An Analogy for the News: Or can ChatGPT draw?

I like to create an image in my mind — a visual analogy — and see what I can learn from it. Then I’ll have an AI draw it and see what I get.

Recently I’ve been thinking about the state of news and information. How all the old “reliable” means of being informed are collapsing or self-cannibalizing. It came to me that the news media right now is like a street vendor setting up outside a fancy buffet restaurant. Like many bloggers, I guess I am a street vendor, a mini one. I count on larger media sources for information. This vendor buys a single ticket to the buffet and then ferries out the food that he passes out to his street customers and sells for cheap. Or free. Can you picture that in your mind? I could.

So I asked ChatGPT to make me that image, using the language from the paragraph above:

My first inclination was to correct the flaws. To edit out the inserted colonialism and classism so that the image would focus in more on the issue that my analogy dealt with: the news and information.

Then I thought: Wow! The layers of additional meaning here.

I decided to just post exactly as was presented. The royal palate luxury buffet is an apt name for the owners of massive media corporations. And perhaps gives an answer to the WHY — the “why is this happening” that lingers over formerly beloved local papers. It is still unsustainable.

~Lizzy