More Doom, Less Boom!

The new Daily Doom will focus exclusively on economic, political and social collapse. It will still cover war, which impacts those topics, but not as much.

Aug 28, 2023

I greatly appreciate everyone who responded to the reader poll in order to guide me on narrowing the focus of my efforts in The Daily Doom to what I have time for now that I’ve had to return to full-time employment. I think it will actually make The Daily Doom a BETTER (more concentrated) publication. The most frequent comment by readers was that my most important addition to what is available elsewhere for them is my perspective on economics and (to a lesser extent) politics. So, I’ll tighten the focus of The Daily Doom in that direction.

The Daily Doom will start coming out in the late afternoon or evening (depending on where you live, of course) as of Wednesday since almost everyone said the timing doesn’t matter to them. The main thing that showed through clearly from the poll was that the headlines are of the least interest, though not of no interest for most. While half do not open the links at all, over 80%, at least, skim them to get a sense of the news. Almost all said they were not a deal-breaker if they went away altogether.

The headlines will continue, but the main change to The Daily Doom will be to narrow the headlines down to focus just on our economic, political and social collapse, national and global. That will save me, at least, an hour a day, as I won’t even read stories not related to that core interest.

There was a stronger interest in war than I anticipated there would be. I was actually thinking I would drop war coverage entirely; but, of course, it is a big factor in global collapse. I’ll continue to cover it because of the interest level expressed, but probably not as much.

The big interest expressed by all was to focus on the daily editorials and especially on the weekly “Deeper Dives.” So, I will continue writing those, though the editorials may have to be shorter and sometimes less regular, which several readers advocated as a path to streamlining The Daily Doom to what I have time for … if necessary. Continued quality over frequency was the refrain. I’ll try to approach that like the discipline of poetry where less is more so that the restrictions of time simply result in more concentrated focus.

The new format

The following is the new topical format of The Daily Doom, based entirely on retaining all headline categories where the poll expressed greatest interest and terminating those where minimal interest was expressed. Some categories of moderate interest have been consolidated into one. (I also interpolated the data I have available on what articles get clicked the most as a calculus for reader interest in particular subjects.)

My commentary will focus on the collapse that is happening all around us unless I feel strongly compelled on a particular subject. What is gone completely based on polled interests is weather, going green, campaign coverage, off-the-beat and offbeat news, except where they clearly add to the forces of global socio-economic collapse; and I will only be including humor (the “Creative Collapse” section, which got the least interest of any topic in the poll) if I happen to come across some that is particularly good and related to The Doom’s core theme, such as the one I came across this morning and couldn’t resist after all the conversation we’ve had about the press relentlessly pounding the climate-change aspects of recent heat waves. I won’t be spending time looking for it. (Of course, I’ll continue to salt my own writing with humor from time to time as I have always done. That’s just my way of looking at things.)

I will from now on only be covering Covid when there are major new outbreaks that may be resulting in or are resulting in a return to autocratic, police-state enforcement, such as we saw in the Covid lockdowns, because that resulted in massive economic and social collapse. For example, today’s news contains a story about the shutting down of entire school districts in Kentucky once again over Covid. Otherwise, the spread of Covid is about as interesting to me as the spread of the flu at this point, while all the stuff about vaccines side effects and past Covid fraud is being so deeply and widely covered by numerous alternative sites now that I no longer feel I have anything to add there. (So, that category will be just about new events or revelations of major importance when it appears at all.)

I’ve shown all the streamlined categories that will continue in the weekday headlines below, even if there is no news to go with a topic today just so you can see what is still being covered, but you won’t normally see a topic listed if there is no news on a particular day that is significant in terms of our global economic, political and social collapse (the original theme of The Daily Doom). That’s the real change here: just becoming more disciplined to where that theme will govern what I read and what I cover. I’ve also changed the topic names a little to focus more on the collapse aspects. My goal is to see that the transformation for the sake of time also makes The Daily Doom better by forcing my focus!

(Note that my work schedule will be a little variable this week and then will settle into a pattern next week, so please be patient as things settle into place for this one-man team; and please share your reactions to the change in the comments below, especially if you think I got the changes wrong.)