Instead of being able to write about whatever tweaked my curiosity, my editors fielded complaints about the stories I wrote. The readership was old and growing older, and to cater to their interests, I had to be less relevant to the entire community. I suspect this occurs all over the country today.
I left Facebook last year after watching the social media platform help rip the country in two over the course of the previous four years.
Leaving is difficult to do, especially when you spent a decade cultivating a large and diverse group of people on Facebook. It’s especially complicated when…
