Raising a glass to Free Press readers amid polarizing times

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 30/12/2024 (340 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Is it any wonder Merriam-Webster chose “polarization” as its word of the year?

And given the divisions that defined 2024, the way extremists were rewarded, the fact a billionaire trafficking in bitterness and bile via his algorithm-amped platform is now joined at the hip to the incoming U.S. president, I’m already worried what the dictionary will choose for its word of the year in 2025.

Sorry for sounding a dystopian note to start my traditional end-of-year coda to readers, my 13th as editor of the Free Press. I swear I’m still a glass-half-full guy, because I remain convinced in the power of journalism to make a difference.

Readers like you can be that bulwark against a further descent into the disorientation that breeds disconnection.

In a world, however, where the information environment has shattered into so many shards — many of which are increasingly corrupted, even perverted — journalism is staring at a pretty tall order.

Of course, it wasn’t always like this. There was a time when polarization wasn’t aided and abetted by vectors of disinformation, when you didn’t profit by peddling conspiracy theories and deep fakes.

“If only there were a way of somehow moderating this maelstrom — of altering the algorithms so as to downplay vitriol and falsehood and outright lunacy,” journalism professor Christopher Dornan wrote for the opening of the Winnipeg Art Gallery show making the 150th anniversary of the Free Press.

“If only the social media giants would choke off content that was harmful and deluded, and play up instead what was trustworthy, reliable, reasonable and civil.”

Dornan noted a time did exist when newspapers like the Free Press were cohesion machines, custodians of less hysterical conversations, a metronome for what mattered.

While I can romanticize the past, I’m not naive enough to believe newspapers like the Free Press can wrestle back control of that metronome from Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok and whatever disruption and disorder AI has up its sleeve.

However, readers like you can be that bulwark against a further descent into the disorientation that breeds disconnection.

The fact you are reading what I write, whether it be in print or pixels, says something about you in this day and age, when so many digital distractions are vying for your attention all the time.

You value a domain of ideas and the serendipity of discovery over mindless memes and echo chambers. You are prepared to spend time and energy absorbing, with a mind that is open.

You aren’t afraid to take on a piece that is demanding.

You are willing to reflect, to respect rational thinking.

By helping preserve an institution that’s served Manitoba for almost as long as it has been a province, you are defending the notion of objective truth the polarizers so often seek to undermine.

In short, Free Press readers are the antidote to the threats posed by a polarized world.

By turning to us as an information source, you are strengthening the social fabric being pulled apart by the twitchiness of social media.

By helping preserve an institution that’s served Manitoba for almost as long as it has been a province, you are defending the notion of objective truth the polarizers so often seek to undermine.

By finding utility in the text we deliver, you are running against the technological current of platforms engineered to use us, rather than the other way around.

So, let me end my year-end note to you with a word of thanks for reading what we write, for helping fund our journalism and for keeping the faith in a cohesion machine committed to ensuring we are more than an aggregate of strangers where the only thing we have in common is agreement on how polarized we’ve become.

Happy New Year!

paul.samyn@freepress.mb.ca