Went to a meeting tonight, got in the car and motored out somewhere. My excuse for this break from my reclusive existence, and if you can say that sentence fragment three times without blowing it you’re too functional and something is wrong with you, is that the meeting centered on a matter which not only interests me but concerned, directly, an old friend and cultural hero.
The specific point of the gathering was a call to “Save the Coastal Post”, a monthly newspaper of general, mostly local, circulation which has been tweaking the ears of idiots and the powerful, which I concede is occasionally redundant, for around thirty-five years. The man who created and still runs the paper is the old friend.
The reason the paper is struggling right now is that the Coastal Post, which is actually named The Great Western Pacific Coastal Post, finally pissed-off the pro-Israeli lobby enough to incite some ugly shit. Among the items: large quantities of the paper stolen from its distribution sources like public markets and newsstands. Also: a lot of phone calls were made to advertisers to convince them to pull their ads or face boycotts.
So the issues are things like freedom of speech, which is no small consideration, plus the survival of a very important community asset. But how is it going to be accomplished?
There were some pretty smart cookies in the room and ideas got tossed around, but what distinguished them for me was that they were all over the place. Various proposals designed to raise the paper’s profile locally, entice subscribers ($24.00 for a year’s worth, which ain’t bad –– the letters section alone is worth it), take on the would-be censors, have value, and they’ll help for a while. But the larger question, the one nobody is yet able to answer, is this: in the age of corporate media ownership and mass media consolidation, where will the independent voices come from and how will they be heard?
After all, freedom of the press was based on the absolute necessity of dissent in any society which expects to be free politically.
Meanwhile, somebody has to pay the cost of producing and disseminating material. In the world of mass media, the costs are enormous and are borne by advertisers who are interested in much more than selling you a physical product. They are interested in controlling editorial content. Let’s face it, Boeing is not trying to sell me a bomber; they are trying to sell me on the idea that my government should buy it. They are trying to sell me on the idea that my country needs it, that I am at risk without it. They are selling war.
But the Great Western Pacific Coastal Post is of no interest to Boeing. That is its secret weapon. Because in this new internet world, at least at this moment, all bets are off. Nobody knows how to control the internet and nobody knows how to best use it to advance ideas or political power.
Instead of focusing inward, perhaps the Coastal Post can run the other way. The editor mentioned that the website has at times generated hundreds of thousands of views. That’s because search engines have connected information-seekers with information. Well, why not? It’s wide open.
Marshall McLuhan observed nearly fifty years ago that, historically, the old media invariably became the content of the new media. As in many other respects, he is being proven right. But no one is yet sure how this will evolve. Newspapers like the San Francisco Chronicle are getting thinner and lighter by the day, with odder and odder front-page stories and large photos. Whatever they think they’re up to, it’s not working.
That means there’s room. Freedom of the press is going to be tough to stop on the internet. It may be possible to find a way to secure it, to guarantee it, in fact to cause it to blossom into a real nightmare for Boeing and the rest of them, so long as we can figure it out first.
Check out www.coastalpost.com.
