misnomer: Plug, Enlightened

December 29, 2003

Plug, Enlightened

I'm listening to some of the audio from the National Conference on Media Reform, which are good. I just wanted to reprint this deft and funny justification that Amy Goodman gave for plugging Democracy Now! wares in her keynote speech.

We're selling t-shirts and DVDs--I say that because you will know that public media has arrived when it is the Pentagon that has to hold a DVD and t-shirt sale to buy its battleships and public media in this country gets an eighty seven billion dollar blank cheque.

Another great line, from one of the founders of the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Centre (transcript here):

If you elect people to represent you, you learn how to complain instead of learning the difficult work of building fair policy in a diverse society. If you have a maid to cook for you, then you never learn how to cook. If you leave storytelling up to experts, then you forget how to tell your own story.

Ralph Nader's speech [mp3, you'll need broadband] contains a few years of material for any independent investigative journalists out there in the US, and manages to be funny and engaging as well.

posted by dru in journalism

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About

Misnomer is a weblog about the politics of new and old media, foreign policy, tech, culture, philosophy, and photography. It is maintained by Dru Oja Jay, who edits a newspaper called the Dominion. He lives in Mile End, a neighbourhood of Montréal, Québec, which is, in some ways, a part of Canada, which in turn subsists on occupied native land to which Canada doesn't actually hold the title. He also travels a lot.

The Dominion

The Dominion is a newspaper with the aim of promoting decent journalism, annoying the overwhelmingly right wing Canadian press, and being non-profit and democratically accountable. All at once. This newspaper also has its own weblog, where I post often.

Others

Some other folks who contribute to misnomer from time to time include Kendall Clark, John Haney, Amanda Jernigan, Ola Mork, and Sylvia Nickerson.

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