Cold Spaghetti

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1. Christoph | 17-Mar-08 at 11:08 am | Permalink

   This is one of the reasons why I decided not to accept the internship that could have led to a job with the paper out here. (And I thought it was a fine paper, but I didn’t think they’d be immune to the larger rule.)

   Once I figured out to what extent that the media is a business that tells stories for profit, I decided I wanted to be in a different business. Newspapers sell narratives to an audience, and the composition of the people who buy those narratives determines what they print. We all know that, I’m not bringing wisdom from the sky.

   So it shouldn’t be a shocker that certain people don’t make it into the paper — the Times-Picayune won’t go bankrupt if those “certain people” don’t read the paper. Now if the other people who DO read the TP get pissed, and cancel enough subscriptions, and put effective pressure on advertisers … things could change. Not a guarantee, but it’s the only way.

   This is also why there’s an important role in society for the independent media, which, in this day and age, are self-published blogs.

   This also reminds me of a recent post on the Houston Chronicle’s website. A political blogger/reporter, a white woman, wrote that while there are still racial problems in Texas, overall the state has a more “sophisticated” – her word — level of dialogue on race than other so-called enlightened “zip-codes” back East. Look, I love Texas, but let’s not lift it to mythological status. I unloaded on her in a comment, and asked her to describe the level of sophistication of the Council of Conservative Citizens, or the white students who had a blackface party at Texas A&M, or the people who dragged the black man behind the truck in Jasper in the late 90s, or the reaction I would get if I walked into a restaurant or store with my hands draped around a tall blonde woman in Beaumont, Wichita Falls or Texarkana. My point is, the media also writes what they write based on their own perspectives, which are usually forged inside a tight bubble of white privilege. We all know the media are the biggest hypocrites. They rail against inequality in their stories, but if you watch CNN, MSNBC or Fox News, count the number of black anchors and reporters you see. Then go online and look at their corporate management, and count the number of black news directors and executives you see.

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