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[themidnightbrief]

From Runway to Algorithms: What The Devil Wears Prada 2 Says About Media Now

I did not expect a sequel like The Devil Wears Prada 2 to feel like a media studies class, but here we are. I grew up watching The Devil Wears Prada and, at the time, Runway felt like the center of everything. It was a physical magazine, something that had weight to it. Fashion was curated, slow, and controlled by a clear hierarchy.

Watching the second film twenty years later felt like stepping into a completely different media system.

Runway is still there, but it does not feel like it runs anything anymore. It feels like it is trying to survive inside a system that has already moved on.

In the first movie, the magazine had authority. What got published mattered because institutions like Runway were gatekeepers. They decided what counted as culture. In the sequel, that gatekeeping role is almost gone. Instead of setting the agenda, Runway is reacting to it. The real power sits outside the magazine, in platforms, algorithms, and audience behavior.

That shift connects directly to what we have been reading in class about how media systems actually function, especially the idea that media is never neutral even when it claims to be.

One way to understand what is happening in the film is through the idea that propaganda is not always about obvious messaging. It is often about structure. When Edward Bernays writes about public relations shaping perception, he is not just talking about propaganda campaigns. He is talking about how attention itself can be guided. What people think is important is often shaped before they even realize they are being guided.

In the first film, Runway shaped attention directly. In the second, attention is shaped elsewhere first, and Runway is forced to follow it. Trends are no longer created in a magazine office. They are generated through feeds, engagement patterns, and viral circulation. The magazine becomes reactive instead of directive.

That change also reflects something closer to what George Orwell warned about in his writing on language and power. The concern is not just censorship. It is the slow shift in what feels normal to say, publish, or even think about. In the movie, nothing is explicitly censored, but a lot is still left out because it does not fit what the system rewards. The result is a kind of soft narrowing of content. Not by force, but by design.

That is where the propaganda model we studied becomes useful again. Herman and Chomsky argue that media systems filter information through structures like ownership, advertising, sourcing, and profit. What looks like free flow of information is actually shaped by incentives.

In the sequel, those filters feel even more aggressive than in the original film. Runway is no longer just dealing with advertisers in a traditional sense. It is dealing with engagement metrics that function like constant evaluation. Content is not just judged after it is published. It is optimized before it even exists.

That changes what gets created in the first place.

Instead of long, carefully developed editorial pieces, there is pressure for fast, visually appealing, and easily shareable content. The logic is simple. If it does not circulate quickly, it disappears. That is not a creative decision. It is a structural one.

Sourcing also looks different now. In the original film, authority came from editors and established fashion figures. In the sequel, authority is much more fragmented. Influencers, digital creators, and branded personalities all function as sources of legitimacy. But many of them are also tied directly to sponsorships and marketing relationships. So the line between reporting, promotion, and performance becomes very thin.

That is not just a stylistic change. It reflects a broader shift in media where content and advertising are no longer separate categories. They operate together inside the same system.

What stood out most to me is how the film shows speed replacing reflection. In the first movie, there was time built into the process. Ideas were developed, refined, and edited. In the second, everything moves faster. Content is pushed out to match trending cycles rather than editorial judgment.

That speed has consequences. It changes what counts as important. Stories that require context or patience lose out to stories that can be consumed instantly. Even serious topics get reshaped into shorter, more emotionally charged versions of themselves.

This is where journalism starts to feel unstable in the film. Not because it disappears, but because it has to constantly justify its existence in a system that rewards immediacy over depth.

There is also a subtle shift in power that the movie captures well. In the original film, power was concentrated in figures like Miranda Priestly. In the sequel, power is dispersed. It sits in algorithms, audience behavior, and platform logic. No single person fully controls it, which makes it harder to identify but not less influential.

That diffusion creates a different kind of pressure. Instead of responding to one gatekeeper, media now responds to a constantly changing set of signals. What performs well becomes what matters. What does not perform well disappears.

And that brings me to what the movie is really showing about journalism today.

It is not that journalism is gone. It is that it is being pulled into a system where attention is the main currency. That system rewards speed, emotion, and visibility. It does not reward depth in the same way.

So what used to be careful reporting starts to compete with gossip, entertainment, and algorithm driven content that is designed to circulate quickly.

The result is not a clean replacement of old media with new media. It is a blending of everything into one environment where distinctions are harder to maintain. Journalism, marketing, entertainment, and commentary all exist in the same space, often packaged in similar ways.

That is what makes the film feel realistic. It is not exaggerating media change. It is showing how messy it already is.

By the end, what stuck with me was not just the fashion or nostalgia. It was the sense that media institutions are no longer operating from a position of control. They are operating from a position of adaptation. And adaptation in this case means constantly adjusting to systems they do not fully control.

Runway is still trying to define taste. But now taste is shaped elsewhere first.

That reversal says a lot about where we are.

The movie does not give a clear answer about whether this is good or bad. It just shows the trade off. More access, more voices, more speed, but less stability, less depth, and less time to think before something becomes public.

And that is what makes it feel connected to real life.

Because outside the film, we are all moving inside the same system. We scroll, react, share, and move on. And somewhere in that cycle, real reporting has to fight to stay visible.

The question the film leaves open is not just what journalism becomes, but what we are willing to let it become in an environment that never slows down.

[themidnightbrief]

When an Airline Disappears Overnight: Spirit Airlines and the Media Logic Behind “Sudden” News

The recent news about Spirit Airlines caught me off guard. As a broke college student, I have always known Spirit Airlines as the go to option when I needed a cheap flight. It was not glamorous, but it was predictable. You paid less, you dealt with the fees, and you moved on. So when I saw headlines that Spirit had suddenly shut down operations, I had to pause and ask myself how did it even get to this point, and why was this not bigger news earlier.

What stood out most was not just the collapse itself, but how it entered the public conversation so late.

For a long time, Spirit was talked about mostly in jokes or complaints. People joked about the seats, the baggage fees, the delays. It was never framed as an airline in real danger. Even when financial issues started building up, the coverage stayed pretty light. It was treated like background noise in the airline industry, not something urgent.

Then suddenly, the tone shifted completely. Once Spirit officially ceased operations, the news became everywhere. Headlines about shutdowns, stranded passengers, and uncertainty spread fast. It felt like the story only became “real” once the system actually broke.

That timing says a lot about how media works.

Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky’s propaganda model helps explain this pattern. One of their main ideas is that media does not treat all events equally. Instead, what gets covered depends on structural filters like ownership, advertising, sourcing, and profitability. In other words, news is not just about what happens. It is about what fits into the media system.

Spirit’s decline probably did not fit neatly into what news outlets prioritize. It was gradual, technical, and financial. That kind of story does not generate immediate attention. It does not create urgency or emotional reaction. So it stays under covered.

But once the airline shut down completely, everything changed. Now the story had stranded passengers, sudden disruption, and visible consequences. That is what makes it newsworthy under a commercial media system. It becomes immediate, dramatic, and easy to package.

This connects directly to the advertising and attention filter Herman and Chomsky describe. News outlets are not just reporting information. They are competing for attention. Stories that produce strong reactions get prioritized. Stories that develop slowly often get ignored until they reach a breaking point.

So instead of consistent coverage of Spirit’s financial struggles over time, the media environment waited until collapse created a more dramatic moment.

There is also something interesting about how political attempts to intervene were covered.

There were reports that Donald Trump tried to step in and support or stabilize the airline situation in some way before the shutdown. But that part of the story never really became central in public discussion until after the collapse. It was not framed as a major policy issue while things were unfolding. It only gained traction once the outcome was already visible.

That delay matters.

Eric Alterman’s work on media bias helps here, especially his argument that bias is not just about political leaning but about what gets amplified versus what gets ignored. In the Spirit case, the issue was not that outlets were pushing a specific narrative about the airline. It was that the gradual warning signs did not fit the kind of story that moves through modern news cycles.

Once the shutdown happened, everything became easier to frame. The focus shifted to failure, disruption, and reaction. At that point, political commentary also becomes easier to attach. People can assign blame, point to leadership, or connect it to broader economic narratives.

Before that moment, the story was too fragmented to hold attention.

Herman and Chomsky would probably say this is also connected to sourcing. Airlines are complex systems. Unless there is a crisis, journalists often rely on official statements or industry updates. That means if nothing dramatic is being released, the story stays quiet. There is no constant stream of updates that keeps it in the headlines.

But when operations stop, suddenly every source becomes active. Government agencies, passengers, airports, executives. The media has something to work with. The story becomes easier to produce at scale.

So what looks like a sudden collapse in coverage is actually a predictable result of how media systems function.

Another part of this that stood out to me is how quickly people reacted once the shutdown was announced. Social media filled with frustration, confusion, and personal stories of disrupted travel. But there was very little reflection on how long the warning signs had been building before that moment.

It felt like collective attention only activates at the point of crisis.

That connects back to how modern media systems operate under speed and immediacy. Slow developing problems do not generate engagement, so they remain invisible until they can no longer be ignored. The moment of failure becomes the moment of recognition.

The Spirit situation also shows how corporations exist inside a media environment that does not track gradual decline very well. A company can struggle for a long time without becoming a major public issue. Then once it fails, the narrative becomes instant and simplified.

It turns into a story of collapse instead of a story of buildup.

What makes this important is not just Spirit itself, but what it reveals about how we receive information. We tend to think news reflects reality in real time, but it often reflects moments that are most readable to a system built on attention and speed.

So the sudden visibility of Spirit’s shutdown is not just about the airline. It is about what kinds of stories break through and when.

And in this case, the breaking point was not when the problems started. It was when the system could no longer continue.

That gap between buildup and visibility is where a lot of modern media analysis sits. It is where structural forces shape what we see without always making themselves visible in the process.

What this ultimately shows is that “breaking news” is not always about when something begins. It is about when something finally becomes legible enough for the media system to process, package, and distribute at scale.

Spirit did not suddenly fail overnight. But it became visible overnight.

That distinction says more about the media than it does about the airline.

[themidnightbrief]

Before the Headlines: Media, Mexico, and the Collapse of the Public Sphere

When I first heard about the cartel attacks in Mexico, it was not through a news alert. It was not through a newspaper. It was not through some official government statement. It was by scrolling on Tiktok.

The video was loud. That is the first thing I remember. People were running through the airport. You could hear screaming. Someone was filming while trying to crouch and run. It felt chaotic and raw and real in a way that polished news clips never do. I remember just staring and immediately telling my dad, “Did you see what’s happening in Mexico?”

I liked the video, and suddenly my entire Tiktok was flooded with clips from different parts of Mexico- burning buildings, people running, gun shots, news about hostages being taken. I had been to some of those places- Puerto Vallarta, Cancun. Places that hold important memories for me. Seeing buildings burning and hearing shots fired in cities that once felt safe and familiar made everything feel closer.

It stopped feeling like foreign news. It felt personal.

But what struck me almost immediately was not just the violence. It was the comments.

Within minutes there were thousands. People were not just reacting. They were using the event to argue. Some were saying this is why Mexicans flee to the United States and why immigration policies should be more humane. Others were saying thank God Trump is kicking out illegals because cartels are crossing the border and this is what Biden allowed. The situation had barely unfolded and people already had fully formed political positions attached to it.

It made me think about everything we have read in this class.

In “The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia Article,” Jürgen Habermas describes the public sphere as a space where private citizens come together to debate matters of common concern through rational discussion. It is supposed to be about dialogue, reason, and collective understanding. But watching TikTok that night did not feel like a rational debate. It felt like instant polarization, people stating their opinions as fact.

Habermas argues that over time, the public sphere became distorted by mass media and commercialization. Instead of critical debate, media institutions began shaping public opinion. Watching the reactions to the cartel violence, I felt like I was witnessing that distortion in real time. There was no pause. No investigation. No careful deliberation. Just reaction and political framing.

And the framing happened fast.

Some comments immediately connected the violence to immigration. Others connected it to presidential leadership. It did not matter that the event occurred in Mexico. It was instantly absorbed into American political discourse. The public sphere was not operating as a space of shared understanding. It was operating as a battlefield of different narratives and views.

That is where Edward Bernays becomes relevant. In Propaganda, Bernays argues that the conscious manipulation of public opinion is not only common but necessary in a democracy. He says that an invisible government of PR experts shapes the ideas and beliefs of the masses. When I saw how quickly the narrative shifted from cartel violence in Mexico to debates about Trump and Biden, I thought about Bernays. Public events do not just happen. They are interpreted, packaged, and circulated in ways that serve political goals.

Even if no one formally orchestrated those TikTok comments, the structure of our media environment encourages this kind of framing. Influencers, political commentators, and partisan accounts know that engagement thrives on controversy. If you connect a violent event to immigration policy, you get clicks. If you attach it to Trump versus Biden, you get even more.

Bernays believed that people respond more to emotional symbols than rational arguments. The videos I saw were pure emotion. Screaming. Gunshots. Fire. Fear. Those images are powerful. They bypass careful reasoning and go straight to instinct. And once instinct is activated, it is easy to attach political meaning.

The violence became a symbol. For some, it symbolized the dangers of open borders. For others, it symbolized the instability people are fleeing from. The same footage produced completely different interpretations. That is not accidental. It reflects how public opinion is shaped by prior beliefs and media cues.

But there is another layer here, and that is where Robert W. McChesney helps explain what is happening. In “Rich Media, Poor Democracy,” McChesney argues that corporate control of media limits the range of debate in democratic society. Media outlets are profit driven. They prioritize stories that attract attention and advertising revenue. Crisis and violence are profitable. Nuance is not.

When the cartel attacks happened, major news networks quickly picked up the story. But the coverage focused heavily on spectacle. Burning buildings. Military presence. Dramatic footage. There was less focus on deeper structural issues like economic inequality, corruption, US drug demand, or the history of cartel formation. That kind of analysis does not generate immediate clicks.

McChesney argues that when media systems are commercialized, democracy suffers because citizens are not provided with the information necessary for meaningful participation. Watching this unfold, I felt that tension. I was emotionally affected by the violence. I was sad, but I was not necessarily better informed.

And then there is the impact on the United States.

Even though the attacks occurred in Mexico, the ripple effects reached the US almost instantly. Travel concerns increased. Political commentators used the event to justify border policies. Immigration debates reignited. The violence was folded into ongoing partisan narratives.

This is where Habermas’ theory comes in. The idea that citizens would gather, evaluate evidence, and deliberate calmly about what this means for US foreign policy or border strategy feels unrealistic in an age of Tiktok and algorithmic feeds. Instead of structured debate, we get fragmented reactions.

I also think about how proximity changes perception. When violence happens in places we have personal connections to, it feels different. I had memories in Puerto Vallarta and Cancun. Seeing those names attached to violence made it emotional for me. That emotional connection made me more vulnerable to immediate interpretation. I had to consciously slow down and ask myself what I was actually seeing and what I was being encouraged to believe.

That is something Bernays understood deeply. Emotion precedes thought. Public relations works by attaching feelings to ideas. In this case, fear and shock were quickly attached to immigration debates.

The loudness of the video still stays with me. The screaming. The running. It felt immersive. Almost like I was there. Social media collapses distance. It turns global events into personal experiences. But that closeness can also distort perspective. We experience the intensity without context.

And when context is missing, narratives rush in to fill the gap.

Some commenters framed the violence as proof that stricter immigration enforcement is necessary. Others framed it as proof that asylum protections are morally urgent. The event itself did not dictate either conclusion. The interpretations came from pre existing political identities.

McChesney would argue that in a corporate media system, these identities are constantly reinforced. News outlets cater to ideological audiences. Algorithms feed us content that aligns with our prior engagement. So instead of one unified public sphere, we have multiple fragmented spheres.

The result is not collective understanding. It is parallel monologues.

What worries me most is how quickly tragedy becomes political currency. Before victims’ names are even known, before causes are fully understood, the event becomes material for debate. It becomes content. That transformation feels connected to the commercialization of media. Attention is valuable. Outrage is valuable. Fear is valuable.

Democracy requires informed citizens. But informed requires time. It requires investigation. It requires patience. The speed of social media undermines that process.

At the same time, social media also allows ordinary people to document events firsthand. The Tiktok video I saw would never have been broadcast in Habermas’ early modern public sphere. There is democratization in that access. But democratization without deliberation can become chaos.

So where does that leave us?

Watching the cartel violence unfold through my phone made me feel small. It reminded me that global events are never isolated. They travel across borders through screens and shape political conversations instantly. For the United States, the impact is not just about security. It is about how such events are used rhetorically. They influence elections. They influence policy debates. They influence how Americans perceive immigrants and neighbors.

Habermas gives us an ideal of rational discourse. Bernays reveals how opinion can be engineered. McChesney shows how corporate media structures shape what we see and how we see it. Together, they help explain why a violent event in Mexico immediately became a polarized American argument.

I am still saddened by the news. That part has not changed. But now I also pay attention to how I am encountering it. Who is framing it. What narratives are being pushed. And how quickly I am asked to choose a side.

Maybe the real challenge for our generation is learning how to slow down inside a media environment that never does. To pause before reacting. To ask what information is missing. To resist being pulled into immediate political conclusions.

Because if the public sphere is going to survive, it cannot just be loud. It has to be thoughtful.

And right now, when I think back to that video of people running through the airport, the screaming and gunshots echoing through my phone, I realize that the sound was not just violence. It was also the sound of a public sphere commenting- struggling to exist in an age of instant reaction.