I hope you don't read this right now now.

My thoughts while chopping vegetables. [Mother Jones]( MoJo Reader, One of the things I love about Thanksgiving is waking up to a Twitter feed that has slowed to a crawl. It's as if, briefly, the world is not churning crisis after crisis. And I sure hope nothing terrible happened between Wednesday afternoon, when our team set up this email, and whenever you're reading this—which hopefully isn't first thing Thursday morning. Because you deserve a break. This is what I found myself thinking about last weekend as I washed Brussels sprouts and chopped sweet potatoes while digesting news of the Rittenhouse verdict, the car attack in Waukesha, and so much more. Brian Stelter, CNN's media correspondent, said it really well: There's an "exhausted majority" right now. So many people are tired of senseless brutality, tired of gridlock, tired of fighting with relatives over whether the unvaccinated get to come to Thanksgiving. Let's just acknowledge it: Sometimes we need no news at all, and I hope today and this weekend can bring a respite and recharge. And let's also acknowledge that to have either is itself a gift—many of you don't get to take a break from the daily grind. Thanksgiving emails like this are supposed to express the gratitude we all feel for you, our supporters, and believe me, that gratitude is immense. But as a journalist, I want to do more than say thanks. I want to try and help you make sense of the world, and that includes digging into why the news can feel so tiring. It's not because of you or me. It's not even (just) the state of the world. Yes, there are a lot of crises out there, but this is by no means not the only, or the worst, time of crisis America or the world has been through. It is, however, the only one in which we have lived in a media ecosystem that depends for a significant part of its business on instant reaction and instant outrage, and when the line between opinion (very good at driving those emotions) and reporting (including [reporting that is honest about its point of view]() has become harder to parse amid it all. Opinion, as one magazine editor [told]( Columbia Journalism Review's Adam Piore, is both cheaper to produce than reporting (at least in the form of hot takes on the day's news) and more effective at grabbing both eyeballs and subscribers. And opinion comes at you just as fast as a breaking headline. Cable news networks, as the Los Angeles Times' then–editorial page editor, [Sewell Chan](, told Piore, "are nonstop opinion machines." But so, too, are our prestige newspapers, as the editor of the Washington Post's editorial page, Fred Hiatt, made clear: "There was a time when the president was giving his acceptance speech at the convention on a Thursday night, the editorial board would listen, and on Friday morning they would meet and discuss it; somebody would write an editorial, the editor would edit it, and we would publish it thirty-six hours later, on Saturday morning, and that would be fine. If I did that now, I'd be a laughingstock. It's gone from No, we have to be in the next morning to If we're going to have a response, we have to have a response that night." The internet's hunger for instant takes is even changing politics itself: As my colleague Tim Murphy has written, there's a whole cadre of politicians now who function primarily as [content creators for the outrage machine](: "They are treating the Capitol like their own hype house, using the stature of their office for clout." This is not an argument against, you know, news: If something big happens, a lot of us want and deserve to know the what and the why. At Mother Jones, there are a few journalists dedicated to exactly this: making sure that people who look to us for the information they most care about get the biggest stories of the day, on the biggest issues that we track. But there's only so much now, now, now that anyone can, or should, handle. We need what some have called "slow journalism," too—reporting that takes time to tell a story that hasn't been told and regurgitated hundreds of times before. This, of course, is what Mother Jones was created to do, and it's what so many of you tell us you look to us for today. And we're able to do it because we don't have to try to be a "nonstop opinion machine" to draw clicks or subscriptions. When Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery and I joined the team, back in the early aughts aka prehistory, MoJo's journalism mostly operated on a bimonthly magazine timeline, featuring reporting that was sent to the printer six weeks before anyone would ever read it! That can be painful for impatient journalists like us, but it also does a great job at forcing you to think longer-term: What are the stories that will still feel relevant when all of today's takes have faded? To this day, we treasure that kind of reporting and we're so thankful that support from readers has let us keep pursuing those deeper stories. Because the crises that are out there will get no closer to being fixed if we fixate purely on the now, now, now. We need moments to read a book, take a walk, stare out the window, chop vegetables, or dance to our favorite music. We need it, as Dan Rather—who spent a lifetime bringing breaking news to millions—[wrote]( the other day, so that we can come back with a little more strength to make change. "We get to a point where the exhaustion is itself exhausting. And I firmly believe that the forces who seek to undermine our society, who seek to pit us against each other for their cynical gain, see exhaustion as a potent weapon at their disposal. Over the course of my career I have covered many protest movements that have ultimately proved successful. And I have found one of the hallmarks for that success is that they are collective actions where members of the group step up to help others when they get exhausted. We must acknowledge that not everyone can step back from exhaustion. To be able to take a break is its own form of privilege. There are people whose life circumstances never provide respite. But there is also a reason so many of the world's religions have days of rest and reflection built into the calendar. The human body and mind cannot always be working, or it will cease to work well. I say all of this not to diminish the challenges we face, quite the opposite. The world needs sustained effort and exertion. But effort and exertion requires energy. And energy requires us to acknowledge, attend to, and forgive our exhaustion." So that's what I hope we can all do this week, and beyond: Acknowledge, attend to, and forgive exhaustion. Our own, and that of others. Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours if you're celebrating, and please know how thankful I am for all of you who help make Mother Jones what it is. [Monika Bauerlein] Monika Bauerlein, CEO Mother Jones P.S. If you're ready to dig into some powerful storytelling over the holiday, allow me to suggest Mary Annette Pember's [powerful essay on how we can truly honor Native American History Month](. It’s a must read, and another way for us all to step up for each other. [Donate]( [Mother Jones]( [Donate]( [Subscribe]( This message was sent to {EMAIL}. To change the messages you receive from us, you can [edit your email preferences]( or [unsubscribe from all mailings.]( For advertising opportunities see our online [media kit.]( Were you forwarded this email? [Sign up for Mother Jones' newsletters today.]( [www.MotherJones.com]( PO Box 8539, Big Sandy, TX 75755