I officially ran out of ideas at 15:37 GMT on Thursday. Requests from editors had been flying in for weeks. It was, “I need to write about the clock going back.” We groaned and tried to ignore it, but it kept coming up. That need was eternal, like time itself.
People who aren’t in the digital publishing business may not know this, but people love reading articles about clock changes. These are always one of the most-watched articles on the site, and are probably the purest distillation of how his web traffic will work in 2023. Find out what people are searching for on Google, write about it, and get people to click on it when they search on Google.
Of course this is depressing, but we’ve been doing the same thing for so many years that it’s kind of become a joke. As a newsroom, we’ve been attacking this issue from every angle: This watch is changing Last time ever. They should stop changing their clocks. They should stop changing the clock to help us You’ll be healthier and more productive. If they Obsolete time zone Have you stopped changing your clock completely?
Of course, the most direct approach is the easiest. “When is Daylight Saving Time in 2023?” But at WIRED, we strive to add context, commentary, and scientific rigor to our minutes. So we brainstormed. Matt Reynolds from the Science Desk suggested “rank all time zones!” (UTC is clearly the “OG time zone,” he said, but was concerned that it presented a very Eurocentric worldview.) It would rank high because it’s 30 minutes out of line with the region.We felt it added a sense of intrigue in addition to the International Dateline.Mountain Time is the best name. )
The clocks actually changed in the UK on October 29th, and a mild lack of sleep may explain the level of discussion here. I proposed interviewing watch store owners ahead of a big day when they would have to manually reset thousands of antique clocks. Science writer Grace Brown offered to work in gonzo journalism. There she continued with her life as if the clock had never changed. She was an hour late for everything and she was trying to get the others on her side. Rebellion of time.
Of course, there are also very serious points to make. I just made them all before. Changing clocks twice a year has negative effects on people’s health, the economy, and even the climate, and there have been serious efforts to stop it in both the United States and Europe for years. , it just continues to stagnate. A study published last year estimated that increasing daylight hours at night could save the United States $1.2 billion annually by reducing traffic accidents. “Darkness kills,” Steve Calandrillo, a University of Washington law professor who studies the economics of daylight saving time, told my colleague Amanda Huber when the clocks last changed in March. .
