Journalism in the 21st Century

Well, well, well. You're probably reading this on your smartphone, or the mini iPad or some other tablet. If you are sitting at a desk reading this on a computer larger than a loaf of bread you are probably also listening to "Afternoon Delight" and playing Pong while you're at it. For in 2014, the year when everything journalistic was consumed not only digitally and quickly but minimally, everyone competed to do things faster and smaller than the next guy. If you were capable of reading font on a one-inch screen, hey, you've got a leg up on me. I'm still enlarging fonts and begging PRs to only send me releases with 12-point lettering. Yet, the trends toward faster and tinier were innocuous compared to the tragic assault on our industry that came with layoffs. Fewer and fewer of us were making a living as journalists -- from reductions at The New York Times to CNN to smaller papers such as the Orange County Register . At CNN, too, it seemed that the tre