Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
This shows how the State has been heavily involved in the evolution of the media from the beginning. It looks in particular at the post office, which was established precisely in order to expedite traffic in ideas and writing of all sorts. It’s an incontrovertible reminder that fantasies of free markets that operate on their own to produce media are just as foolish in reference to the ancestral past as they are in respect to the presumed spontaneous combustion that produced the internet.
Your next choice is The Creation of the Media by Paul Starr, which you’ve chosen for rather different reasons…
This book looks at the historical precedents through a different angle, not through sensibility, what brains are doing, but through institutions. And its main point is that the state has been intimately involved in the evolution of the media from the beginning. It looks in particular at the very homely institution of the post office, which is provided for at the beginning of the American Republic. Media rely on public institutions like the post office. The post office was established precisely in order to expedite traffic in ideas and writing of all sorts. It’s a worthy reminder, and an incontrovertible reminder, that fantasies of free markets that operate on their own to produce media are just as foolish in reference to the ancestral past as they are with the respect to the presumed spontaneous combustion that produced the internet. Anybody who knows anything about the internet knows that policy, government policy specifically, was a necessary condition.
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Todd Gitlin is a professor of journalism and sociology, as well as chair of the PhD program in communications at Columbia University. He is the author of 12 books, several of which concern media and culture, and a prominent commentator on the US media. He writes regularly for Dissent, The American Prospect, TPMcafe.com, and opendemocracy.net. He suggests that no successful model for newspapers to make money from the internet exists, and that there is no future for the industry without government support.
