In this blog post about creatives and their ailing industries, Redding writes about whether or not the work is worthwhile in the end. He comes from an advertising perspective, but this was the bit that killed me…

What I have witnessed happening in the last twenty years is the aesthetic equivalent of the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century. The wholesale industrialization and mechanisation of the creative process. Our ad agencies, design groups, film and music studios have gone from being cottage industries and guilds of craftsmen and women, essentially unchanged from the middle-ages, to dark satanic mills of mass production. Ideas themselves have become just another disposable commodity to be supplied to order by the lowest bidder. … The zeitgeist has moved on. And so have most of the bright-young-things.

Obviously, we’ve all see this in journalism lately. It’s easy to relate and, if you’re in Michigan, it’s even easier to point fingers.

What I hope we still have going for us is that the good work, the real journalism, will matter in the end, unlike the advertisements Redding created. But it’s up to us to make it matter if our industry is to pass “The Overnight Test.”