A good knight’s work

Barack Obama seems to be setting a good example of not letting fear stymie creativity.

In his speech to Congress last night, the U.S.president countered the absurd rumors circulating about health-care reforms (death panels, incipient communism) by bluntly calling them what they are: lies. He also made it pretty clear that he’s not going to cave on the innovative elements he wants to see in a revised health-insurance program, such as a “marketplace” of insurance options, including government-sponsored plans, for individuals and employers of varying means to choose from. He also pointed out – not insultingly, but unmistakably – that supporters of the Bush administration are in no position to question the cost of providing health care to the American people when they’re the ones who overwhelmingly supported spending billions on the Iraq war and cutting taxes for the extremely rich.

It was a speech that rode in, took an unshakable moral and policy stance and delivered knockout offensive blows while simultaneously conveying fresh ideas and the hope and expectation that  left and right will unite in an effort to think up even more.  

Whether or not you like the ideas or Obama himself, you’d have a hard time claiming that it wasn’t a bold speech. And boldness – guts, spine, heart and brains – is what we need more of in our thinking and our actions. It takes courage to invent new ways of solving our problems, but it take even more to make sure the best ones are put to use, in spite of other people’s reluctance, resentment, knee-jerk opposition and attempts at sabotage .

P.S. And how nice to see a president act boldly in the interest of actually helping people. Maybe before Obama’s term is up, all of us will be able to afford annual check-ups.

Media monopoly should not pass go anymore

My Friday post about the news business drew an interesting response from reader Richard Ingraham, who noted that huge media conglomerates are not just unwieldy and inflexible and thus unlikely to respond quickly enough to new societal and market conditions, but may also be the poster children for strengthened antitrust laws.  Ingraham wrote:  

“Lastly I would just say that we are reaping what we’ve sown. By not having any sort of public outcry while the FCC changed rules about how one organization can own more and more newspaper and other broadcasting organizations all in the same market we have allowed these huge media juggernauts to be created, who as you just admitted are too large to change fast enough to keep up with the times. Hmmmm… maybe if we had insisted on much smaller organizations and less consolidation of all our media, they would be quicker to adapt and we would all have been better off.”

I don’t think there’s much doubt that government enforcement of antitrust laws has been, shall we say, toothless in recent decades. The obscene binge of mergers and takeovers that characterized the Reagan years may have subsided, but the government’s mindset hasn’t seemed to change a lot – many markets remain dominated by organizations that have grown gargantuan from buying up their competitors, severely limiting the public’s choices and making it impossible for entrepreneurs to challenge them profitably. Clear Channel and Time Warner are just two that come to mind.

But the Zeitgeist is changing and it looks as if the Obama administration may try to restore the power of regulations meant to keep corporations from driving everyone else in their industries out of business or into their stables.

So what will this mean to news outlets? Well, it’s possible that if media conglomerates ended up having to divest themselves of all but one outlet in each market (so that in a particular city, they own either a newspaper or a broadcast station, but not both, which is how it used to be) they might not be able to find buyers for their least-profitable properties and would have to close them instead. Undoubtedly, some enfeebled newspapers would be among them.

If that proved to be the case, we’d probably end up in the short run with even fewer news outlets than we have now. But with the media giants reduced to normal-sized adversaries and community demand for news going unmet, the opportunity for entrepreneurs to step in and create new – maybe much better – small media companies would be both great and healthy.

I hope with all my heart that we don’t lose our grand old newspapers – we as a nation desperately need their news-gathering skills, integrity and reach. But the conglomerates that own many of them have already sacrificed some of the unique editorial voice, investigative drive and spirit of experimentation that made those papers grand in the first place. It’s time to loosen the big bullies’ hold on the media marketplace and give other initiatives and ideas a chance to thrive.

Is there a doctor (of sociology) in the house?

Convulsions. That’s the only word I can think of to describe what the United States is going through now. 

And what’s causing them? People have focused strictly on an economy that’s pumping ever more weakly, but we have a wide array of symptoms: a rapidly deteriorating skeleton of steel and concrete structures; ruined or exhausted resources and compromised defenses; an obesity of wealth aggravating a flesh-eating poverty; an educational nervous system whose synapses aren’t firing. And now a painful rash of failing newspapers, inexorably spreading. 

This last is becoming agony for us journalists, for whom every sale or closing is like losing a family member to some horrible pandemic. A story in TIME online predicts more deaths and soon.   

I can’t believe these problems are unrelated and I suspect that money is not the real root cause, though it’s certainly a factor. What we need is a differential diagnosis.

What could account for all these ills? Could it be our attitude?

Yes, I’m suggesting that the U.S. has a psychosomatic problem – and psychosomatic doesn’t mean the problems aren’t real, just that they started in our heads.

Look at where those heads have been: For decades now, Americans have been absorbed with amassing personal wealth and spending it ostentatiously, needlessly, on unwholesome toys and pursuits, from SUVs and multimillion-dollar homes to environmentally destructive industrial products and practices. Until recently, the majority of us have voted for leaders who ripped away regulations, encouraged overdevelopment, neglected schools and food safety and the health-care system, turned corporations loose on the public like strep colonies in a neonatal ward, ignored – even defied – the warning signs of a dying  planet and a sickened generation of children and kept indulging the rich while depriving the poor.

Why did we do it? Why didn’t we invest our obscene incomes in better education and medical services and more nutritious food? Why didn’t we clean up the air, water and soil and the stupid, polluting cars and industries that poisoned them in the first place? Why didn’t we insist that our leaders accomplish these things?

And why are we letting our news organizations go under?

Apparently, because we enjoy being rich and not thinking about anything but our own comfort and fun. Or because those of who weren’t rich so wanted to be that we were willing to let the wealthy do as they pleased, in hopes that one day, that would be us. Only now – irony of ironies – we are all becoming the poor and afflicted that we didn’t used to care about.

And I wonder if, at long last, we’ll change our attitudes. Electing Obama was a tremendously encouraging sign that Americans at least wanted a new economic strategy for our nation. But I’m looking for a different sign, now. The one I’m hoping to see will show that we care about more than our own wallets, that we care what’s going on in the world and demand the most accurate information about it that’s humanly possible to provide.

If the last major newspaper dies, will Americans suddenly discover that they miss the on-the-ground, eye-witness, reliably researched news they used to get from the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune and all the other papers that invested money from subscriptions and advertising in huge networks of skilled reporters and editors? Or will our society just blow the whole thing off and contentedly derive its impressions of the world and what’s happening in it from YouTube and the aimless minutiae of Twitter?

Americans can’t run their country without dependable daily news and news organizations can’t produce that news unless Americans are willing to pay for it.  Foreign correspondents and  Capitol Hill reporters – and all the people who make professional-quality print, radio, TV and even online news possible - represent enormous amounts of ability, training and experience. If they can’t get paid for their work, they can’t do it at all and their skills will disappear from our society. And then we will become a nation of people without a clue, unable function and ripe for takeover by whatever oppressor wants power over us.

But maybe Americans won’t say “good riddance” when the news disappears. Maybe they’ll realize they need it back. I’m waiting to see. … with the journalistic defibrillator paddles in my hands.

Recreating what can’t be fixed

Despite the hours of contemplation bestowed on me all last week while I waited for the next available tech-support person to answer, it didn’t occur to me until just now that my ordeal makes a good metaphor for the situation confronting our nation.

For eight years, Americans have been on hold, unable to reach help or take action themselves as our international reputation, environment, economy, educational system and Constitutional freedoms have been destroyed or defiled. And now that our new Tech-Supporter-in-Chief is finally on the job and trying to set things right, we’re beginning to realize that some of what was damaged may never be fully restored.

So, as I had to do with a couple of my blog posts, we Americans are going to have to reinvent what we’ve lost. If we’re smart and creative about it, we’ll end up with better stuff that we started with.

Education in the U.S. has been going downhill for decades and needs to be completely reimagined, starting with the 19th-century industrial assembly line it’s modeled on. Saving the life of our planet will require every brain cell we have just to bring the Earth back to the compromised state of health it was in 20 years ago. But if we choose the right new strategies and practices and stick to them, our children’s children may learn more effectively and have a cleaner, cooler world to live in. 

Obama has already begun to change how other nations view us, just by getting elected. But he’ll need our encouragement and ideas and, most of all, our willingness to change our behavior if the U.S. is to become, for the first time, a leader that other nations can trust to live up to our own stated standards, heed international law and work for the common good. Being truly responsible and fair - that’s going to take a serious self-makeover.

We’re going to have to realize that our livelihoods and our futures depend on the U.S. being a good global citizen and a center for creativity. 

Or else. Because we have met our tech support – and it is us.

Time to hang up that phone

 and take action!