The Truth Barrier Goes Pro: Breaking Fascinating Story From Renowned UK Journalist and Filmmaker, Who Researched One Of The Most Baffling Aspects Of The Covid PSY Op: The Dancing Nurses

Article Coming Out Today—First A Few Words About What This Represents For The Truth Barrier, and For Me—Make Publishing And Editing Great Again By Bringing Back Editors As Pollinators

“When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”

—Hunter S. Thompson

1. What Is An Editor? What Is A Publisher?

Though “legacy media” is the scourge of the planet, “professionalism in journalism” is an old friend I’m reuniting with.

Let me tell you how it happened:

I came upon some very intriguing tweets on X last week on the subject of the dancing nurses of Covid, and my old editor’s instincts came out— a feeling of “ohhhh wowwwww.”

I wanted to run after this writer and ask her to write for me.

That’s what the “editor’s instinct” once said when one came upon original, bold thoughts, with a quality of diamond cutting.

Editors once pursued writers—that’s how it was in the stone ages. And if you want to hear something really retro—editors used to take writers to lunch to glean what was on their mind, and talk about assignments.

(Elizabeth Nickson knows what I’m talking about. 🍸🍸 😆)

2. 
   I have perhaps never told you this: I’m a trained editor. You could call it a talent scout.
   

For a few years, in the 1990s, I was “Features Editor” at SPIN. Prior to that, I was “Senior Editor.”

All writers, at SPIN, were expected also to play dual roles of editors as well as writers; We were to scout and attract new writers, match writers with stories, find writers who didn't yet know they were writers— and so on.

I did well in this vein. A friend’s husband went from working in a bank to becoming one of the top writers at the magazine. Another friend got a top job on the strength of a single memo. (Both of course, never forgave me.)

But I want to do it once again, after all these years. This means: less of me, and more other voices. Familiar ones and new ones. Many whose voices you know from our comments section, who I will start to formally pursue once we can call the shots, once money is “no object.”

It means pieces that break fresh ground, like Joel Salatin’s ruminant cattle.

It means resurrecting a rich, classical tradition that somehow went to the dustbin of automation and isolation, of “media” having both huge money and no money. Having money only for depressing party line propaganda. Like that stink heap that is the post Graydon Carter Vanity Fair. Like 100% of the old glossies, once bursting with great writing, now just the print arm of the Great State Attack On Life.

No assignments, and no money for writers with original ideas. Even if it’s, like, Gay Talese. (Gay Talese and his wife, Nan, sat with my father having a cocktail party the night I was born, prematurely, in 1965. My father wanted to be near the phone. True story.)

Gay Talese, for those who don’t know, wrote the article in Esquire in 1966 that was taught in magazine feature writing classes for decades as the best celebrity profiles ever written. It was called “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” which was its opening line.

Principles of Editorship

One good trick really good editors understand, which I want to explore again, is to assign writers pieces that go against expected terrain, bias, theme, and temperament. Not let writers remain in their comfort zones. Hunter S. Thompson, say, sent to the Kentucky Derby (Scanlan’s Monthly, 1970—) that kind of thing.

My point is, I am a trained editor. I intend to start acting like one. I’m bored with what’s become of editor-less writing fields, where crops grow so predictably, en masse, but so few stunning surprises or works of genuine creativity.

It’s loveless.

A Few Concepts

In the hierarchy of editor-writer, the editor has the “power” of authority, (final say) but the writer has his or her own power, that matches that of the editor, in its way. A writer can refuse to have a piece published with their name on it if they hate the edits enough. That’s the leverage. It used to be if a piece got “killed” the writer got 25%.

It used to be, periodicals would pay writers sometimes up to four months (NY Press, was like this) after publication. This means writers became chronically broke, chronically subservient, kind of a lumpen proletariat, unless they (we) wrote for glossies and were contracted. Editors, for their part, drew six figure salaries. One had to be fairly “fawning” for sure. One had to never admit one needed money. One had to demonstrate that one knew one was a dime a dozen and one would work really hard. The class that became millionaires were the publishers—the owners.

Substack has literally changed everything, like a, dare I say, Marxist dream—(I mean imaginary Marx, not actual Marx.) Substack returned the ownership, and ability to self govern one’s economy, to the lumpen-proletariat. The writers.

We need to pray for Substack, and also: Build. That means expanding into a “real magazine,” which is my possibly impossible or possibly possible dream.

The writing, publishing, magazine and newspaper realms degenerated, after the Woke Plague, like some kind of eclectic, chaotic ruin that nobody paid attention to. Ariana Huffington removed payment for writers from the business model, replacing it with a thing she called “access” to her “hive.”

We simply let the vandals take it over.

Writing, editing, and publishing can make a comeback, and can soar—the way podcasting did in the age of woke.

It should be well run, like Downton Abbey.

Everybody should thrive.

(Don’t beat me up, I’m joking.)

But here is where I am not joking:

Hierarchy, Respect, Goodwill, Professionalism and Fun

The editor is the editor—responsible not only for “authority” but for inspiration. Letting writers know what we see in them and how grateful we are for the chance to publish their writings. Many will have their own Substacks and won’t need any of this. But many, especially those who were around back then, may welcome it.

Synergy.

Like I told my son when he was 12, that when he pursued a wife later on, he would be equally responsible for protection as for what I then called “magic.” No woman should join her life with you if you fall short on either, I told him, and even started explaining how the blue hue on a Tiffany’s box can alter a woman’s brain in his favor. It’s proven science!

(Joking again. Don’t take me too seriously?)

A healthy relationship between editor and writer creates a very fruitful terrain of win-win.

When one had a major magazine that paid to industry standard, the pursuit of writers was usually easy and fruitful. Story ideas emerged from long lunches at and phone conversations, but above all—mutual attention being paid.

Writers, being crazy, usually had hunches worth indulging and assigning. Sometimes pieces go bust—that’s ok. They should not, merely, produce themselves like fruits of lonely orange trees.

Losing Many Years, Because AIDS Researchers and Activists Got Mad—Not Losing Instinct For Story Finding

It’s funny, or not so funny: I have had an inverted career: Began as a professional very young, and landed after many years as an amateur after a mighty series of blasts to my boat because AIDS people got big mad— started bailing water, a mere 18 years ago, to try to get back to being once again a professional. Come to think if it, many alt media people have similar stories. You starve and drown as soon as you get onto a big story that you are correct about.

Our former selves resonate like rings in oak trees. They want to come out.

I Did Something I Normally Don’t

So—I overcame paralysis and AI mimicry (where we don’t innovate) and wrote her, (she will be named shortly—) told her how her take on this fascinated me, and what I could offer.

She agreed!

Even better—she knew what language I was speaking: Editor, commissioning writer, on assignment. Everything was easy, fell into place.

And this is my new thought: If money is removed, the whole thing collapses. It’s a professional transaction. The money is the energy of the transaction. She agreed to a sum that was kind of her to agree to. Later, I’ll publish our new guidelines and fees.

She (I reveal her identity soon) gave me a deadline estimate, and she delivered the piece as promised, just as we conceived of it in our exchanges. How happy this all made me confirmed that yes— I do have an editor waiting to come down from the attic, from a few decades ago.

I love finding, working with, and publishing writers. And we treat one another with respect and professionalism. And that’s how we grow.

I’ve not done a good job at it this far, here—I’ve neglected works and offerings. I did not mean to or want to, I just got so overwhelmed always hunting down every story and never having bandwidth to consider the stories of others that I could help nourish. (Publisher.)

I don’t think everybody should work alone, despite the wonders of Substack; Editors are to writers as bees are to flowers. Editors pollinate and generate. Writers used to break stories precisely, or partly, because they wanted to fulfill an editor’s unspoken expectation of the craft. It was synergic.

Burying The Lede

This is the writer I speak of—and though I knew her work from before, I had not made the connection to her name when I saw her dancing nurses tweets:

This was the Tweet of hers that sparked my interest:

And The Truth Barrier will be the first outlet to publish a longer piece from Jacqui on this. Today.

It will initially be offered only to paid subscribers.

Let me say also: I believe writers should be paid for their work. Your contributions make that possible, we form a circuit. This is our idea moving forward. And I will need, when it can be afforded, a fellow editor. A “Foreign News” editor. A “Middle East” editor. And so forth.

Why not? Why can “they” but not “we?”

Help TTB Grow, And Continue To Pay Writers For Original Pieces

We have our Christmas sale at The Truth Barrier—monthly subscription down from $6 a month to $4 a month. Huge THANK YOU to all who upgraded, and all who have been supporting my work here in the past as well as the present.

Link to Christmas Sale here. Link to One Time Donation, here.

Final words of this post go to Barry Farber, my father, whose “three words about journalism” were given to me in 1984, when I reunited with him after an 8 year separation in Sweden.

Let’s make it the official Truth Barrier motto?

”Penetrate the ostensible.”

—Barry Farber