Depression and Journalism

You know, every once in a while you read an article that does journalism really well. I was particularly impressed with this article in the Washington Post.

I was drawn to the article by the title: "Democractic operative . . . goes rogue." I figured it would be full of juicy political gossip that would get me up in arms in one way or another. Instead, I found an article that presented a nuanced, humanizing, portrait of a man.

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In fact, the more I think about it, the more I think the title is really inappropriate to the article. Maybe the article should have been more about Steve Hildebrand's political roguery - about his ideas. As it stands, it is mostly about Hildebrand's depression.

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It's funny how when you stop to consider, and especially, when you stop to put things into words, you change how you think.

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Now that I'm writing this post to extoll the article, my opinion has at first subtly and now completely changed. Instead, I think the article had a lot of potential and started off interesting. Unfortunately, I feel like instead of getting the nuanced article I wanted it to be, it ended up defining Mr. Hildebrand by his depression. Or maybe that's the demon in depression, how it can end up defining you and that's what you are fighting against when you are fighting depression.

All of this to say that as I was reading I identified strongly with the debilitation part but then lost sight of the person that Mr. Hildebrand is - he seemed to become a caricature. Perhaps this is the limitation of journalism rather than a novel, where the interior-life can be documented (journalists discourse in the public/exterior world). Or perhaps it is the medications (which is reason #1 why I have serious qualms about anti-depressants like Wellbutrin).

I suppose I should apologize for the disconnected and disjointed nature of this post, but perhaps it's worth putting out there as 1) something that attempts to be totally real and unfiltered, or 2) documentation of a thought-in-process. Oh well, in any case, please forgive me.