Life & Wisdom Quote by Andrew Vachss

A weirdly clinical verb does the heavy lifting here: “consumers.” Vachss isn’t asking people to admire journalism or “support” it in the soft-focus sense. He’s pushing a harder, almost transactional ethic: treat reporting like a product you actively choose, test, compare, and pay attention to - not like background noise that washes over you. Coming from a crime novelist and child-advocacy firebrand, the phrasing tracks. Vachss spent a career writing about systems that thrive on public passivity: predation, bureaucracy, the easy impunity of people who count on you not looking too closely. “Consume” is a call to look closely.

The subtext is skeptical of both sides of the current media romance. It resists the idea that journalism is a priesthood (“trust the experts, don’t ask questions”) and also the populist sneer that it’s all propaganda. Consumer implies agency and discernment: read the receipt, check the ingredients, notice who’s selling and why. You don’t have to love the chef to recognize whether the meal is edible.

There’s also a faint warning embedded in the blandness. Consumers can be manipulated, addicted, upsold. In an era of outrage-driven feeds, “consumer of journalism” can sound like “consumer of content,” and that’s the trap Vachss is trying to dodge: choose journalism, not just information. His intent isn’t reverence; it’s vigilance - a public that treats reporting as a necessary purchase for citizenship, and holds it accountable the way only paying attention can.