Even though I was surprised to feel inspired to go out for it, I enjoyed the most wonderful run this afternoon. After a couple of hours (you read that right) largely spent hopping from rock to rock, climbing up and down hills normally a little more easily navigable when it’s not rained so recently, and feeling a quiet sense of camaraderie with fellow joggers undeterred by the weather-induced obstacle course, a gorgeous bald eagle soared majestically toward me in the home stretch straightaway; and I was reminded of how important it is to learn to listen to one’s heart for guidance rather than only taking in appearances.

I love the opportunity trail running sometimes offers to dive deep into thought and try to put intuition into practice and have felt encouraged recently by something I’ve read many times: that, when one prays about an issue, and, rather than getting better, for a while it gets worse, not to worry. And I feel like I’m suddenly beginning to get it.

So often, a problem appears to exist and persist at all because of what’s hidden and, sometimes, although not always, it seems there are moments when such things may need to be exposed, at least to a degree, in order to be removed. I do feel this has begun to prove to be the case in the women’s movement in corporate journalism as there has seemed to be such a vast disconnect between many companies’ postures toward women’s rights and their actual practices that reconciling appearances and reality takes a reckoning requiring more than a mere glance at a corporate news PR department’s tip-of-the-iceburg claims about itself and, at least for a time, a more in-depth look.

Much of the height of the women’s movement in corporate journalism – a healthy and needed storm of disclosures that felt like an answer to many years of so many of our prayers for some form of resolution – at its peak, still felt unsettling; and I coped with the feelings of fear, responsibility, and almost violent pushback that accompanied what at least appeared to be a new freedom to be able to talk about my experience at CNN by integrating regular time making art, volunteering with animals, and athletics into my life. And I’m so grateful that, despite the cost, it worked out for me to join a local, coached fitness center (this was a remarkable local “orangetheory” location) where, almost daily and for several years, I received personalized encouragement and support. What was it about this system’s design that was, truly, so helpful, I wondered, before concluding it was a willingness to consider more than shallow appearances, focusing much more on health and athletic performance than just the one number on the scale on which so many women have been pressured to focus for generations.

I’ve been thinking a lot about external measurements lately, actually – and, as a writer on media topics, with regard to how citizens and executives can be encouraged – and empowered – to consider more than just ratings when evaluating a journalism organization’s performance. Of course, I still do believe the idea I put forward in 2016 for the listening agency model would help; but I would love for there to be some sort of conversation open to many more perspectives, ideas, and opinions; and I do believe such a dialogue would be timely, given the ways in which news corporations today seem to be continuing to regress.

I saw an ad (although I believe it was labeled an opinion article) yesterday for a new CNN program titled “United States of Scandal,” and felt almost nauseous. (In case no one has reminded its host, Mr. Tapper, recently, there is a technical term for feeling heavily pressured to use code words and elaborate organizational strategies to keep one’s boss’s lovers straight and separate from one another as an official job requirement: it’s called “working for CNN,” although, as an important caveat, while it was certainly my impression they were a major problem, I do not know of anyone who was asked to participate in the cover-up of an extramarital affair.)

Thank goodness no television corporation has found a way to make money from drivers’ tendency to rubberneck every time there’s a car accident; there’s too much need for everyone to keep their eyes on the road (would the fields of highway and vehicle safety even exist anymore in such a scenario?).

I recently heard a pundit remark that American cities and built infrastructure are becoming ever more banal; and, while he is by no means the first one to lament such an observation (this is four years of design school talking), it sometimes bewilders me how few people seem willing to allow proposed solutions to be communicated.

Just as the beauty, durability, and connective functionality of American cities – geared, not toward preserving beauty or functionality, but profit – has degraded under the weight of unbridled stock market-fueled macroeconomic forces, our communications infrastructure has seemed to do the same. And arguably for precisely the same reason.

I listened recently to a Jordan Belfort interview, which was entertaining and informative, and which also certainly seemed heartfelt to me. But I took pause when the interviewee tried to extend hope to viewers concerned about economic downturns that, regardless of how bad the U.S. stock market gets, “you’re still gonna have really big companies out there that are raping and pillaging, making a fortune …” Obviously, this statement was an intentionally hyperbolic one; but does anyone want to make money in unethical ways that are simply laundered through the machine of a corporate brand?

I still believe a question we all face today is whether the status today of journalism corporations as Wall Street insiders is the principal obstacle to the achievement of a restored informational ecosystem in which information is shared in the most helpful way possible. Might not a – if not the – central problem with which we are faced be that, since the journalism and stock market sectors first merged, there has never once really been a wolf, so to speak, on Wall Street?

Regardless, it still feels as important as ever, even if some do consider it a drastic step, to raise the question of what forces are enabling news – and sometimes even former news – corporations to dominate the country so unchallenged; and even now, I ponder this often when going for a run. Certainly, today’s was not my fastest day on the trail this season, or probably even this week; but it was more optimal and one of the most wonderful in awhile by a better measure.