Media Re:public

I thought I might lose my Trader Joe’s Blueberry Muesli this morning, listening to Adam Davidson chat with Morning Edition co-host Ari Shapiro about free trade, Colombia and the US election. Their 4-minute conversation is ickily chatty (”Hey Adam, hey Ari”) and unbearably arrogant and US-centric. Adam contends that making a big fuss over trade agreements with Colombia is, in his words, “nutty” because Colombia is just too small to matter: “I did the math and… the entire Colombian economy is the size of Hollywood, Florida, not Hollywood, California” They both laugh. Indeed, what could be more entertaining than living in a country where the per capita gross domestic product is less than $20 a day?

So, Ari persists, why do US politicians care about this silly little country, since only “some people here and there” (Adam’s words) will be affected by any trade deals? Well apparently, unions are upset because a lot of union leaders get killed there, but as Adam goes on to observe in the same cheerful “gosh-how-silly” voice, “a lot of people get killed in Colombia, it’s a very violent society.” Wow, that’s even funnier than being poor!

The hilarity continues as Davidson notes that in some states “trade is a big, big deal” even though those foolish voters are just wrong about trade being the reason they lost their jobs. Davidson presumably thinks that American voters in those states may be almost as stupid as the people who choose to live in poor, violent Colombia.

I’ll leave union members and residents of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Ohio to defend themselves against Davidson’s flip dismissal of their concerns. On behalf of the rest of the world, though, I urge NPR to make both Ari Shapiro and Adam Davidson spend a few hours learning something about Colombia. Wonderful place to start is on Global Voices, which will steer them to a heart-breaking series of short videos on the struggles of a brave group of women to fight back against the violence and economic hardship in the Barrancabermeja region, home to the country’s biggest oil refinery. Hey, did Davidson really fail to mention that petroleum accounts for almost 30% of Colombia’s exports? Yup, I listened one more time to be sure.

This offensive piece of “analysis” (perhaps that’s just another word for “filler” at Morning Edition?) added nothing to our understanding of trade issues or the election politics it was supposedly about, while actively encouraging the worst sort of American closedmindness. Which public is public radio aiming for?

Photo: Bogotá
2600m + montañas paisas…
Uploaded on December 27, 2006
by One*mandarino
Some rights reserved

The Mapping Where’s the money? panel* here (warning error-prone as-live blogging ahead) at Beyond Broadcast - Diane Mermigas (Mediapost) totally gets it about the fact that the challenges to public and commercial media are the same. I’m not sure I agree with her on all the ideas for public broadcasters should make money in what she calls the “Consumer-Centric Public Media’s Interactive Sphere” see image at left, paper here), but they’re definitely smart.

Keith Hopper (Public Interactive): my advice to you: focus on getting more online users. User interaction is the new currency. The best stuff on the web is free. Follow the model of successful online sites: build user base first, monetize later. You need real interaction, people downloading stuff, remixing, discussing. No users means no money. Lastly, if you monetize first and build users later, you can corrupt your environment, people will get turned off.

Craig Reigel, (Nonprofit Finance Fund): “Bringing in revenue needs to be decriminalized.” He doesn’t care whether it’s donations or ads (hmm) he just wants us to get busy getting the important stuff we do funded.

Vince Stehle, (Surdna Foundation): Compares Radiohead model to public brodcasting (shortened by the folks here to “pubcasting” which sounds too much like pubcrawling to me). Commercial media are more challenged, but they may be adapting more quickly. What if you’re not a superstar, how does that work? Take Colby Calais she was working in a tanning salon. She got a recording contract after 10 million free downloads of her music on MySpace. Look to what we can do in public media to dramatically reexamine our business model(s). Where is our 99 cent Itunes model - how do we let folks do micropayments? (Doc Searls’ gang will fix this.) Too early to say we can’t raise money online. Look at the progression from Dean to Obama.

Ernest Wilson, (Annenberg): An interjection of pessimism: Let’s not forget what we’re talking about here is the BASIS of democracy. If people in this room don’t get it right soon, democracy will suffer and it will be our fault. (He bangs the table for effect!) We need to create dialogue, discussion, serve the underserved. Our beloved local stations especially, possibly the last local voices in many communities, are not doing it. If we don’t change that quickly, our democracy will be poorer for it. Get people out of our silos!! (GO, Dr. Wilson, GO!) He lists 4 silos: print, digital media folks, public broadcasting, and commercial. (I would add a 5th non-profit civil society silo, myself) He says public broadcasting is serving people well from birth to age 7, ignores folks till they’re 47, and then serves them from age 47 till shortly after their death. Big laugh line.

Mermigas leads an active discussion on how to light a fire under the asses of public broadcasting. Mentions VRM work on the funding question. She and Wilson are relentless about the need for the people in the room to get relevant fast. Stehle: you need to help each other, build up each other’s sites and networks. I tell my neighbor this panel should have been called not “Mapping the Money” but “Speaking Truth to Ostriches.”

self-promotional P.S. Gave a supershort (they are actually keeping to SCHEDULE here, what an idea) chat on the current versions of Media Re:public conclusions and recommendations. Sildes are here: http://www.slideshare.net/guest95ccec/media-republic-beyond-
broadcast2008

*1:45pm - 3:00pm Roundtable Discussion: Mapping the Money
Conversation Leader:
Diane Mermigas, Editor-at-Large, Media Post
Discussants:
Henry Jenkins, Director of the Comparative Media Studies Program, MIT
Keith Hopper, Product Manager, Public Interactive
Craig Reigel, Vice President, Western Region, Nonprofit Finance Fund
Vince Stehle, Program Officer for the Nonprofit Sector Initiative, Surdna Foundation
Ernest J. Wilson, Walter Annenberg Chair in Communication and dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California

Does this graphic make you giggle?

Thanks to PRX’s excellent BallotVox project, which is identifying some really interesting election coverage from unusual sources, for highlighting a disturbing video about sexism in the campaign.

(As an Obama supporter) I don’t think that blaming Obama is really the point. It’s more revealing to me how easily it is for all of us to let things slide. Try mentally replacing every sexist insult in the anti-clinton visuals with an equivalent racial slur and imagine your reactions.

Or imagine reading this sentence in the NY Times: “A majority of those polled — both whites and blacks — said they thought Mr. Obama would be an effective diplomat, suggesting he has made headway in diminishing concerns that his race would impede him from dealing with with white world leaders.”

Impossible, right? Try this one:

“A majority of those polled — both women and men — said they thought Mrs. Clinton would be an effective commander in chief, suggesting she has made headway in diminishing concerns that her sex would impede her from leading the nation in wartime.” Women Supportive but Skeptical of Clinton, Poll Says

If media only reflect the society they serve, maybe it’s time for all of us, men and women, black and white, to look in the mirror?

-30-

Compelling, well-researched, human, making a serious and complicated issue accessible without dumbing it down - that’s the kind of journalism we’re concerned with, right? This week’s episode of This American Life is all of those and more. It’s a collaboration with NPR news that actually makes it possible to understand how the subprime mortgage crisis happened, and its implications for the economy here and abroad. At the same time, you meet, understand and may even feel sympathy for some of the people whose mistakes made it happen, and whose lives were thrown into turmoil.

If you don’t already, subscribe now to the This American Life podcast and check it out. Or if you can’t make time for an hour of radio (your loss), listen online to the 12-minute All Things Considered version which aired Friday.

Great work, radio people!

Now if we could get them to:
put additional materials (photos? videos? reporter’s notes? glossary?) and links to outside resources on both websites;
allow listener comments; and
localize all of the above on each local affiliate’s site,

we’d really have something!

Tags: radio, public radio, NPR, This American Life

Burn The Money,
originally uploaded by Bradshaw.i.