Smoky air is unpleasant, ay? We're aware.

More than 100 wildfires burning in the Canadian provinces of Quebec and Ontario are causing wretched air quality from St. Louis to Philadelphia and Albany to Atlanta, with air quality warnings expected to remain until at least Saturday—a situation Oregonians are all too familiar with. 

And it's revealing a wee discrepancy in how media outlets cover West Coast catastrophes. Today's top New York Times headline read "Swaths of North America Are Shrouded Under Unhealthy Air"—which, technically speaking, accurately describes the last four summers in America. 

Journalists in Oregon and Western states—where Americans have had to learn to deal with debilitating wildfire smoke during the summer months—had a lot to say. 

holy cow, [this] sure underscores the "News only matters when it happens in NYC" trope. All of a sudden my feeds are wall-to-wall "What are we going to do about air quality? 10 tips to cope!"

— Tom Hewitt (@tomhewittnews) June 7, 2023

We here in Oregon we can empathize with the pain-in-the-ass lifestyle of keeping children occupied indoors for a week while having all outdoor plans dashed. Yet when it happens out West, it is typically a buried headline. Today, national outlets such as the New York Times and Washington Post made this brief stretch of haziness their top story, alongside articles like, "Is It Safe to Go for a Run in Wildfire Smoke?" (Conclusion: Uh, no. That might "adversely affect cardiovascular health.") Politico went with "'Unprecedented does not begin to describe this event': Wildfire haze smothers East Coast." Psssst. It's precedented. 

it pains me to see wildfire smoke affecting my friends on the other side of the country, but i'm also hoping this brings renewed attention to a bigger audience of the real threats wildfires cause for folks living on the west coast *every single year*

— Meira Gebel (@MeiraGebel) June 7, 2023

Westerners' years of managing smoke hell has created a survival playbook. For example: when in Oregon, always keep wide paint tape around so that you can tape off the window crevices around your home. As one PoMo staffer put it, "I'm really feeling like a sage elder with my New York City friends today." We reserve the right to pettiness while sharing our sage advice.

New York City - "We can't see bc of all this wildfire smoke!!!"

Pacific Northwest: pic.twitter.com/giqH6Nwoyu

— Derek (@dsharpe) June 7, 2023