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Welcome to a Dying Industry, Journalism Grads
Barbara Ehrenreich delivered this commencement address to the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism class of 2009 on May 16:
The dean gave me some very strict instructions about what to say today. No whining and no crying at the podium. No wringing of hands or gnashing of teeth. Be upbeat, be optimistic, he said - adding that it wouldn't hurt to throw in a few tips about how to apply for food stamps.
So let's get the worst out of the way right up front: You are going to be trying to carve out a career in the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. You are furthermore going to be trying to do so within what appears to be a dying industry. You have abundant skills and talents - it's just not clear that anyone wants to pay you for them.
Well, you are not alone.
How do you think it feels to be an autoworker right now? And I've spent time with plenty of laidoff paper mill workers, construction workers and miners. They've got skills; they've got experience. They just don't have jobs.
So let me be the first to say this to you: Welcome to the American working class.
You won't get rich, unless of course you develop a sideline in blackmail or bank robbery. You'll be living some of the problems you report on - the struggle for health insurance, for child care, for affordable housing. You might never have a cleaning lady. In fact, you might be one. I can't tell you how many writers I know who have moonlighted as cleaning ladies or waitresses. And you know what? They were good writers. And good cleaning ladies too, which is no small thing.
Let me tell you about my own career, which I think is relevant, not because I'm representative or exemplary in any way, but because I've seen some real ups and downs in this business.
I didn't start out to be a freelance writer or a journalist, but after a number of false starts and digressions, I discovered that's what I really loved doing. In about 1980, I was a single mother of two small children, and my work quota was four articles or columns a month. I did my research at the public library. I bought my clothes at Kmart or consignment stores. The kids did not get any special lessons or, when the time came, SAT prep courses.
Then came the fat times, in the '90s, which I realize now were an anomaly in the history of journalism. The industry was booming; editors would take me out for three-course lunches in Manhattan. I'll never forget one of those lunches: It was with the top editor of Esquire, and I was trying to pitch him a story on poverty. He looked increasingly bored as we got through the field greens with goat cheese, the tuna carpaccio and so forth - until we finally got to the death-by-chocolate dessert, and he finally said, "OK, do your thing on poverty - but make it upscale."
It was still an uphill struggle to write what I cared about, but at least I was getting generously paid - up to $10 a word by Time magazine. Imagine that - $10 a word. Most Americans would be happy to make $10 an hour.
Then, bit by bit, it all began to fall apart. The news weeklies: Time let me go in 1997. The book publishing industry was in tatters by 2005. And then the newspapers began to shrink within my hands or actually disappear. I was beginning to feel a certain kinship with blacksmiths and elevator operators when the recession hit in 2008, and every single income stream I had began to dry up.
But it was the recession, of course, that saved me from self-pity. I began to get sick and tired of the typical media recession story - which was about rich people having to cut back on the hours they spend with their personal trainers. All right, I realize those are man-bites-dog stories compared to a story about a laid-off roofer being evicted from his trailer home. But it seemed to me that the recession had absolutely eliminated the poor and the working class from the media consciousness. Once again, they had disappeared from sight.
So a couple of weeks ago, I pitched a certain well-known newspaper a series of reported essays on precisely this topic. They took it - but at about only one-quarter of what they had paid me for writing columns five years ago, barely enough to cover expenses. That bothered me. But then I had a kind of epiphany and realized: I've got to do this anyway. I'm on a mission, and I'll do whatever it takes.
Which brings me back to the subject of journalism as a profession. We are not part of an elite. We are part of the working class, which is exactly how journalists have seen themselves through most of American history - as working stiffs. We can be underpaid, we can be jerked around, we can be laid off arbitrarily - just like any autoworker or mechanic or hotel housekeeper or flight attendant.
But there is this difference: A laid-off autoworker doesn't go into his or her garage and assemble cars by hand. But we - journalists - we can't stop doing what we do.
As long as there is a story to be told, an injustice to be exposed, a mystery to be solved, we will find a way to do it. A recession won't stop us. A dying industry won't stop us. Even poverty won't stop us because we are all on a mission here. That's the meaning of your journalism degree. Do not consider it a certificate promising some sort of entitlement. Consider it a license to fight.
In the '70s, it was gonzo journalism. For us right now, it's guerrilla journalism, and we will not be stopped.
36 Comments so far
Show AllSad but true.
I recommend you look at it this way. An artist's job is to express and communicate. They are the ones who ask the questions. Scientist and engineers come up with the answers. A journalist is the one who motivates the people to action. You must motivate people to change themselves and a system that is unjust to ensure that we don't lose our freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of dissidence.
We have started a Critical Writer's Group on The Activist Motivator to help further the effort of Activist Critical Writing. http://activism101.ning.com/groups
Please join and participate.
http://twitter.com/activism101
What is truly amazing to consider is that at the start of this decade, journalism schools were still advising students that the profession's future was still good despite the rise of the Internet. Of course, this was before the profession's largely shameful "performance" during the Bush error, which trashed "mainstream" newspapers main asset then, what was left of their credibility. What will emerge in the debris should be interesting to observe.
The appearance of PHP-driven blogging like CD has provided a form that fulfills most news functions better than newspapers or TV have in at least the half-century I can speak for.
Perhaps a hybrid environment of subscription services that can pay to send reporters abroad and public-donation sites like CD might help resolve the matter of sending reporters abroad.
Of course, there will be and are sites that sell adspace. But that's a large part of the "shameful performance during the Bush error," is it not? And we should note that this matches the shameful performance most of the time prior as well. Truly independent reporting has happened in commercial press, but very seldom. Exploitation and abuse and corruption happen constantly but get reported so seldom that reader register shock and surprise.
Perhaps someone who does find it necessary to sell ad space should post ALL communications with the purchaser as part of due diligence. That should be part of the initial agreement between blogger and advertiser, so there's no libel or privacy issues later.
I have some optimism about this--gee, when did I last say that?!--because the evolving ethos of Net writing seems to involve a certain, albeit limited, transparency of source rather than the pretense of objectivity that characterized 20th century journalism.
PS
See in Fisk's post about "Obama in Cairo" this first line:
"Go into the average newspaper office and you'll find the reporters staring at Sky News or the BBC or Al-Jazeera International."
You see, it would only take a very small percentage of journalists paid from subscription or donation to beat Things As They Are (or have been).
Have you looked at the average daily newspaper these days? Mostly ads. Perhaps there would be jobs for journalists if newspapers actually reported the news rather than act as platforms for advertising, the execrable 'style sections' and other effluvia.
It would also help if they were owned by people who knew and loved the news business, rather than corporate clods with MBAs.
Has anyone taken a look at the real problem with the news papers? If the journalists did not suck up to Bush and Cheney they were openly castigated. That is the way Dictators put fear in them by the threat of losing their jobs. So they sucked up to them and lost their jobs. Bush and Cheney has so much to be proud of. They totally destroyed this Country in everyway a Country could be destroyed. Cheney is the mentally sick of the sick. So the rest of the journalists have to really struggle because of the ones in fear of the Dictators.
Good point. Certain parts of the system deserve to be preserved. How to preserve journalism? Enable journalists to do their jobs by preventing the elite from buying up the media. A similar approach is warranted in every sector of society. People are starting to connect the dots, and recognizing that the elite war on people is destroying every sector.
Journalists have a rare opportunity to transform their jobs today. We're through with elites, so now we need the info necessary for self-governance. Journalists need to start providing a much higher quality info, with a much higher level of objectivity and utility. The people need more awareness and more responsibility and the journalist has to provide the fodder. We can't beat around the bush any more. There are too many pending catastrophes - the journalist has to supply the people with the scoop.
And reflect the people's better interests. This is of course a political call. We no longer have the luxury to give the left and right equal balance. We have to start favoring the left, the public interests. Because the destruction from the right side in balance is still wildly out of control. The new journalist has to report through the universalist frame, and reflect the sensibilities of the people, not the elites.
According to Wikipedia (which is sometimes but not always an "informed source"), the 19th century humorist Peter Finlay Dunne said journalism should be to "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable". I too wish it was doing a better job of that. Sometimes mass media journalism allows some prettied up truth to slip through -- ABC News's long state-of-the-earth documentary on last week wasn't too bad; a bit sanguine but still told people things they needed to hear.
From what I have heard and seen on TV (and occasionally read), journalists used to be kind of working class guys with cigars and hats pushed back who didn't identify with the rich and powerful. Now they seem to mostly identify with the rich and powerful (as a Gary Trudeau play years ago said, then speaking of yuppies, "they didn't just sell out, they bought in").
Maybe as they start losing their jobs and finding out the kinds of struggles many of the rest of us are involved in, they'll use their writing and reporting skills to do more expose type stuff, assuming there's somewhere it can be presented.
I wonder what Barbara got paid to deliver this address?
It's disappointingly short on content- not up to what I remember reading by her in times past.
I don't think she meant to go off like this but if she really cared about journalism, she might take all that money she's earning which I'll bet is at least 50x what any of us earn and get folks like George Soros and similar to channel that money towards building a counter media that is actually progressive/liberal and in the process make room for unbiased journalists. At least that's a hell of a lot better than liberals and progressives wasting their time showing up on rightwing tellie shows when they don't hold the floor and the damn game is "fixed" against them.
Sioux Rose
MAX PAYNE: You just articulated MY dream. I'd love to see a TV network that also offered holistic health (preventive!) topics, and perhaps had a show on Yoga, another on massage and vegetarian cooking. Perhaps an hour could be devoted to a religious program that would have several enlightened persons hosting like Father John Dear or Rabbi Lerner, added to a voice from the Muslim world. All would speak in an open fashion about issues of concern to us all. Hey, there could be an atheist on the panel, too, a spiritual version of "Crossfire." The possibilities are limitless since basically these (and related subjects) are the things missing from the MSM. Currently media serves as a banquet featuring violence 1000 different ways, for breakfast, lunch and dinner. A more enlightened menu is needed if we expect a more enlightened citizenry to emerge.
I can't remember who once described this but I think it was more than one person but it goes like this. Conservatives buy up their media outlets ahead of time and put their infrastructure in place while progressives give it up and instead rely on limited funding to just help the poor at the expense of saying no to long term planning and help. In essence, they're making it too easy for the right to privatize the left. That said, the dream to be turned into reality it sadly privatized. There are a few channels that offer some of what you're looking for but unfortunately, the cable and satellite companies place those channels such that you have to pay higher ups for that certain tier or similar to get it. For the most part, all the good stuff appears to be privatized while all the filth appears to be socialized.
I'm still skeptical though that even if the progressive movement weren't privatized that TV would never be as helpful a medium as it should be for what we pay. If there's one thing I could say about television as my wife learned from the Orthodox Brahmins in India, it's that television was always meant to be a devil's best friend. Some would even say the same of the Internet or of it being fickle but I can't see that completely so. I gave up watching TV for the most part a few years ago after my wife thought I was getting high blood pressure because I'd shout at the TV and almost felt like throwing stuff at it. I had slowly gotten rid of my restlessness over time. I can't tell you how much relief I had felt just getting off watching the media filth. Nowadays, when I come across someone listening to Rush Limbaugh on the radio or watching Bill O'Reilly on Faux, I often shake my head and walk away hoping I'll never ever return to that status again. I'm trying to remember who it was who said this but I never forgot the saying "If the game is fixed don't play it".
For now, there's youtube and other online video sites where we could find truly helpful videos that most younger individuals don't mind uploading. If that gets privatized, back to IRC, Usenet, and bittorrent underground I guess.
By the way, I do like what the author has to say and I can sort of see how even those of us who are still hanging on are getting nickel and dimed but are afraid to come out.
Hey MP...
I must say...
That regardless of who you work for or how you thought in the past...
You have shown a maturation in how you relate with others here at CD...
No longer is it explosive justifications and ad hominem attacks...
You focus on the issues and engage with a friendly tone...
While I don't share some of your points of view, I value your perspective...
Thank you for changing your style to be more respectful to others...
Peace...
Hi GM,
No problem. I think I'm actually returning to my older self. I used to hang around on Alternet more often than not though I haven't frequented it as much overall this year. I had finally remembered to do what I once did there. Just let my anger go and admit my weakness to start. I have to admit that I am rather impressed by a lot of strong thinking on this site despite our current system being "fixed" against us. I generally have a hard time deciding whether to bother trying to knock some sense into the puppets or just give up and work on voting them out next time around. I try to make the best of what's available but also realize that somewhere we gotta fight for better. Maybe my mixed thoughts on the issues makes it hard for me to decide which way to go. On a good note, although I voted for Obama, I'm not Obamabot and even on Alternet where I got laughed at by some of the Obamabots for switching and giving up on the last minute, I won't hesitate to hit them back and tell them NOT SO FAST. Politics looks too complicated and stressful which is why I think the Lord put me to computers and programming.
Sioux Rose
GOLDEN MEAN: I noticed this "transition," too and that's why I am pleased to share a civil discourse with Max.
By the way, Barbara's experience with pay mirrors my own. Back in the early l990's when I guess the greed fest was in full swing, I was routinely paid $2000 per column (steady income) and had other gigs paying over $1000. Now I am lucky to get $300 for similar work, and glad for it. The free content on the Internet added to the media buyouts have done to the journalism field the equivalent of what off-shoring industrial sectors has done to the skilled laborer. It all points to a new feudalism, or the corporations becoming virtual pharaohs and rendering the rest of us slaves who don't recognize our status as thus since we are "free" to "shop." And then since so many of us (me, included) find the need to utilize credit cards, we are tethered to invisible debtors' prisons. This is an ingenious inroad over the past as no upkeep of inmates is required, and yet we are indentured through the use of usury... 20% interest on what we borrow, while we bail out those who lend us these paltry sums; and if we're so lucky to hold onto any savings, they gain about 2-3% interest. Look at those odds! And with them, these bastard casino-style banker/investors still HIT ON US and all those old ladies with tiny pensions, to bail THEM out. Talk about a system skewed against decency, wisdom or justice!
Link TV is one such television outlet that hosts unbiased (Al Jazeera - compared to American media anyway, and I rather enjoy their reporting) and progressive (Democracy Now!) news reporting and commentary. Link TV also shows very good documentaries...I learned far more staying up in my dorm room till 4 AM a year ago watching Link TV than I did from my classes. MSNBC has gone more liberal with the addition of Rachel Maddow and Ed Shultz, but they more or less refute right-wing nutjobs on their shows rather than present progressive viewpoints, same with Keith Olbermann. David Shuster has also been on a roll lately, but got moved to another timeslot, I haven't really seen his show lately. Pretty much any other TV media outlet is either far-right or center-right.
With the price of healthcare as it is, preventative care is a must. And that's why vaccinations are so important. I'm with you, SR: the media *must* put a stop to this antiscientific vaccination hysteria, or this generation and the next will pay the price.
Beats me why you think religious folk are "enlightened", though. All the praying and meditating in the world failed to stop the series of hrrific plagues - one after the other - that humanity suffered before science came along.
I like to say: whenever someone states something as fact, there are only two sources it can come from: either it came from observation of the external, real world; or else someone just made it up.
http://www.users.bigpond.com/pmurray
http://www.paulmurray.id.au/ageofworms
I don't really see vaccination hysteria happening in this country. For example, during the swine flu scare in the media, they did report on preventive measures being taken by the government, buying up more antivirals, working on a new vaccine, etc...I saw nobody bashing vaccinations is any way.
Sioux Rose
PAUL M: I think you misunderstood me. First of all, I believe there is a sacred and empowering place for spirituality in our lives; but I think religion for the most part breeds and sustains the authoritarian personality profile that is anathema to what a healthy democratic republic requires in its citizens. Second, I was born with a VERY active imagination and now that the times cast my thought process in a cynical direction the other night I was thinking how "Disaster Capitalism" already going after water ownership, may soon up the ante to go after genetic profiles. You know Blacks are susceptible to Sickle Cell Anemia, and there is some infirmity that targets Jews. A genetic company could conceivably set something loose to target a specific ethnic population and only when its "members" could pony up the "costs" for the immunity/drug would they be saved. We could be closing in on this type of medical/moral abyss. Frankly, I am against vaccines. I have read a lot from a holistic health perspective and there's just as much evidence that sanitary conditions and doctors washing their hands, added to vitamins and better diets wiped out disease as opposed to the belief that odd cultures grown on all kinds of dead animals and injected into the blood streams of babies made certain strains go defunct! The holistic approach beefs up the health of the organism. The medical approach essentially declares war on the body and uses a battery of chemicals and at other times cutting and burning to supposedly facilitate health.
I believe autism rates are related to all the mandatory immunizations given to newborns, lest all the mothers of those newborns drank diet sodas or had the same chemical offenders in their diets that led to so many babies born with compromised nervous systems (or whatever the neuro-muscular "scientific" connection is). The autism rates are off the charts! This reliance on science is dangerous. 50% of women over 50 are prescribed hysterectomies. As if Creator designed that many faulty uteri. When I was a kid we all had to get our tonsils out, and I remember sitting one Thanksgiving with the son of my parents' friends and he, like me, had his teeth turned into toxic moon craters. Tiny pin pricks were drilled and filled with what European dentistry bans... I absolutely HATE dentists now. The newest is that 50% of people over 50 have periodontal DISEASE; when my 85 year old father was dying (as bodies tend to do about that age), he was told he had a DISEASE which made him feel hopeful about treatment. All it was involved his being a prisoner of the medical-industrial complex rendering the last weeks of his life a chaos of one medical appt after another. Since I was the chauffer, and am none too patient moving through an urban nexus of traffic light after traffic light, it made me want to scream! I spoke to lots of people in waiting rooms to hear many horror stories about hospitals and billing, and there is so much fraud in all that. Just like our MIC getting paid mega sums to do schlock work, if it can be called that, electrocuting showers and raw sewage coming through ceilings, in Iraq. The entire basis for integrity has broken down in our society. America is operating on the basis of toxic values with the likes of Mammon (pure profit motive) and Mars (pure aggression) championed over everything else, everything decent, sacred, pure, true and beautiful. What a madness, and we've only begun to experience its price.
Siouxrose June 6th, 2009 9:43 pm, your programming proposals are similar to Al Gore's original concept for his cable TV channel, but he was convinced by his financial backers to go in a different direction to attract a younger audience -- basically MTV quick-cut videos with a political/environmental veneer and not much depth on any subject.
The Democracy Now TV show comes the closest to your idea, but it's only on for an hour a day, and Amy Goodman is overworked doing that and her Pacifica radio show.
Things may change for the better, though: With the ratings success of Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow on MSNBC -- they're number one with the advertiser-coveted 18 to 34 demo -- other cable stations may realize there is money in progressive programming and, unfortunately, that's the only thing that's going to bring them around.
Al Gore was always into the money on everything. Having read his bio and his environmental books, I seriously doubt that he really was for the environment. There's plenty of evidence throughout his political tenure to prove that he was more of an anti-environmentalist than otherwise.
"The Democracy Now TV show comes the closest to your idea, but it's only on for an hour a day, and Amy Goodman is overworked doing that and her Pacifica radio show."
You can't count on one person to do it all. We need more people in more places. That's how the conservatives won. Even Idaho was not safely in their column back in the 1960s.
"Things may change for the better, though: With the ratings success of Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow on MSNBC -- they're number one with the advertiser-coveted 18 to 34 demo -- other cable stations may realize there is money in progressive programming and, unfortunately, that's the only thing that's going to bring them around."
We were able to finally get a few local environmentalists on the air back on our local media outlets and these environmentalists are nothing like the national versions. They cannot afford to anger the gun owners or the farmers whatsoever for one thing.
Progressive programming will most likely have to start out decentralized until some common ground can be found. You could say that the progressive media in California is not the same as that in Idaho. For one thing, it's small in my state. Second, our progressive media in Idaho will not allow discussion about guns. However, where CA and ID progressive media can find common ground is on saving the environment. Farmers too might find some common ground. I don't know how farmers in CA communicate with the environmentalists but out here in ID, it's farmers vs environmentalists. Maybe if we improve our progressive media will the fighting stop.
Progressive media will be just as hard to define as conservative media. Some say that today's media is more progressive than 16 years ago while others say it has gone worse. It all depends on the issue I guess.
Jason Jordan
Sandpoint, Idaho
Sioux Rose
RSJ: (Should you return here) Don't you find it amazing that there are entire networks devoted to "Christian" broadcasting or sports or "news," or "shopping," but a network dedicated to raising consciousness with an ethos oriented towards inspiring a wiser, better citizenry is the thing absented? On the network I envision, I would like to see a "midnight astrologer" (or mystic), and while I'd like to be one of those aired, I would certainly welcome other astrologers and mystics to the "pulpit." We who spend our lives deciphering the "as above, so below" equation do not have a public forum these days, just when madness in our world is at its peak and the old traditional voices demand that they retain the wheel and navigate as they have... right INTO the abyss.
This network would have shows about ecology, green technology, planting gardens, vegetarian cooking. I figure if there was a one-hour massage show, then every massage therapist in the country might donate $10 a month because ultimately that show could boost their clientele. Companies that produce organic food could host the vegetarian cooking show. Green Peace, Sierra Club and other organizations devoted to sane ecology might host (through fund-raising) the programs devoted to their topic. I could see this network run like a time share. I've also seen certain communities buy a property and rent out its spaces to a variety of independent holistic contractors. This premise could work for such a network, too. Perhaps a New Age publishing house could help offset the cost of the midnight mystic/astrologer program, and as book sales would ideally rise, there would be no loss and possibly a gain.
This network would interview political candidates, especially progressives! and really ask them at depth about their positions. It would favor the marginal candidates, those who have not prostituted themselves to one of the major corporations that today drives policy. I could see people like David Korten, Marianne Williamson, Naomi Klein, Ralph Nader (to name a few) all getting LOTS of air time. Imagine Cindy Sheehan, Father Dear, Rabbi Lerner and others debating the issues of our times instead of the hate-is-all right wing echo chamber and its monopoly of the air waves, rendering them SICK.
Instead of these healthier programs we have recycled TV shows like "Dawg, the Bounty Hunter," or numerous murder-as-entertainment dramas; and virtually NOTHING that is aimed at lifting the consciousness and awareness of the citizenry. And boy does this dearth of content show!
If you like something that resembles a TV news format (or the best aspects of that) It's looking at the Real News Network, at least for the politics end of this.
http://therealnews.com/t/
It's voluntary and donation-based, no ads, some overlap with CD posters. I like to run it in the background while I'm doing other things and often run the same thing over 3 or 4 times until I get it.
But it seemed to me that the recession had absolutely eliminated the poor and the working class from the media consciousness. Once again, they had disappeared from sight.
These are the people who, if they develop political awareness or political consciousness, will finally start to get out into the streets. Obysmal and the Democrats greatly fear this. George Wanker Bush and the human popsicle stick up his ass, Cheesedick Cheney, would have resorted first to overwhelming police presence and severe beatings. If that didn't work, then a little Kent State; and if that didn't stop the demonstrations, then demonstrators would have been declared "terrorists" and made to disappear. Would Obysmal yield to popular pressure or act like a Republican and order the boot in the face? I fear it's the latter. In the United Scams of America, where desperation is slowly climbing toward the red line of danger, Uncle Sam is beginning to cough and wheeze under the pressure of two failed wars, the maintenance of its empire, the ongoing pressure of a fascist fifth column and the highway robbery that now passes for business and capitalism. The crumbs are visible on the horizon and we will soon be fighting for them. If we fight each other, the Republicans and the Democrats will be happy. If we refuse to fight for the crumbs and instead say no to the thieves and snake oil barons who salted them on the horizon, then perhaps there will truly be some hope and not the stale Twinkies of change peddled by Obysmal and company.
Some heavy hitters here. At least as competent as any journalist, living or dead.
"The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read."
Oscar Wilde
“The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything. Except what is worth knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesman-like habits, supplies their demands.”
Oscar Wilde
“There is much to be said in favour of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.”
Oscar Wilde
“Journalism largely consists of saying "Lord Jones is Dead" to people who never knew that Lord Jones was alive.”
G. K. Chesterton
“Media is a word that has come to mean bad journalism”
Graham Greene
“I hate journalists. There is nothing in them but tittering jeering emptiness. They have all made what Dante calls the Great Refusal. . . . The shallowest people on the ridge of the earth.”
William Butler Yeats
great quotes, but a little biased, don't you think? there were more than a few great writers who also did a bit of journalism (sinclair, capote, eric blair aka orwell, others i can't think of).
Great quotes, kalidas June 6th, 2009 10:20 pm! I'd add these few:
"The main threat to Democracy comes not from the extreme left but from the extreme right, which is able to buy huge sections of the press and radio, and wages a constant campaign to smear and discredit every progressive and humanitarian measure."
-- George Seldes -- can you believe it? -- more than 60 years ago.
"The minority, the ruling class at present, has the schools and press, usually the Church as well, under its thumb. This enables it to organize and sway the emotions of the masses, and make its tool of them."
-- Albert Einstein, letter to Sigmund Freud, July 30, 1932.
"...[T]he rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitious. The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly...it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over."
-- Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Propaganda Minister and patron saint of Fox News.
"The freedom of the press belongs to those who own one."
-- A.J. Liebling
"The entire news business is dominated by financial considerations. In fact it’s probably more accurate to say that the business is dominated by financial desperation. TV networks routinely run blatant advertorials about new 'miracle cures' or product launches (new movie releases are a classic example). Moreover they routinely ignore important news stories if they don’t offer an angle that sells. The whole industry, I mean the entire news industry, missed the financial crisis, and do you know why? I know why. Because there wasn’t a single news organization in the country that could afford to put boring mortgages on the front page. Who wants to read about underwriting standards declining? Who wants to know what’s in the Commodity Futures Modernization Act? Nobody. But we all love cat-in-tree stories, babies in wells, confused pop stars shaving their heads."
-- Matt Taibbi, "On Tom Friedman, Maureen Dowd and Edmund Andrews," Smirking Chimp, May 27, 2009.
http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/22006
"Rush said that he thought most [right-wing] people are incredibly gullible, and he felt that the key to radio programming was to reach that crowd, and that it would be really, really easy. He thought he could get anyone to believe anything he said, and the more outrageous it was, the more they would believe it." […]
"I think most of them [Rush's listeners] are psychotic. I don't think these people realize he's just pandering to them for ratings, but if they find out, I wouldn't want to be there."
-- Elliot Sanders, the St. Louis, MO, music store owner who claims to have had a 3-month-long gay affair with Rush Limbaugh in 1971.
http://www.sianews.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=419
if by "journalism" one includes TV, cnn, fox, etc., then "journalism" is not dying fast enough. i'm sure a few of those students b.e. was addressing only aspire to landing a job in front of a camera.
i still wonder about this, hopefully someone at CD can give an answer, but are other countries experiencing this "death of (print) media" thing?
if americans were forced to start reading the guardian or le monde or (gasp!) al jazeera, how could that be a bad thing?
and how, if at all, does the new Pentagon/NSA cyber war division relate to the "death of journalism"? inevitably it will target the Homeland. maybe that's part of its intention as americans are forced to seek news from international sources?
Sooorrrreeee, they wasted six(?)years and a bucket full of 100 dollar bills which they will pay back to Master at market rates for the rest of their lives. They have no place here like Barbara has no place here anymore...Barbara will disappear like the people she has written about. Master has no need of people writing about feudalistic plebs and their futile lives of imposed debt slavery. I am glad that Barbara had the good times she did. Her successors can fantasize about such meals and such hotels because while they may serve such meals and while they may work in such hotels - they will never be diners, they are on the menu...
In the late 70's and early 80's I watched interviews done with on activists and organizers from the 20's & 30's. They were without teeth in residential hotels in downtown major metros - 6 deadbolts on the door and dog food from a can for lunch. These were the ones who got their heads beaten in for the right to unionize, for a 40 hour week, for the end of child labor - all the good things, and that is what America did to them for their efforts. Cautionary tale Barbara.
Perhaps the best quote of all is from Maxpayne. "If the game is fixed don't play it."
But there is another game which is also "fixed."
Anyone may chant. Anyone may may associate with transcendental spirit. It's absolutely free, doesn't cost a penny, requires no journey(s). A child may do it...
How many of the journalism schools are camped under advertisement and business these days?
How many graduates are going into Public Relations instead of Journalism?
Where are the working class, investigative, gonzo journalists Barbara E underscores as our archetype? Is there evidence in the halls of journalism programs today? Is the working class, wage worker's voice -the on-the-street reporter- showing up to take credit?
Barbara E's speech comes off to me as more of a challenge to the audience, than a reaffirmation of the audience's sentiment. Is she right? Are we on the cusp of seeing the voice of the people once again be represented in journalism, like a Phoenix rising out of the ashes of the public relations, media saturated entertainment we are told represents modern journalism?
If so, let it burn and let's get busy. BE's speech is one of the best columns I've read by her in a very long time.
JBCracker@gmail.com
"journalism" is "smurfalism", DAM (don't ask me...)
when you have the richest country in the world but 36th or 37th in education this is the
net result.when you have a generation of video playing kids and parents who are ok with that
dick and jane who have no interest in reading. just as bad has been msm who have turned
page 6 articles into page 1 and refusing to report the real news of the day and eventually
relegating themselves to obscurity. the american business model of racing to the bottom
and eventually into bankruptcy!
You can't get any better than from Naomi Klein, or Jeremy Scahill, or Ami Goodman, or Paul Jay, or Laura Flanders or a handful of others. Internet audience browse the same pages, it's a miracle how many portals is able to live off internet, presenting sanity news, while core public servants appear only on commercial media (with Obama in the lead.) As for the majority of shrinking journalist market, try something effecting the readers, just to catch their attention.
It seems to me that journalism has committed suicide. I've almost quit reading the Register-Guard (Eugene, Oregon), which recently downsized, because I'm sick and tired of the government/corporate propaganda. All those AP, NYT, WAPO "news" stories full of words like "militant," "extremist," "insurgent" and "terrorist". They're all telling a story, and the story is that we should be afraid of people defined by our government as the enemy.
How come it's "news" when yet another government bureaucrat gives a speech saying Iran is going to get nuclear weapons? They make it sound like that would be a bad thing. Iran has as much right to nuclear weapons as we do, and they probably need nuclear weapons to defend themselves from us, unfortunately.
We need to invent a new journalism on the Web, supported by its readers, through websites like Common Dreams, CounterPunch, Portland Indymedia, etc. More of us need to become writers, whether we get paid for it or not.
http://lynnporter.wordpress.com
Why is it dying?
Because of the sell-outs who've been squatting in journalism jobs for the last thirty years.
Get your lame butts out of the way.