(ANALYSIS) One of the realities of being a journalist of a “certain age” is constantly hearing people ask, in digital and analog contacts, questions that sound like this: “What do you think of (insert a trend in the modern world or a specific event in news or entertainment)?”

What’s painful about that?

The pain is the temptation to respond by saying: “Did you see the column (or online post) that I wrote about that the other day (or week, or year)?”

I know that people are busy and do not have the time to read everything that writers like me release into the hurricane of social media and even publications in the mainstream press. After all, one of my primary goals with the Rational Sheep project is to serve as an antenna that helps readers find material that I believe parents, pastors, teachers and counselors need to see.

Those “signals” may come from X, Facebook, YouTube, mainstream news outlets or (I want MORE of this!) direct contacts from friends, colleagues and readers out there in cyberspace.

This is why I sincerely hope that readers will be patient with me when something important happens — such as the Hurricane Helene debacle — and I respond with posts that include links to what I have written in the past in columns, posts, essays or whatever.

I will always try to add new material via Rational Sheep posts, even when that commentary is used as an introduction to something from the past. Here’s a prime example of that: “Why mountain people live (and worship) near rivers.”

OK, as you have probably guessed, I am about to respond to one of those, “What do you think about this?” questions about mass media.

To read the rest of this post, please visit Terry Mattingly’s Substack at Rational Sheep.

Terry Mattingly is Senior Fellow on Communications and Culture at Saint Constantine College in Houston. He lives in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and writes Rational Sheep, a Substack newsletter on faith and mass media.