I woke up sweating and in the grips of panic.
The air was thick with strangeness, and I could feel something was wrong. My adrenal glands fired as self-preservation consumed me. I rapidly surveyed the room… The walls were breathing… No — worse — they were morphing inward.
I staggered out of bed and into the dim, narrow, brick maze of Centennial Towers, my scalp itching my vision buzzing. I found the stairwell and frantically descended, ten steps at a time, testing my will to live. I burst through the lobby doors and wobbled desperately out of the back exit, running headfirst into a wall… of bliss! Colorado sun, cold air, birds chirping, the whole nine yards.
What I had just survived, I later learned was Towers’ Psychosis. A savage condition, catalyzed by the compounding of a few rare maladies.
According to a very serious doctor friend of mine, the disease is triggered when three ingredients combine:
- Stagnicity: too many consecutive hours within Centennial Towers residential property
- Gluttonous degenerate alchemy: a self-explanatory lifestyle choice
- Excessive date consumption: extremely high in natural sugars, flooding the glucose receptors and racking the body with a noxious excess of energy
When these ailments align, a vicious delirium is induced, with the only cure being an immediate exit from the confines of the banal mounds of beige before full insanity erupts.
While we continue to trudge through this wandering dialogue, I will attempt to consolidate where my bout with Towers’ Psychosis ultimately led — as I myself am wondering, how this tangent could possibly lead to commentary on contemporary journalism?
I now find myself outside behind Centennial Towers, grateful the hellish trip was over, and trying to make sense of what had just been done to me. With some clarity restored, I headed for the light-rail station — figuring I could benefit from a trip downtown and some distance from “it all.”
Overcome with a renewed zeal, I navigate the three hundred yards with ease, eradicating any fear of “The Wobbles” repossessing my body. There amid a melancholic wasteland of concrete benches and a dirty yellow curb, a sharp, bright news rack caught my eye. Inside sat one of Denver’s largest publications — whose name I will leave out, as freelance work is hard to come by, and I have no interest in acquiring enemies.
Still recovering, entering a stuffy train filled with strangers felt like a gamble. So, I decided that some form of grounding was necessary to smooth my headspace. I picked a paper from the bunch and found a seat, eager to read informative and exciting journalism about the Denver metro area.
My attempt to decompress quickly turned sour. The trite, shallow nature of what I was reading flooded my inner dialogue with drear. I immediately abandoned the first article, assuming it was a fluke. But what followed only made things worse, page after page of soulless jargon.
How was it possible that not one, but many paid “professionals” looked at this and thought, “Yes, this will grab the attention of the general public and convey important topics in an engaging manner”?
I could continue my verbal broadside against this standard and well-meaning newspaper, but the carcass has been beaten and my point delivered.
Now, how does this all relate to dementia and Hunter S. Thompson?
In the months prior to this strange saga, I was introduced to the voodoo child of American journalism: a speedy, high-stomping style that was wildly entertaining, wickedly twisted and deeply human. The details of my descent into HST’s work and character are not interesting. What matters is that my literary diet was entirely grass-fed wagyu from Woody Creek — making me highly sensitive to the grain-bloated cull stock I mistakenly ingested — and here, inside this metaphor, lies the nature of the beast.
The lifelessness of what I was reading struck me in the manner it did because of one foolish assumption: that the captivating style and literary tactics of HST had long ago been studied, recorded and published, then systematically distributed to journalism schools nationwide. Surely newsrooms, I figured, had been absorbing and evolving his innovations for decades.
This assumption created an expectation that any established publication would, at the very least, provide some level of personable dialogue.
To further digest this idea, we will pivot and take a look at the sport of basketball.
When the three-point line was introduced, teams were hesitant to incorporate this alien rule change into their “tried and true” strategies. Players who took three-point shots were largely seen as gimmicky. The three-point revolution took time. It was not until the 2000s that most teams realized the nuclear upside of systematically implementing these “huck n’ hope” shots. Today, the three-point line has completely revolutionized the game and now defines the past twenty years of play.
Journalism and sports aren’t the same, but both depend on learning from innovation. In a field built on studying the past to report the present, it is hard for me to comprehend how such meteoric innovation can be seemingly forgotten and ignored.
Now, I am not suggesting littering articles on local politics with mescaline and speed. But Thompson’s voice as a writer in both his straight reporting and his Gonzo had a quality that transcended subject matter. He fused profound truths and entertainment, while vividly capturing the human experience. That’s what made his style groundbreaking and him an icon.
Maybe I am drunk with youthful ignorance, but in journalism today, it seems the prioritization of objectivity and neutrality has become a cancer that is quickly spreading to the heart. Journalism as a written medium is losing its pulse and it won’t be revived by sterile, third-person recitations of local monotony. I could drone on about those who are fighting the “good” fight, but that isn’t the point here.
As I step back from this mess, two perspectives compete for the main stage: either I am wrong and formulated this opinion with a head full of jangled nerves; or that amid the mayhem, the wool slipped from my eyes. Maybe, for a moment, I saw into the bowels of modern journalism. Revealing a dementia-riddled profession that’s forgotten how to sound human.
