Newsflash: Too many people felt that January was too long and that there was nothing new with the New Year. Many are petitioning for a restart of 2020 to this month, jokingly, of course, though they are not entirely silly, and their intentions are well-meaning. 2020 was supposed to be “the year of clarity” but its first 31 days was chaos, to say the least.

A quick rundown of the events which took place last month:

The assassination of Maj. General Qasem Soleimani, a “misfire” that caused a plane to crash, and the US, under Trump, almost declaring war with Iran; the massive bushfires in Australia, burning for the past six months, finally gaining global attention; the Taal Volcano suddenly steaming ash over parts of Luzon and the “imminent threat” of a magmatic eruption looming for weeks; in showbiz, a long-time loveteam denying an alleged break up, eventually breaking up for real, and the rumors that made a mess in between; the coronavirus, the scares and the helpless spectating as the President issued hardly a word, just as he did during the Taal crisis; and to close the month, less than 24 hours after LeBron James overtook his scoring record, basketball legend Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna, and seven others died in a helicopter crash on their way to Mamba Acadamy in Thousand Oaks, California. Lest I be accused of not giving airtime to how government responded to this month of crisis, let’s not forget Little Teddy Boy Locsin Jr. going full on WWE kayfabe right outside his office, the President being petty about Senator Bato’s visa cancellation, and the administration launching “The Duterte Legacy”—sheesh.

The irony in all this is that I could care less—like many of us, Filipinos, could—with all these things happening far from where I live in Agusan, and occupying abstract headspaces far from the schools where I teach. But there remains a pull, living in this material world, in Mindanao, an island still undeniably held under a Dutertian pseudo-martial law; I can’t help but feel that the world is, indeed, literally and figuratively burning and there’s not much we can do.

Still, coming to work from Monday to Friday and teaching in college classes was a chore that offered me some semblance of order, sending a message that the world is still spinning. I’ve always believed that teaching is an act of hope, a job you can’t do if you didn’t have even just a tiny bit of hope for your students, the next generation.

Carrying on with everyday life also propped up the nature of media, its ability and responsibility to create surfaces upon which to rest our heads. In other words, media’s being a perception game became clear. What to do with all this information, when they are the tidbits that connect us to other human beings?

It’s difficult to be a media practitioner these days. I couldn’t imagine being sent to Batangas to cover the relief ops. What would I say to my friends and family, knowing fully well that a magmatic eruption might just happen anytime and I’m not getting paid much, too?

Also, on the distribution end, the mutations that social media inflicted to the landscape of traditional mass media are forcing writers and reporters to a wall and task them to question: When nobody’s reading anyway, when “fake news” has left only very few patrons to continue trusting in the news, then what’s the point?

January 2020 was a difficult lesson for us in the media and for those who still trust our output. It seems that from this point on, there’s no hoping for a plot twist or a convenient set of “good news and positivity” that would save the new year. And we can’t come up with enough fiction to change the mindsets of a hapless nation. My advice: let’s make the practice of reporting and writing pedagogical.

We need to teach, more than merely inform, our readers. Let the surfaces we create be stable enough to educate, to pin hope down. Besides, our education sector needs all the help it could get.

No more re-posting of all the senseless crap Butler Bong Go and Malacañang send us. No more sound bites that mean nothing to an uncritical audience. Let’s do more processing for them. In any case, most of us have already learned in undergrad this important truth in media: Objectivity Is A Myth.

We’re better than this. There are success stories abound of the longform making minds think and people move. Maybe hope springs there.

DLS Pineda, 30, finished his undergrad and masters in UP Diliman.