Journalism without ideas

«The first time it happened to him, he smiled. He had published a column in the morning and in the afternoon another appeared, in another medium, suspiciously similar. It undoubtedly had the same theme, the same general approach. But he thought it was current events and its coincidences. The second time he wasn’t amused. There was something else: not only did the topic coincide, but also the structure, the order of the arguments, even an example that he believed was particularly his. He began to get uncomfortable and wonder if he was exaggerating. The third time he closed the laptop. Then he remembered that phrase attributed to Ian Fleming in ‘Goldfinger’: «Once is a coincidence. Twice is a coincidence. Three times it is enemy action. But in this case there were no enemies. Or at least not visible because the problem is actually very complex. We are in a time without ideas, without originality in any context, and journalism, except in some cases, is repetition. Walter Benjamin wrote about the loss of “aura” in reproduced works. Perhaps today that loss no longer affects only art, but also ideas. Everything can be copied, adapted, reused. And in that process, the original stops mattering. In the end, a version of something is sold that takes on more prominence than the source and the creator. And in the face of this absurdity there is only indifference and neglect. «The journalist read both texts again. There was no literal copy. Nothing reportable. “Just awkward closeness, like someone has been looking over your shoulder.” Perhaps the problem with repetition and copying is that almost no one writes from virgin territory anymore. It is written after reading, scanning, absorbing. And in that chain, ideas wear out. They become predictable. Interchangeable. Technology has only accelerated the process. Tools like ChatGPT allow you to produce correct texts in minutes, reorganizing what already exists. They don’t invent: they order. And that, in a timeless environment, is more than enough. The key words in this criticism of plagiarism must be pronounced: we are in a historical era without ideas, in a crisis of originality, but that cannot be an excuse to renounce professionalism. In the press, as in culture, there must be courage and uniqueness, transparency. The craft of counting cannot be a farce because over time the quality degrades. Or so I think.