Adhesive stratum
…Even more so today, when information seems part of the problem more than part of the solution, journalists are more reviled than ever before in history. The reason for this is not just the inconsistent, fluctuating, and odd period we live in. Rather, it is the fragile, ambiguous, indiscreet, occasionally immoral, irksome nature of a job which was never held in high esteem. On looking back, journalists have not always had a good press themselves… «We have now already reached a point,» wrote Nietzsche back in 1872, «at which the scientific man, as such, is no longer allowed to speak. On the one hand, that adhesive and tenacious stratum which has now filled up the interstices between the sciences – Journalism – believes it has a mission to fulfill here… The newspaper actually steps into the place of culture, and he who, even as a scholar, wishes to voice any claim to education, must avail himself of this vicious stratum of communication which cements the seams between all forms of life, all classes, all arts, and all sciences… The journalist, the servant of the moment, has stepped into the place of the genius, of the leader of all time, of the deliverer from the tyranny of the moment.»
