A Thanksgiving Message: Making Democracy Work
November 23rd, 2008
Under the Microscope
by Glynn Wilson
I don’t remember the exact moment when I first realized how important the press is in making democracy work. The simple fact is, the realization did not happen in one moment of epiphany. It took years of working at it and reading about it and thinking about it, even dreaming about it in the middle of the night.
As winter sets in early here in middle Alabamaland, however, that is increasingly the dominant subject occupying my thoughts: How to make democracy work.
Perhaps because I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that making democracy work is critical to what kind of a future I will have for the second half of my life. And it is critical to the future of so many other lives here and around the country. And there can be no doubt that the shape of our new media will have a lot to do with creating that future, for good or ill.
There is no doubt that the American democracy has been broken for the past eight years both by an unbridled greedy hunger and a thirst for power by a group of people who don’t care about the rest of us. They have exploited a disconnect between real information and misleading political propaganda to dominate this country and the world for their own political and economic ends.
But their time is at an end. It is time for a new beginning.
In an effort to continue trying to inform a certain audience on what shape this new direction should take, I will continue to tell the stories that have informed my own experience in making democracy work. I have seen it work. I have helped make it work.
I know it can work, but not without the Web Press. The era of the mass circulation daily newspaper is about over.
Inevitably, there are those who will fight the onset of this future in the name of “conservatism.” Newspaper managers are even now trying to figure out how to cling to their hold on the past.
They will fight for the status quo like the plantation owners who did everything in their power to prevent the death of slavery as an institution in the late 1800s, like the merchants of downtown Birmingham in the late 1950s and ’60s who did everything in their power to keep people of color from eating in the same restaurants, drinking from the same water fountains, attending the same schools — and obtaining the simple American right to vote.
My own life and history is indelibly tied to this past. No matter how hard I have tried to run from it and escape it and wish it away, it hangs there like an albatross around my neck. But I know when I write about myself, the story is not just about me. It is about so many others from here who have been infected and held down by the same past.
From my experiences in moving beyond this past, there are lessons for others in how to go about changing. That is my simple quest.
Some people take it wrong. Nothing I can do about that. Some people will never learn. Some people have to learn things the hard way for themselves as I have.
If you are still reading at this point, I can only assume you are interested enough in this story to find out what my experiences have been and how I interpret those experiences to inform the future. I can’t force-feed people who don’t want to learn, which is one of the reasons I no longer teach. I may one day teach again, but not now.
In my decade of university teaching experience, I found the best students to be those who had been around for awhile, those who had lived some life before they came back to college with a real thirst for knowledge. That is my own story. Most of the young people who were forced by their parents to attend college thought they already knew it all and were not interested in what some old guy had to say.
I suspect they either went on to learn things the hard way, or failed. That is life. Some get it. Some don’t. It’s not magic. There are no shortcuts, no quick fixes, no get-rich schemes.
As Malcolm Gladwell documents in his book Outliers: The Story of Success, people need a helping hand to succeed. Yes, intelligence and luck are a big part of it. But it also takes hard work, many years of hard work. According to his analysis, it takes 10,000 hours or 10 years of hard work.
Some people may get lucky early in life. For others it may take even longer.
One of the down sides of the Web Press is that an author has to communicate in short segments. Most people are not going to read a book length manuscript in one sitting on a Website.
So I am planning a series of stories to run over the next month or so to explain more about what I mean. The news is going to slow down over the holidays from Thanksgiving through Christmas and New Years anyway. It always does.
So this will give me something to write about and you something to read, if you are interested.
I am planning to tell some stories from my past, stories that may one day be reprinted in book form. I will talk about how I first got interested in writing and journalism, how I got a college education and then found myself in the newspaper business. I will tell some stories about things that happened in those years, including what I learned covering the final term in office of George Wallace.
I will talk about what I learned as a free-lance journalist while owning my own business, a bookstore with a coffee bar on the Southside of Birmingham. I will talk about my return to the news business on the beach in Gulf Shores. I will tell the story of how that era of my life came to an end and how I ended up going to grad school at the University of Alabama, then how I taught in Georgia and ended up in a Ph.D. program in Knoxville, Tennessee.
I will tell the story of how I came to start THE first magazine online there, The Southerner, and then how I ended up in New Orleans and everything that happened there, including how my life was changed like a lot of people’s lives on September 11, 2001.
There is more, but for now it is time to cook Sunday breakfast. I hope you will stick around and continue on this journey with me. I promise you will not be disappointed in the end, because along the way, I am going to connect the dots and talk about how Alabama has a chance to play another critical role in the history of American politics and government.
We have it in our power to bring about change, if only we will heed the lessons and work hard to bring it about.
And Happy Thanksgiving, by the way. I am most thankful that George W. Bush will be headed back to Crawford, Texas, very soon, so I don’t have to write about him anymore. I am thankful that Sarah Palin will not be the vice president we have to make fun of for the next four or eight years. Whether you are a Republican or a Democrat or an independent, believe me when I say we are all better off. See you next week.
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November 23rd, 2008 at 12:43 pm
A thoughtful piece from Glynn Wilson and it should provoke all of us to reflect on the importance of free communication.
The importance of freedom of the press was such the founders enshrined it in the Bill of Rights. Jefferson, I believe, said something to the effect that if the choice were a government and no newspapers versus no government and newspapers, he would choose the latter.
The simple truth is that information is power, most particularly power to shape one’s own life, based on the ability to judge competing ideas, opinions and theories for onself. Also very important, by knowing what the governing elite, whoever they may be at a given moment, is doing, we are far less susceptible to authoritarianism and tyranny.
With the dawn of the internet the free press has been given a new lease on life. Blogs such as Locust Fork play a critical role now in keeping vital information available to large numbers of people. This is essential to democracy and essential to freedom.
Hats off, everyone.
November 24th, 2008 at 10:43 am
I believe the key is getting more and more people to go ahead and turn to the internet as their news source. I think one way to do this would be to have a monthly Democracy Quiz of about ten items that would test on important issues and events of the past month. The answer key would provide links to the internet sties that provided a level of information and documentation to inform the reader/quiz taker about that issue. This would not only would inform people on the issues but make them aware of sites that provide much better information on the issues than the dying print and TV news sources.
An example question would be: Which of Obama’s proposed programs do the Republicans fear the most? The answer would be health care reform because the Republican strategists believe that a successful health care program would move working and middle class whites to the Democratic party for generations, in effect killing the Republican party. The answer key would link to blog discussions of Bill Kristol’s piece and the analysis of how Labor’s health care program in the UK provided the basis for their being the dominant party in Britain for decades as well as the original articles. The answer key could also link to groups that are politically active on the issue.
November 24th, 2008 at 11:16 am
Interesting thoughts, Jim.
My stories are going to focus on how a real watchdog reporter goes about making democracy work using the Web Press without being beholden to corporate interests.
But we are going to have to continue working on how to fund this work. If I can’t figure out a way to pay to get this tooth ache taken care of I have today, how can I save democracy : )
I would like to see your thoughts on Gladwell’s thesis. I believe my experience gives me unique expertise in this area. There are two reasons political blogs can only go so far. One is, most of them do not have the education or experience in the news business to even know what I am talking about here. Two is, the masses are not going to read such partisan rants.
Excuse the metaphor, but without the patina of objectivity, you can’t reach a mass audience.
The problem with most newspaper reporters is that they have been socialized by the corporate model and simple economic objectivity for too long.
Want to see that at work? Check the Huntsville Times today for another editorial column saying there is not one “shred of evidence” to support the idea of a political prosecution in the Siegelman case. Then, check the Birmingham News for an editorial saying Troy King should investigate third-party groups funding ads in the Supreme Court race. They should be investigating him.
I won’t even bother to link to them, because they are so obviously inspired by their vested money interests that they are clearly a waste of ink and paper — and bandwidth : )
November 24th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
BTW: By turning to the Internet, you mean the Web, right?
E-mail is passed over the Internet, if people use Internet software to get and receive e-mail. Web mail is another matter : )
And don’t forget what Karl Rove said in his Newsweek column we linked to the other day. The right is going to spend the money to get better at the Web.
The reason so many white people in Alabama voted for McCain instead of Obama this time was because of rumors being passed around over the Internet via e-mail about him being a “terrorist” and a Muslim. This was then passed around by word of mouth. And no matter how much the Obama campaign and even the mainstream media did to counter it, it didn’t matter. They wanted to believe it. It came to them on their very own computer over the Internet.
November 30th, 2008 at 11:38 am
[...] Note: As I indicated last Sunday in the introduction to a series on the importance of the press in making democracy work, there can be no doubt that experience matters. For example, you can’t just start a blog as a [...]
December 7th, 2008 at 2:42 am
[...] Note: As I indicated Sunday two weeks ago in the introduction to a series on the importance of the press in making democracy work, there can be no doubt that experience matters. This is the third part of a series designed to show [...]
December 14th, 2008 at 12:33 am
[...] Note: As I indicated Sunday two weeks ago in the introduction to a series on the importance of the press in making democracy work, there can be no doubt that experience matters. This is the third part of a series designed to show [...]
December 14th, 2008 at 12:33 am
[...] Note: As I indicated Sunday two weeks ago in the introduction to a series on the importance of the press in making democracy work, there can be no doubt that experience matters. This is the third part of a series designed to show [...]
December 20th, 2008 at 10:18 pm
[...] Note: As I indicated Sunday three weeks ago in the introduction to a series on the importance of the press in making democracy work, there can be no doubt that experience matters. This is the fourth part of a series designed to [...]
December 26th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
[...] Note: As I indicated Sunday a few weeks ago in the introduction to a series on the importance of the press in making democracy work, there can be no doubt that experience matters. This is the sixth part of a series designed to show [...]
January 4th, 2009 at 12:39 am
[...] Note: As I indicated Sunday a few weeks ago in the introduction to a series on the importance of the press in making democracy work, there can be no doubt that experience matters. This is the sixth part of a series designed to show [...]
January 10th, 2009 at 11:55 pm
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