I struggle today with a question Denzel Washington keeps needling me on.
If you don't read the news, you're uninformed.
If you do, you're misinformed. So which one am I supposed to be?
I'm sitting with a piece I'm trying to verify.
Trying to get it right before I publish it.
And I feel the pull the whole industry runs on.
Don’t be true, be first.
Get it out there.
Sell it.
Anything you practice, you get good at, and the internet practices speed, not accuracy.
Have we forgotten there was ever another option?
As an investigative blogger, it’s the one rule above the others: tell the truth.
But you can't tell a truth you haven't found yet.
And finding it — actually finding it, not just grabbing the first plausible version — takes longer than the feed wants to give you.
That's the part I keep running into.
Everyone else is publishing.
I'm still looking.
So I go back to Joseph Campbell's line, the hero has a thousand faces.
It’s the only frame that makes this feel like I’m doing the work in order.
Three faces, specifically, keep showing up.
The first is visual learning.
It cuts through the noise.
The second is investigative blogging.
The third is the six questions — who, what, when, where, why, how — except one of them does all the work: why.
The question WHY is what matters.
Here’s an example.
Three guys open the same door for the same woman.
Same action, same optics, same story if you're tracking it.
But one wants to be in her life, one wants sex, and one was raised to do it.
Same door.
Completely different truths.
If you never ask why, you're not reporting.
You’re guessing and calling it news.
Being first means someone else decides when you're done.
Being true means you decide.
I’m not better than those racing to publish.
It means I'm signing up for authenticity, but this costs me the moment.
I lose the news cycle.
I lose being early.
I’m still deciding, but I’m betting on one thing.
My win is authenticity over allure.
What I don’t know is how you know you’re being true vs. feeling true.
And here’s my confession.
Does knowing mean you’re faster or does being faster mean you’re faking?
