News from the Front Porch Republic
Greetings from the Porch,
I spent the last couple of days in Oklahoma City talking with faculty and students at The Academy, a thriving classical school here. It’s always encouraging to witness a community of people deeply engaged in the work of sustaining an institution committed to handing down wisdom to the next generation.
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In this week’s Water Dipper I recommend essays about diversion, leisure, and beauty.
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Casey Spinks turns to the great John Graves for help in wrestling some of the core tensions inherent in trying to inhabit a place: “There is a common concern about the online back-to-the-land movement. How can you live that life you spend so much time chatting about on the internet? There must be an either/or: you get a Twitter account or an apiary—now choose! Unlike others who dismiss such a dichotomy, I am always afflicted by it, prone as I am to such stark choices, thanks to too much time spent reading various philosophers who claim the How is the What.”
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Elizabeth Stice considers two TV shows that feature place as a character in their dramas: “Places shape us and provide the contours of our communities. And despite the grittier dramas, the grip that a place has on us is not always all about past crimes and complicated emotions.”
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Peter Biles narrates a arboreal coming of age story: “Many Marches ago, a tree cracked in half, and my life began to change into what it’s become today.”
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Seth Wright commends Marly Youmans new work of verse narrative: “Here is what Seren of the Wildwood has done for me: it’s rekindled my love of narrative poetry. Once I have read several of my old favourites, I’ll read it again, and then I’ll move on to the rest of Youmans’ work.”
Gerald Baldasty’s The Commercialization of News in the Nineteenth Century surveys the shift from small, partisan papers in the early days of the republic to longer, more professional and profitable papers by the turn of the twentieth century. News went from being the work of party politics to being big business. Some good came from these developments, but making money and serving the polis aren’t always congruent missions:
Commercialization imposes the imperative that newspapers must entertain their readers. When entertainment is paramount, difficult issues or current events that are not inherently interesting or entertaining may well get short shrift. Witness the blight of lowest-common-denominator and least-offensive programming in television.
All this matters because traditionally, the press has certain responsibilities in a democratic society. . . . But will a vision of news as a money-making commodity always square with broader societal interests and needs? Can news be, simultaneously, both a commodity and a vital source of information in a democratic society? When commercial considerations dictate the general news process, the press will serve democracy only when such service is financially profitable.
Thanks for spending some time with us on the Porch,
Jeff Bilbro