Category Archives: Random Blogging

Do We Dare to Hope?

Has Amazon’s Jeff Bezos developed a workable business model for real journalism? According to Politico and other sources, the Washington Post–which Bezos bought three years ago–plans to add sixty reporters in the first quarter of 2017.

That’s not a typo–the Post really is hiring sixty new reporters.

The Post newsroom will grow by more than 60 jobs — or 8 percent — an astounding number in this day and age. Such contrarian additions, of course, come at a time when newsroom staff reductions are the rule across daily journalism.

The Post newsroom will number more than 750, third among the national newspaper-based press and moving it closer to the Times, with which it increasingly competes for high-end talent. The Times complement stands at about 1,307, the company says. USA Today’s newsroom stands at about 450, while the Journal, after its recent buyouts, tells me it employs 1,500.

Furthermore, subscriptions are evidently up at the Times, Journal and USA Today.

According to the story, Bezos believes that old-fashioned journalism — increasingly delivered via a variety of digital platforms from smartphone apps to the Kindle to Facebook — sells.

The Post has seen a 75 percent increase in new subscribers since the first of the year and says it has doubled digital subscription revenue over the year. Many of those new subscribers prove out Bezos’ theory that a mass market of low-price (generally around $36 a year for the national edition, after up to six months of “free trial”) subscription sales will form the leading revenue source for the Post in the years ahead.

In a time of journalistic business desperation worldwide, that’s a hugely important lesson being retaught to all news publishers by both the Post and the Times this year.

This is an incredibly important development. It is not an exaggeration to say that the displacement of genuine journalism by today’s fragmented and inadequate media bears much of the blame for today’s toxic and broken politics. Increasingly, as legitimate journalism has ceded its place to less-than-credible outlets, people don’t know whether they can trust what they read and so they read–and believe–what confirms their pre-existing biases.

As formerly reputable newspapers have competed online for eyeballs and “clicks,” far too many have eliminated sound reporting and substituted “infotainment,” celebrity news, the “bar beat” and sports. They have fired reporters and reduced substantive news coverage (which is more expensive to produce) in an effort to protect their bottom lines. It hasn’t worked.

The Post’s experience vindicates those of us who have insisted that any successful business plan would necessarily begin with a return to quality content–to what used to be called the journalism of verification.

Dare we hope that this “discovery” by national news outlets–their renewed recognition that the public wants substantive content and a return to journalism’s “watchdog” role–might encourage a similar trend locally?

As promising as this news is–and it is–it only addresses the deficit in national news. In Indianapolis and similar communities, we are still without anything approximating adequate coverage of local and state government. Gannett is still chasing those eyeballs by telling us more than most of us want to know about Colts’ games and bar openings.

Fingers crossed; maybe even Gannett will figure out that success in the news business requires…what was that they used to provide? Oh, yeah…news.

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Have a Merry

If you are celebrating Christmas today, Merry Christmas.

If you are celebrating Chanukah, Happy Chanukah.

If you are a secular soul celebrating some time off work, Happy Holidays!

If you are one of those culture warriors hysterical because everyone isn’t using the language you have prescribed–the language that you believe acknowledges the superiority and “true Americanism” of your particular faith– bah humbug to you!

I’m not a Christian, but I have great respect for the many Christians I know who spend their time (all year–not just in December) trying to model Jesus’ teachings about love and compassion, modesty and charity. As you might suspect, I have little or no respect for the “stiff-necked,” ostentatiously pious folks who brandish the label as a weapon in their fanciful “war on Christmas.”

I admire and value those good people who are Christian in the true sense of that word–those of you who look to your theology for guidance on how to live a meaningful and moral life. I hope your Christmas day is filled with love, family,  friendship and cheer.

Something tells me that those in the “stiff-necked” category–those who believe their religion is a badge of superiority entitling them to denigrate and discriminate against those they view as “lesser”– will ultimately find the equivalent of coal in their stockings.(I’ve noticed that they all seem to be unhappy–and unpleasant–people.)

Happy Holidays, everyone. Have a great day.

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Picturing Resistance

I would not have expected to find a manifesto for resistance to Donald Trump on Rooflines, a wonky publication of the National Housing Institute.

But there it was. With a reference to Gandhi, no less.

“Public opinion alone can keep a society pure and healthy.” – Gandhi

Gandhi believed in people—all people. He believed that everyday people both in India and England would reject colonialism if they really understood it. Gandhi’s civil disobedience, built on this faith, was carefully calculated to hold up a mirror to show people (on both sides) the true face of British colonialism. Rather than confront the superior British military, Ghandi won independence by changing public opinion.

Seen from Gandhi’s point of view, Donald Trump is a gift.

The critical problem the author identifies is a lack of public awareness. When large numbers of Americans don’t see injustices and corruption, when we are unaware of the fault-lines in our society, the result is apathy. History confirms the insight: it wasn’t until television brought images of vicious dogs being loosed upon peaceful demonstrators that public opinion coalesced behind civil rights; it wasn’t until that same television brought the Viet Nam war into American living rooms that support for the war decisively turned. It wasn’t until ubiquitous cell-phone cameras documented police misconduct that calls for better training and appropriate disciplinary action became too numerous to ignore.

Trump is the face that America has been hiding since the 1970s. It is almost impossible to fight an invisible enemy, but with the enemy out in the open, we have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to pick the kinds of fights that permanently change people’s hearts and minds and fundamentally alter what is politically possible…A majority of American adults (96 percent) believe in equal rights for women, and 87 percent have a personal relationship with someone who is gay. I don’t believe that the vast majority of Americans will let people be pushed back into the closet—if they manage to notice it happening. Given a clear choice, they won’t allow Muslims to be targeted or immigrant families divided.

The post makes the obvious point that as long as the people who voted for Trump continue to support him, Congress won’t stop him. The only strategy that will work is a strategy that will change public opinion–and that will require a unified effort by the various groups now working to protect everything from the environment to reproductive rights to fair housing laws.

If we fight for our separate issues separately, we have no chance of penetrating anyone’s media bubble or changing anyone’s mind. But if we stand together we can draw clear lines in the sand that highlight (sometimes symbolically) the choice we are facing about what kind of country to be. And if we draw the lines in the right places, when Trump crosses them, the American people will stand with us—and they will remember that choice for generations.

I would add two observations: first, those of us who are opposed to–and terrified by–Trump and Ryan and McConnell begin with a solid lead in that all-important public opinion. Thanks to the archaic Electoral College, Trump will be President, but Clinton won nearly 3 million more votes. The majority of people who are already engaged with the system, the people who have been paying attention, are with us. Our task is to engage those who have been passive, inattentive and oblivious.

Second, history and political psychology (and more recently social media) teach us how to engage those people. It isn’t through graphs, or philosophical arguments, or blogs like the one I’ve quoted. It isn’t even through exposes of Trump’s conflicts of interest, sexual assault history and corrupt practices. It isn’t through blogs like mine. It’s through stories. Pictures. Videos. The effects of Trumpism on our neighbors and friends. We need to support good journalism that tells those human stories, that brings individual examples of injustice and self-dealing out of obscurity and into the light.

We need a constant stream of stories illuminating the human toll of Trump’s appeal to the racist, mysogynistic, xenophobic underside of American society, stories illustrating the effects of policies that ravage the environment, benefit the plutocrats and crush the hardworking poor.

Sometimes, you have to paint a picture. This is one of those times.

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The Conservative Temperament

Michael Gerson was a speechwriter for George W. Bush (until Trump, my least favorite President), so when he began writing columns and Op Eds, I expected facile, disingenuous justifications of the Rightwing agenda. That expectation was wrong. Gerson has proved to be a thoughtful and fair-minded commentator; I don’t always agree with him, but I’ve come to respect him.

I was particularly impressed with this recent column in the Washington Post.

The column is worth reading in its entirety, but I want to share a few of the observations that particularly struck me.

It is one of fate’s cruel jokes that conservatism should be at its modern nadir just as the Republican Party is at its zenith — if conservatism is defined as embracing limited government, displaying a rational, skeptical and moderate temperament and believing in the priority of the moral order.

All these principles are related, and under attack.

Of course, that definition of conservatism does not describe the philosophy of people like Paul Ryan or Mitch McConnell, or the Tea Party and “alt-right” types who have disproportionately  appropriated the label. It harkens back to a time when “conservative” was a much more respectable term. Gerson is right, however–that version of conservatism is very much under attack. And the following description bears little or no resemblance to the arrogance and defiant ignorance of those who currently claim the title.

Conservatives believe that finite and fallen creatures are often wrong. We know that many of our attitudes and beliefs are the brain’s justification for pre-rational tendencies and desires. This does not make perception of truth impossible, or truth itself relative, but it should encourage healthy self-examination and a suspicion of all forms of fanaticism. All of us have things to learn, even from our political opponents. The truth is out there, but it is generally broken into pieces and scattered across the human experience. We only reassemble it through listening and civil communication.

Gerson concedes the gulf between his understanding of the conservative temperament and that of its current exponents.

This is not the political force that has recently taken over the Republican Party — with a plurality in the presidential primaries and a narrow victory in November. That has been the result of extreme polarization, not a turn toward enduring values. The movement is authoritarian in theory, apocalyptic in mood, prone to conspiracy theories and personal abuse, and dismissive of ethical standards. The president-elect seems to offer equal chances of constitutional crisis and utter, debilitating incompetence.

As Gerson recognizes, the incoming Administration–and those in charge of the current iteration of the Republican party–are not conservative. They are radical. And very, very dangerous.

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R.I.P.

If there was any doubt that 2016 was a miserable year, word that Bill Hudnut has died confirmed it.

Bill Hudnut, for those of you who are too young to remember, or who live elsewhere, was the Republican Mayor of Indianapolis for four terms–sixteen years–from 1976 to 1992. His fingerprints are on this city in more places and ways than most current residents appreciate.

I served as Corporation Counsel–the city’s chief lawyer– in the Hudnut Administration from 1977-1980. (My appointment raised eyebrows; at that time, no woman had previously held the position. Bill valued diversity.) That was also where I met my husband–then the City’s Director of Metropolitan Development. With Bill’s death, the two of us have lost a good friend with whom we shared a vision of what urban life should and could be.

The loss is more difficult because his death reminds us that we’ve lost more than Bill Hudnut. We’ve lost both the Republican party he represented and the approach to religion and politics he exemplified.

Before he entered politics, Hudnut had been a Presbyterian minister. The lessons he drew from his faith focused on service and compassion; he expressed that faith in ways dramatically different from the fundamentalist arrogance of the present-day culture warriors who are constantly trying to impose their beliefs on everyone else.

A story: Shortly after I joined the Administration, the ACLU and the Jewish Community Relations Council sent a letter to the City, objecting to the seasonal placement of a nativity scene  on the publicly owned Monument at the center of Monument Circle. No other symbols of seasonal or religious celebration accompanied it, so it was a pretty clear endorsement of Christianity.

The Mayor asked me for my legal opinion, and I explained that religious endorsements by government violate the Establishment Clause. He ordered the Nativity moved.  (Its new “home” was–and still is– across the street from the Monument, on the entirely appropriate lawn of Christ Church Cathedral.) Hudnut could have scored lots of political points by resisting– “protecting Christianity”– and he took considerable heat, especially because he was a member of the clergy, for doing the right thing.

Hudnut’s religious beliefs motivated him to work for the well-being of his fellow-citizens and to respect political and religious differences. His was a Christianity of inclusion, not demonization.

During my time in City Hall, I watched the Mayor work closely with both Republicans and Democrats who represented Indianapolis in the General Assembly. I saw him communicate regularly with Concerned Clergy and other groups representing the African-American community, with neighborhood organizations and with organized labor. He appointed a police liaison to the LGBTQ community at a time when that community was subject to considerable marginalization. Relations with these and other constituencies wasn’t all sweetness and light by any means, but the outreach was genuine and the inevitable disagreements usually civil.

It was exciting working in City Hall in those days, because we were participants in a great adventure. We were working with Mayor Bill to build a world-class city, and his enthusiasm for that venture was contagious.

We don’t see much evidence of that sort of excitement today, largely because we have lost faith in the ability of government to improve citizens’ lives. For the past forty years, we’ve been told that government is always the problem, never the solution, that taxes are theft rather than the dues we owe if we want a functioning society, and that public service is an oxymoron.

Hudnut—and Dick Lugar, who preceded him as Mayor—represented a Republican Party that no longer exists. I miss that party, and I miss the optimism, integrity and humanity of people like Lugar and Hudnut and many others—men and women who saw public service as a calling and an opportunity to serve the public interest rather than as a vehicle for self-aggrandizement.

Bill Hudnut’s death reminds me that the loss of those people and that party has  impoverished our civic landscape.

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