The path to reclaiming power over information and securing democracy
When I was a kid, there were these extraordinary chronicles of daily life called newspapers, sold on nearly every street corner, delivered to homes and businesses, read on trains, and shared among strangers in coffee shops. They were magical to behold, and entirely ephemeral. Capable of taking down titans of industry one day, and good for nothing more than wrapping fish the next.
The writers employed by these agents of enchantment were audacious souls who lived hard lives and wrote scathing diatribes about the halls of power and the many injustices in the world forced upon the innocent by soulless villains, but also many the inspiring tale of athletes, authors, criminals, artists, and actors; incredible achievements, despicable deeds, and heinous crimes, all delectably and delightfully told. They were salacious stories meant for the working poor, not the privileged elite, designed to keep hope alive.
A newspaper was the great equalizer because it united a people and stood up to the scions of power. It informed as well as inspired. A well-reported story from a trusted source and published in a credible paper could be a devastating tool for equality and civic justice, even against tyrants, despots, and kings. The pen was mightier than the sword, according to William Shakespeare, and it could, in the right hands, bring down empires.
So much of the early newspaper magic wasn’t targeted at the entrepreneurial class at all, but to the working public—the common man. They weren’t writing stories about mergers and acquisitions, or the finer details of polite society, but bank robberies and cowboys, boxers and race horses, murders and kidnappings—lurid stories that captured the imagination of the great unwashed masses and helped to create the American Dream of meritocratic prosperity.
The billionaire class has long since learned to catch and kill any story that threatens their existence, but has now turned their attention to the entire media ecosystem that supports it, thereby destroying the entire concept of a free and independent press—it being the greatest threat to their continued hold on power. It may not have been the original intent, but it’s become the happy side effect for those in power. Kill the media, and with it goes accountability and bad press.
The loss of the independent, local news media, through various mergers and acquisitions, not to mention the wholesale liquidation of many local newspapers, has resulted in the monopoly of information held in the hands of a few oligarchs who can afford to bankrupt legendary institutions for their own greedy ends. They have centralized and controlled all avenues of information until everyone gets their news from Meta, Google, Comcast, Disney, Fox, or Paramount. There is no one to speak truth to power when power owns the truth.
No one is contesting the fact that the news media are in a free fall and have been decimated by modern economics. But there seems to be no answer as to how to combat it. The one thing that seems clear is that centralization and consolidation are the enemies of truth and competition, so the answer has to be found somewhere within the confines of independent, decentralized media outlets that share information but are not beholden to one another outside of the confines of civic duty, ethical journalism, and honest reporting.
It’s hard to believe that with all our technological advancements, not to mention the connective power of a global internet, we do not have a better path forward regarding the democratization of disseminating factual information. We were promised a utopia free of elitist gatekeepers and instead found a lawless frontier of vigilantes, trolls, gunslingers, and grifters. We were better off with the gatekeepers, that is, until they were replaced by craven profiteers eager to trade ideological integrity for generational wealth.
I don’t know if federation is the answer, but it seems to be working for a small subset of the social media universe that has built a community of decentralized servers, each independently owned, operated, and managed, to come together in a spirit of honest discourse without the amoral manipulation of people for profit. A system free of the traditional enshittification of corporate greed. It’s not utopia, because people are still capable of incredible douchebaggery, but it’s surprisingly manageable.
I grew up in the evangelical Christian community of the 1970s and 80s, when a lot of aging hippies started churches that tried to follow the example of the early Church, which consisted of small groups, intimate gatherings, and home churches. The prevailing belief was that once a church grew past a certain point, the organism was required to split into two and continue to grow. The entire concept of the megachurch would have been anathema to the theology of quiet grace and vigorous compassion. Setting aside their obvious failure to maintain that discipline, I think the same held true of the press. The bigger they became the more corrupting was their design for power, money, and prestige. No one wants to be a saint, servant, or martyr. We want to be kings.
Which is why we need a media ecosystem that is rooted in small, local, independent agencies operating outside of corporate control for the good of the people. When I say it like that, it sounds like some sort of early 20th-century European socialist movement, but really it’s just the way it’s supposed to be. The press has to be free from corporate control and governmental corruption, and the only way that’s feasible is if it’s financially sustainable and independently solvent. We cannot rely on the benevolence of billionaires, not matter how enlightened we believe them to be. The love of money may be the root of all evil, but it is wedded to power in its feverish desire for dominance.
Printing and distributing paper copies does seem a little archaic at a point in history when most people read things on their phones, so it’s hard to imagine returning to that. The answer seems to lie in the digital realm, but not the way we’ve been doing it. There is already a movement afoot to return to small, simple, independently run websites, syndicated to the world through RSS technology, that deliver a wealth of news, technology, art, and commerce. It’s Web 3.0 without the blockchain grift, but it needs to get even better still.
We could be creating information-gathering collectives that operate as a sort of accountability team that rotates personnel voluntarily, and reports on the comings and goings of those in power and the things they do, or don’t do. A sort of neighborhood watch for the news. You elect people temporarily to be in charge of the messaging process, those who understand the power of story and the relationship between narrative and news.
It should be a community project, democratized in its operation and voluntary in nature. A patriotic, civic institution that operates as a public trust and is dependent on the interdependence of the community to function. Everyone must take ownership so that no one person can own it. Democracy requires engagement and commitment, and wilts in the face of apathy.
Maybe there are other ideas, paths, strategies, and tactics, and we should explore and test them all, but we must begin to rebuild before we try to raise a sodden Phoenix from the wet ashes of a long-dead fire.
I keep wondering where the great 21st-century liberal thinkers are. Where are our think tanks and institutions of learning? Where are our philosophers? Who is developing the strategies for moving democracy forward and away from the gates of hell? We know the cavalry isn’t coming to save us, so we must save ourselves, or be lost to another sad chapter of human history.
I would like to propose that we form our own institution of scholars and academics, professionals and experts, philosophers and poets, activists and artists. A new kind of think tank, independent of corporate funding, that operates on a self-funding basis, developing research projects and strategies for success that we can feed to operatives, candidates, campaigns, unions, and citizens to help them live better lives.
The concept of journalism was always an idealistic venture, so for it to be a vision for the future, we need to elevate it as an ideal, not merely a profession. It must be a calling with a theological fervor that requires an oath and an ethos. Maybe there is an aspect of public service to it, but it can’t be controlled by elected officials.
I welcome ideas on how to organize, where to gather, how best to communicate, and on what platforms. I encourage people to organize, share ideas, make plans, and begin to build the next generation of public media.
I don’t know what the answers are, but I do know we can’t keep doing what we’ve been doing and expecting a different result.
Stop the insanity.