Great Journalism is also Great Thinking

Few people are drawn to journalism as a calling, but understanding how great writing is done can help you find better news sources and appreciate more nuanced thinking.

We can improve the quality of our journalism by appreciating real journalism instead of conspiracy-ridden podcasts and YouTube shows. Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash

“Great writing is great thinking” is a cliche, but seeing it proven in print never stops being astonishing.

Finding the greatest journalists can be difficult unless you draw from the whole world. People like Alexey Navalny and Masih Alinejad spent their careers reporting on issues that demanded clarification. Their clear, principled thinking is the kind of thinking worth drawing from.

Maria Ressa is another of those great thinkers. She spent her career reporting on the corrupt and undemocratic practices of the Phillippine’s leaders. Ressa got an up-close look at how social media could be used to harvest data to feed voters the messages they wanted to hear.

Cambridge Analytica’s parent company sold Rodrigo Duterte’s campaign Facebook data, which Duterte used to supercharge his campaign. Ressa features a snippet of her interview with one of Cambridge Analytica’s prominent whistleblowers in her book, How to Stand Up to a Dictator.

So if anyone has a guide to better thinking and more useful journalism, it’s Ressa. Her insights into how to confront intentional distortions of reality are priceless in a noisy media environment.