James Geary

Find me on Bluesky (@gearyjames.bsky.social) and Instagram (@gearyching). Art by Tenzing Rigdol.

was hoping for something more than “May this tusk root out the lice of the hair and the beard” from the oldest known sentence (1700 BCE) written in the first alphabet. Like "The pilot who sees from afar, he will not wreck his boat," Amenemope (1100 BCE) bit.ly/3Ej3ecg

Perhaps it is the greatest madness to see the world as it is and not as it should be. —Cervantes

Objectivity isn’t serving journalism or communities if it’s just another name for my own or someone else’s preferred biases. @ijbailey @GinaKCMO @NiemanReports bit.ly/3Nsj8E2

But it is better to prophesy than to deride. To prophesy is not to predict, but to seize upon reality in its moment of highest expectation and tension toward the new. —Thomas Merton, Message to Poets bit.ly/3fgjscH

Audiences are interested in more and better climate news. The science is urgent. It is time journalism schools do better at preparing future journalists for covering life on a hotter planet. @jillhopke @NiemanReports bit.ly/3sTVx5H

Let us not give them support by becoming an “opposition” which assumes they are definitively real. Let us remain outside “their” categories ... We remain innocent and invisible to publicists and bureaucrats. —Thomas Merton, Message to Poets bit.ly/3fgjscH

Poetry is the flowering of ordinary possibilities. —Thomas Merton, Message to Poets bit.ly/3fgjscH

Every word that's ever said tries to find a way to live. — @JoyHarjo, Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings

Besides, to speak everything is to exhaust mystery. — @JoyHarjo , Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings

It’s time to stop treating the KCPD and other police departments as neutral sources of information, particularly when reporting on stories affecting Black communities. @GinaKCMO @NiemanReports bit.ly/3FmDBbv

We could be slipping into a place where our freedoms are being whittled away. There are a lot of problems with our democracy, but we still have our fundamental freedoms. I don’t want them to be stripped away. @abramowitz @freedomhouse @NiemanReports bit.ly/3f7uJM6

Every interaction we have with a source, every time our reporters are on the ground around the country and talking to people with empathy and respect, is a chance to promote the values of journalism. @mateagold @washingtonpost @NiemanReports bit.ly/3sxPQu9

Some of this brutality and violence [stems] from the fact that the regime sees the situation as a little bit out of their control, because they cannot compete with the power of social media. @YeganehSalehi @CJR @NiemanReports @HaMinhTa bit.ly/3F5x7xx

The media and journalism schools are long overdue for a conversation about how we cover disasters. @NiemanReports bit.ly/3ENqG1T

To have a bigger impact ... we needed to think about how we grow a team that can coordinate and build on our successful editorial relationship with our stations @andreakissack @npr in @NiemanReports @neelaeast @MarigoFarr bit.ly/3rX613Q

What I really worry about is that extreme weather events will lead to a scramble for resources and enormous migrations that in turn will bring about anti-democratic reactions all over the world @neelaeast @npr in @NiemanReports @andreakissack @MarigoFarr bit.ly/3rX613Q

I was conditioned to think white journalists were objective by default and Black journalists were unobjective until proven otherwise, especially on race and criminal justice. It’s taken decades to overcome that conditioning. @ijbailey @NiemanReports bit.ly/3yzEBoE

Stories are a need to exist. —Annie Ernaux, Things Seen bit.ly/3yz3ErG