When It's Time to Let Go: the Danger of Nostalgia

An NY Times article caught my eye: the trend of departing long time local television anchors.

I'm pretty open about my distaste for local television, even though I have been spoiled by a decent glut in the Twin Cities. KSTP, FOX 9, WCCO have all had their moments (but not KARE 11, someone please make the Kare Bears go away). 

I think the nostalgia for local television news is similar to the same nostalgia for what my former professor Stephanie Coontz referred to as 'The Way We Never Were'. Her book explained how the 1950's ideal of the nuclear family came into existence - and how it shaped sexist, and harmful social policies. 

This article reminded me of the danger of getting too nostalgic. When we lose a news personality, we feel it personally. We get angry. We saw this in public broadcasting when the long time Morning Edition host Bob Edwards left NPR. I have been in so many situations where people have decried his departure and looked to me to back them up. I can't - I do think he had to go. I do think Morning Edition needed new energy. I do think he'd been there too long. And I like Bob Edwards - but my inner news manager recognizes that the industry is changing, and if you're people aren't, you have to find new people. 

And this is where the nostalgia can get dangerous. We start talking about "the good old days". When journalists were real journalists, when newspapers were real watchdogs, conveniently forgetting massive failures of our press, and recent ones too. 

Is this a reason to dismiss the independence of our press as a failure? Of course not. But we can talk about how to make it better. And it starts with acknowledging, in the words of Billy Joel, that the good, old days weren't always good, and tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems. 

Killing Newspapers Softly

Sitting at a coffee shop in Minneapolis, I glance at the newspaper stand stacked with USA Today and my adopted hometown's daily newspaper, the Star Tribune. I almost pull out my wallet to buy one, and then...

FREE WIFI!!!!!

Who needs a paper when I can log on with my handy laptop? Which is exactly what I'm doing. I want more information about the violence in Mumbai, I surf around to a few online staples: the NYT, Wash Post, and blogs I check out. And the Star Tribune has a website too.

HOW WIFI IS KILLING THE NEWSPAPER STAR

Coffee shops have always been the enclave of the reader. Parked in the corner with his or her espresso or tea (or in my case hot chocolate), they provide at once privacy and a social scene. Where we come together to be alone. Except now with wifi we're not alone anymore. We're emailing, posting comments, blogging in my case, posting pics, maybe even a few adventuresome folks are cutting up some audio or video for their own purposes. As the violence in Mumbai, India, however, drags on into day 3, I was struck by how meaningless the local daily paper is when international crises occur. The headline above the fold is "Mumbai hunts for survivors".

But I go to the New York Times online, and there's an interactive map, a photo gallery, analysis from reporters who've covered the region in depth. Before the world wide grid, the Star Tribune had a captive audience. People needed them to bring international and national news to their backyards. No more. I can now surf the world.

KUDOS IN ORDER

I have to give the Strib credit: they are still putting up a good face, doing what they've traditionally done. And by the way, the Strib has done some phenomenal work with their website on Minnesota issues. But it does beg the question for these legacy media outlets: how do they respond to these international crises? It's one thing when the bridge falls down in your background as it did in 2007, or when the Republicans come to town to nominate their presidential candidate, but what's your role as a statewide paper when the proverbial international shit hits the fan?

NEWS CHOICES

I'm not saying the Strib shouldn't have put the Mumbai headline on the paper. Its magnitude is too large to ignore. But what I would love to see is a sort of Miracle on 34th Street moment. Santa Claus, who is hired by Macy's to play Santa Claus, tells parents where they can get better deals at a competing department store, Gimball's (sp?).

Why Media Access Matters

I'm back in my adopted hometown Minneapolis for a holiday visit and have been listening to my former employer, KFAI. KFAI's model is volunteer-based and they've made it work. A lot of my German colleagues scoff at this - they have something called "open channels" in Germany that in my opinion is a system set up to fail - but I'm listening to Truth to Tell as I write, and the host and executive producer, Andy Driscoll, has marshalled his granddaughter, and her classmates to talk about racial integration in school.

The show is terrific. The young women, who are 7th graders, are talking to a teacher, a policymaker, and a student who interned for KFAI's Youth News Initiative. Nissan produced a very personal radio story about her experiences as the lone black student in a wealthy, white, suburban public high school. Out of all of the students I worked with during the program, Nissan's was my favorite.

What I find most moving about this program though is when the 7th graders ask the adults "what do we do about racism in the schools" or "how do we address this". And the adults, who are accomplished and educated, respond in Adult Speak. "This is a complex issue" and "That's a big question". For at least this hour on the airwaves, I as a listener got to see the world through the eyes of a 12 year old, and to hear them talk about these issues re-energized me. It also struck a chord because for some reason I decided to revisit J. Anthony Lukas' classic Common Ground, his detailed reportage of the forced busing to achieve "racial balance" in the Boston school district. The recent presidential election has created a period of hope for the moment, but let us not forget our previous policy blunders.

Without media access, we wouldn't hear from these young women. The way most broadcasters are set up, there would be no forum to look at the world through their eyes for awhile. But KFAI does. It's a small, clear bell in the cacophony of the media landscape.

A Hero of Media Reform

I caught Lawrence Lessig on Charlie Rose before heading out for the Thanksgiving holiday, and was reminded of a great speech he gave in Minneapolis at the media reform conference this year. It's worth revisiting.

Online Incursions

I was sad to see KPBS bid farewell to its Citizen Voices project, but excited about what kind of results they'll find. I took the survey - and perhaps because I've just spent a quarter studying research methods in mass communication - was a bit disappointed at how they seemed to be measuring success. One of the questions on the survey was if you had changed your mind about who to vote for in the presidential election.

The implication is that the people who read the citizen blogs are seeking another portal with which to inform themselves to make decisions as members of a democratic society. And that's a fine thing to want to know - are the blogs useful to that end?

But there's another question that could be pursued: did the blogs stimulate discussion amongst you and your social network? I think this is one of the issues that public broadcasting is finding tough to measure: to what degree do people refer back to the content they hear/watch/read? And does public broadcasting play a role in stimulating civic engagement?

I hope more funding will become available for projects like this one at KPBS - and also that public stations will think about carving out some dollars to make space on their websites for participation.

Big Media Covers New Media

Interesting tidbit from the New York Times: how citizen journalism projects are uncovering stories in different parts of the country. 

I'm a bit disappointed though - they tend to focus on the big venture capital invested projects like Voices of San Diego and MinnPost. (Minnpost by the way approached the Twin Cities Media Alliance, which I helped found in 2005, about a content sharing agreement before they rolled out. I left the board of directors shortly after the presentation, so I don't know what happened with the relationship.)

I wonder if these citizen journalism projects like what we started in the Twin Cities with a start up grant from the J-Lab Institute will go the way of neighborhood newsletters started by unions and immigrants in the United States. Forgotten except by a few academics are dig into their meaning. Maybe that's the nature of news media - the big ultimately subsume the small. The big wait for the small to experiment with ideas and then incorporate them. 

There's something a bit sad about it. Maybe it's because I'm rooting for the little guy. Because I like to see media from the bottom up. Not from former editors and publishers and reporters of the era of newspaper hegemony. Not from venture capitalists. 

But on the other hand, it is gratifying to see people willing to spend the dough on an unsure model. Because we don't know what the model of news production looks like - we just know that we need news and information. 

Why I Love Free Speech

I was reminded recently why I love free speech. Frequently, it's uncomfortable. I always seem to be in a state of agitation, yelling at the television set at some pundit, or deeply moved by a comment I hear on a radio program. My relationship with media is an emotional roller coaster. 

I was moved yet again when I got a strange note in my email inbox about a New York Times Special Edition. Imagine my surprise when I read the headline that the Iraq War was over. Huh? 

And then I looked a little more closely at who sent the email: it was from the Yes Men. (To truly experience their satirical gloriousness, I highly recommend the interview my hero Bill Moyers did with them last year, hyperlinked for your convenience.)

The New York Times spoof wasn't just done by the Yes Men. In fact, there's a degree of mystery about who all was involved, because, dang! Doesn't it really look like the New York Times?

We all flex our free speech muscles in some ways, mostly small ways. I recently attended a protest. And we all take for granted that we can say in public how much we hate this politician or that law and not get arrested. It's so every day that we don't even notice it! 

But these guys are heavyweight lifter, pushing the limits of our great 1st Amendment. I'd like to see a Constitution with a six pack.