Journalism: a one-act play

Scene: Early morning. Two people, a man and a woman, sitting in a room. One is reading the newspaper, the other is stretching, preparing to do yoga.

Woman: What are you reading?

Man: O, The New York Times.

Woman:  Anything interesting?

Man, reading directly from newspaper: "Today, a growing number of people are buying their groceries online."

Woman:  O, that's kind of interesting.

Man: I had this thought this morning before reading The New York Times: journalists, and the news organizations they work for, may soon have only two ways of working, of staying employed: 1) to act as spies once acted during The Cold War by moving around surreptiously, and 2) to work out of offices with unregistered addresses and phone numbers.

Woman:  That's frightening.

(Long pause. The man and the woman stare at one another until one of them doesn't know what the other is thinking, then the man reading The New York Times hands the newspaper to the woman who'd asked, "what are you reading?")

She reads the newpaper. He thinks, sitting, without a newspaper.

Woman: Wow! Canada does not have a bona fide populist movement. Minorities are absorbed into the social and political fabric of the nation in a pretty intelligent, inclusive manner which discourages the racial and economic tensions populist's prey on...

Man: I had this thought four or five years ago: when the history books are written, Canada may well be seen as a greater nation than the USA.

The woman folds the newspaper back into its original configuration. She's heard him say this about Canada before.