“At one time, news was transmitted very ‘inefficiently’ by bards, who shaped their statement by all sorts of subtle tests (saying only what could be sung, for instance). This imaginative procedure has now been bureaucratized with the most astonishing efficiency – and as a by-product there have arisen wholly new criteria of purpose and procedure. These have become ‘the norm,’ so that our ‘bards’ now shape their work by the tests of ‘headline thinking,’ literature becoming a mere offshoot of journalism plus the the one-man enterprise. Journalism itself is a kind of haphazard philosophy, developed out of an organized method for assembling a literary product with maximum speed. We can discern the distortions of a yellow journal, but we can only speculate gropingly, on paper, as to the ways in which all journalistic efficiency becomes distortion methodized.

“‘Efficiency,’ to borrow a trope from the stock exchange, is excellent for those who approach social problems with the mentality of the ‘in and out’ trader. It is far less valuable for those interested in a ‘long-pull investment’. Otherwise stated: It violates ‘ecological balance,’ stressing some one ingredient rather than maintaining all ingredients by the subtler requirements of symbiosis.”

-Kenneth Burke, Attitudes Toward History, 1939(!)