I worked a couple years for a nice little tv station, Channel 48 in Toledo, but we had few viewers because the owner of the local paper, refused to list our programs because he had a competing tv statiojn that he owned. This is the notoriously EVIL BLOCK FAMILY, who run one of the most voter spurring newspapser in america because they squeeze out competition -- once they went out and beat up the paper boys of a new start-up. Scared off anyone from delivering the paper, and of course it folded -- this is real life, not a movie where the happy ending scoops in and saves everyone.
The happy endings in movies spread great lies. They say they are just movies, and people like happy endings, but they end up spreading this huge lie -- very difficult situations produce a lot more losers than winners, but Hollywood is usually too stupid to see the amazingin the ordinary, so they ignore the losers and make their story about the winners. Like the sports movies that suck millions of kids into believing they are going to be NBA players -- stopping them from choosing a goal like being a writer, artist, teacher -- realistic goals that they could attain. Instead, most kids who dream of being basketball stars get nothing but those dreams in return -- others really get screwed by it, by going to college and doing nothing but sports, taking dummy me down classes (one Huge University in Michigan had a Hockey Team that filled out workbooks on the bus on the way to games, and that was it... their college experience... I met this guy, by the way, when spending a week in jail for making an important political statement, and his life was a mess -- basically uneducated, because of course he dropped out in his fourth year, when he wasn't making the kind of splash the coach wanted and was dropped by the team... leaving him supposedly to go back to regular classes and continue his education, though in reality this was impossible, so the kids dropped out). Yes, those happy ending sports movies do damage. So does regular reporting that tends to want that same happy ending, and reports those stories more often than the failers. In Chicago, you see this with all the black people who are murdered or raped or whatever on the southside being ignored if one white person has been victimized. Like on the international scene we report on the three americans who were killed in, oh, say Nagasaki, and ignore the millions of Locals killed (not historically accuracy I am going for, but metaphorical... good lesson in New Journalism there).
How can huge problems like this be solved? CITIZEN JOURNALISTS who are ready to take on the issues around them. A lot of people knew about and were enraged over sports figures were being schooled -- I saw a movie about it 30 some years ago, with Robbie Benson, showing this was happening. Unfortunatly, people only remember the happy ending, where he became both academically oriented and winning the big game. This happens to a few people, sure... but this ignores the thousands who end up... in jail. They also use steroids, a lot of time, and professional sports figures are statistically a lot more prone toward beating their wives (happens most frequently after a winning game, interestingly enough).
Now, sending out someone to interview Mayor Daly or whatever, has been the newspaper's realm, prior to their destroyer, the web. How will journalists get paid now to go out do the research that most other writers rely on for their story? I read people who get paid to go out and pursue a story, and they are footnotes everywhere in my writing, and thinking... without them, I would know next to nothing -- I am a fiction writer who dabbles in New Journalism, but mostly I just sit here and write. There is nothing, usually, in my actual physical environment that bears writing about.
There is a group here in Illinois that funds journalists, so that investigative reporting can continue on various important topics -- government corruption in the case I am thinking of, where a very well respected Chicago Journalist retired from working for the tv news and got a job doing investigative reporting full time for a long running co-olition of funders.
This co-olition of funders has been expanded on the web. People buy or donate or whatever from websites that they want to continue. We could do the same thing for journalists. People with certain political beliefs would want to make sure that someone was looking at their world through their perspective. This sounds like the non-objective way of writing journalism, instead of the supposed objectivity that newspapers and tv news are always talking about having, even Fox news, which is a few facts woven around right wing propoganda. They want their warped view of reality to spread. The sane try to counter this with the Daly Report, Colbert, Rachel Maddow and other shows that are primarily liberal in their intent.
People involved in this know something that makes them missionary in their work -- they are fighting a war for the perceptions of the world, the perceptions that will shape how we act, vote, believe in spirituality, etc... If you think we cannot be shaped by such things, remember how Bush successfully drummed up support in people who hate war to 'stop terrorists from getting nuclear bombs." Some love it, in the context of what it can do to save people, etc... others just because they want to use guns to get their point across, or to smite their adversaries, like the Iranaian Governments crack down on protestors demading a fair election. Showing more balls than the states had when Bush stole not one, but two elections... or at least that is how it is percieved, especially the last one, and people here did not do shit. Period. This should have had us outside the courthouse with Pirchforks and Torches, with the cops and the miltary on our side.
With the rise of people being read on the web for their views of local events, there is an excellent opportunity for savvy journalists, or people who would like to be, to put together a co-olition of writers, who feel strongly about their politics, and realize that they were never really objective in the first place, so they might as well admit it, rather than hide their views by taking on stories that focus on their beliefs, just by showing them, without seemingly taking a side... but, the trick is, like Fox knows, that just by mostly reporting good news on Republicans, and bad news for the Democrats, they seem objective if you are on of those people who cannot see the larger picture; where Fox news is merely a propoganda devices supported by seemingly substantial facts, merely because they use current events like footnotes in their ideological speech.
Mine is going to called the Alpha Mind Society, which will be a group of journalists who support leftist ideology. People who believe in these issues will want to support us. I want people who join to be like minded, not forced to think in a certain way. We have to fight fire with fire, and if Fox news wants to be blatant all the time right-wing, and even the New York Times fails to discuss a lot of issues, people should and will act (I was in one class that showed the NYT ignores a lot of stories that reflect well of the leftist who are just a little or a lot left of the NYT. They are as much a tool, sometimes, as FOX. One example -- you can pretty much bet, if you read an article in the NYT about Unions, they will interview the head of the company, and ignore the head of the union. They might get a couple sound bites from someone on the picket line, but they almost never go to someone like the articulate, politicized head of the Companies being picketed. Another thing they do is report on the Strikes like they are merely inconveinances for everyone else, instead of talking about the real problems that have driven the union to take a drastic action that hurts their bretheren a lot, too, and is not taken lightly).
A journalist who understands stand-point theory would know that without looking at everyone's point of view, the reader does not have enough information to make an informed decision. Like the best model yet of government to come along, The Round Table of King Arthur, where every view is equal, and what they agree on takes all of these views into consideration and then they really do see all sides of the stone before they make a decision. The reason this is avoided now by the unwitting tools of the immoral minority, is because it would cost them money, change their lives a little bit -- make them fear they could end up 'common' (5% who own almost all the wealth of the United States... leaving most childen here to be raised in poverty -- whose america is this? Theirs. They hold onto resources that would probably solve all of the worlds problems if they just spread their wealth around.''
I am happy to see this manifesting. The web has produced journalists who get funded by readers and advertisers. So, thus Communal Journalism has of course already started. I would not have come up with this without having it banged into my head for years. Sounds almost obvious, right?
People could put together pools of journalists based on the idea of Objectivity, as well. If that is what they believe is possible, or want, they should have the option.
Go Forth And Tell The World... THE FUTURE IS HERE NOW.
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