National Conference for Media Reform – Opening events and talks

I am currently attending the National Conference for Media Reform at the downtown convention center in Memphis.  It’s pretty amazing to see and feel all this energy everywhere I look.  There will be in excess of 100 presentations. This is still the first day of the 2 1/2 day conference, yet I have already learned more than I can meaningfully absorb.   For more on all the things going on out here, go to freepress.net.

Simply understanding concepts is not what this conference is really about.  It’s about putting this understanding into action.  The organizers chose the following quote of Dr. Martin Luther King for the first page of the conference guide: “And nettlesome task is to discover how to organize our strength into compelling power.” 

It is  media reform, in addition to being an important issue, an issue that inspires people to organize their strength into action?  Apparently so. This is the third time freepress.net has sponsored a national media conference.  The first conference drew 1,800 people to Madison, Wisconsin.  Last year, 2,200 people came to St. Louis.  This conference is being attended by the more than 3,000 people.  According to one of the speakers, the current issue of The Nation features an article advocating the reform of the corrupt mainstream media. You won’t find much about this conference or these topics in the mainstream media, however (correct me if I’m wrong).  That is not unexpected, given that the mainstream media is a constant target of criticism here. 

It’s …

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Never assume that a woman is pregnant (and other lessons I’ve learned)

I have long known that one should never ever congratulate a woman for being pregnant unless one knows (really really knows) that she is happily pregnant. 

About seven years ago, my wife told me that one of the women living in our neighborhood was pregnant.  This surprised me, because I knew that Sally (not her real name) had told me that she had no interest in having children.

About an hour later, though, while I was walking about a neighborhood art fair, I saw Sally.  I walked up to talk with her.  I commented that we hadn’t seen each other for quite a few months.  She gestured toward her abdomen and stated “I’ve put on some weight since then.”  I had noticed that she had, indeed, gained considerable weight.  Therefore, I stated “Congratulations!”

She asked, “Congratulations about what?”

I instantly knew that I had broken a very basic rule and I was now paying for it.  Sally wasn’t pregnant.  I quickly mumbled something like “congratulations about this year’s art fair.”  Sally was a volunteer in charge of the art fair.  She looked at me as if I was acting strange, but then we talked a bit more before parting ways.

When I got home, I asked my wife how she knew that Sally was pregnant.  She said that one of the other neighbors had told her.  I had assumed that my wife had talked to Sally herself and learned about Sally’s pregnancy firsthand.  Instead, rumor had been turned into a …

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Raising a Wall Can Open a View

I visited 2 very different construction sites today, on a whim. Two sons of one of my clients each were working a different site, and we just went by to see what was going on.

The first site is a new 9-story office building in Clayton, MO, a financial center near the center of the country. The son was applying fireproofing to the steel structure, much like you may have seen in 9-11 WTC documentaries. It was fun to ride up the external cage elevator on a breezy January morning and watch concrete sprayed onto the steel, to take a look around, staring down the open elevator shafts and the stairwells still missing stairs, to feel the wind in an office building with just cables between me and the precipice.

Then we went to the other son’s site, where a 2 story residence was being constructed in an old neighborhood. We were just in time to help raise the first external wall up on the second story. I rarely do that, generally preferring the George Jetson style of gainful employment.

What, you might ask, does this have to do with politics and economy and faith? Try the notion of distance from an issue, of perspective. From the points of view I had today, I’d say the building trade is thriving. People are hard at work putting up new buildings all over. Compare this to the national housing starts (down). Were you aware that the Empire State Building was built during …

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The Media (which media? THE Media!)

This age.  Bizarre.  Part of the bizarreness rests in how much we actually know about it.  We swim in a deepening sea of information.  How to cope?  We compartmentalize.  So, though, do those providing us the information, and therein lies another problem, which is a question of integration. Recently at…

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Violence in Iraq is systematically being under-reported

Think Progress contrasts Laura Bush's recent argument that the media are failing to report all of the good things that are happening to this excerpt from the Iraq Study Group: In addition, there is significant underreporting of the violence in Iraq. The standard for recording attacks acts as a filter…

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