Last Night: the People's Reaction and Obama's Speech

Crossing the streets of downtown Athens around eight o’clock, I could feel a charge in the air. It was not so much the energy of hope, as that of expectation. News was starting to trickle in, and the shape of the final outcome of the election could be glimpsed. Still, there was doubt. The last eight years had given corruption plenty of opportunity to become entrenched, and I thought that there would surely be another technicality, another shadow play. It seemed like everyone was holding their breath. When they released it, would it be a yell of triumph or a cry of outrage?

I went to a sports bar to watch the news for a little while. All screens were tuned to the election, and once again it struck me how much like sports coverage the reports sounded. Team colors, mascots, armchair quarterbacking: politics in America looks and sounds like pro football. It was just about as exciting, too: I found that I could not bring myself to sit still while the numbers slowly dripped in, accompanied by droning, exhaustive analysis of hypothetical and provisional numbers. (No, I’m not much of a sports fan.) So I left the sports bar and headed towards my room. On the way I passed through the student center, and briefly observed a celebration the third floor. It was there that I first saw evidence of truly positive energy, in the form of loud music, pizza, and dancing. The crowd was large and loud, and no-one was really watching the screen: these people had come out expecting to celebrate an Obama victory.

About two hours later, I decided to head over to the house of a friend who was watching the election. I hadn’t heard any more news, because I don’t keep a television anymore, and using the Internet to keep up with real time is tedious. Walking across town again, I saw a definite change in mood: people were roaming the streets in groups, chatting and laughing and letting out triumphant yells like, “It’s Obama, bitch!” It was pretty easy to figure out that things were going well. I walked down Court Street past the polling place, now closed, and the bars, now overflowing. When I reached my friends’ house, they were eager to share the news: Ohio had gone for Obama, and it was a landslide victory on the national level. It felt like a weight had fallen away: hope might be justified, after all.

I think that Obama gave his speech that night knowing that his audience would have similar feelings: a dreadful burden of expectation that had just seen everything they had hoped and worked for come true that night. This would be a crowd running high on emotion, and so his speech began with emotions. He spoke of how he shared their triumph, rather than vice versa: he gave all credit to the people who contributed to his campaign. He spoke of how this was a validation of their hopes, and of belief in change. However, he also sought to ground his audience: he reminded them that although this great day was the result of all their hard work, there were now even greater challenges ahead: "This victory alone is not the change we seek. It is only the chance for us to make that change." This was a vital point, and I am glad he put it so forcefully, because there are many real problems to deal with, and surely there will be new ones as well. Last night represented a fresh start for many people, a time when every day might now bring change. But it is not going to happen all at once. People must be realistic, without losing sight of their hopes for the next three months.

This Just In

In The Lost Art of Argument, Christopher Lasch charges that journalism actually lost its ability to effectively inform the public when it abandoned the partisan style. This style actually provoked public debate rather than silencing it, he argues; journalists assigned value to the facts, and this valuation stimulated a dialogue that resulted in an informed public. Current “objective” journalism does not provoke debate, rather it stifles it because there is nothing to discuss. In modern journalism, articles can only be argued with on the basis of their factual validity; our society is no longer accustomed to debating meaning in any useful fashion.
To spot-check this argument, I took a look at today’s London Times Online. The headline for the top story of the Global Edition was:

West goes cap in hand to the East for credit crunch help

The article contains two parts: there is a video clip from Sky One describing a report from British financial institutions. The report is said to be cautiously optimistic, in that the markets have stabilized. However, the clip also introduces an expert who says that although the tumult of the last few months may be over, there is still going to be rising unemployment and that the economy has not yet arrived at the real bottom. In other words, the economy may not continue to plunge, but it is not likely to recover or improve. This seems to be serving as an item of in-depth background, rather than the focus of the article. However, it presented a more interesting news story than the headline article!

The print component elaborates on the headline. Essentially, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank need more money so that they can continue to lend money to countries in financial difficulty- the economic crisis has hit so many nations so hard that these two banking institutions risk having all their funds tied up. Therefore, the traditionally Western-backed IMF and World Bank are going to appeal to relatively unaffected Eastern countries such as China, Japan, and the Gulf States. These nations are going to insist on having more input on the operation of the IMF and World Bank, and thus greater influence over the banks’ clients.

This article demonstrated some things about the approach of most print journalism. The aticle was very straightforward, simply repeating quotes from Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, and relating facts from the public record. Although it is clear to someone who has followed international affairs for some time that this is a major development, and a further sign of how much trouble world finance is in, it is not really treated like a big deal in the article. There is no real value assigned to the facts. Though the article hints at a “high price” for Eastern aid, it offers no indications of what that price might be (even references to past negotiations would have been helpful). In other words, there is no slant, except for the slant towards the impersonal and the remote.
The video clip, on the other hand, actually offers something like effective reporting. It describes the primary thrust of the new financial report, speaks to an official from Lloyd’s of London who agrees that we’ve turned the corner on the economy. Then Sky One goes to an analyst who disagrees, and provides (in my opinion) a well-reasoned argument as to why we haven’t seen the end of the downturn. In other words, even though the piece does not seem to have a definite bias, it does at least present some debate- it offers two competing interpretations, two contexts for the facts, and leaves the decision to the audience.

This actually clarifies my reaction to Lasch: he is definitely right about the poor state of public discourse, which can be traced to an anemic mass media. However, disowning objectivity entirely is not the answer; rather, we would do better to emulate the old “Fairness Doctrine,” where the facts are presented as well as equal time to the different sides of the debate over what the facts mean.

Informational Matrix 2

Informational Matrix

Thinking about art, advertising, and visual rhetoric has reminded me of a book I read last year by the graphic designer Chip Kidd. Kidd is well-known in the publishing world for his rich, creative book cover designs. As it turns out he’s also a very good writer. His book, The Cheese Monkeys: A Novel in Two Semesters is about a freshman art student in the 1950’s who takes a graphic design course that turns out to be more than he bargained for.
About halfway through the ordeal, the narrator/ main character finds that he is seeing the world differently: he is noticing much more acutely how many things are designed, how they use form and shape and color to mean something. He also can’t avoid seeing how these things frequently fall short of excellence. He call the process “becoming ‘Winterized’, ” after the impossibly demanding instructor of his design course.
In the same way, I would like to point out a few things in the everyday world that I have noticed. They are designed to inform us, guide us, or influence our actions through information.
Probably the most ubiquitous example would be street signs. For example, right now I am looking at a sign that says “STOP for pedestrians in crosswalk.” The word STOP is in tall bold letters at the top; each subsequent word has its own line on the sign; the letters are red and the sign is flat white. The sign is arranged so that the word STOP grabs your attention first, and then the rest of the information is as easy to read as possible through arrangement and high contrast. All other street signs follow these basic principles. Along with the automated lights and the lines and signage on the pavement itself, they form a matrix of information designed to help each traveler navigate traffic as smoothly as possible.
Another example is trash cans. Have you noticed that all the trash cans on campus are of about 3 different types? I suppose this could be a case of form following function but it also serves to make it easy to recognize them. In one 30-yard square courtyard I count seven identical green trash cans, each with a little sign asking for a specific type of recyclable garbage. Somehow, I suspect that it is very important to the administration that the fron of the Baker Center remain litter-free.
Finally, there are the advertisements. Around campus and downtown these mostly take the form of notices of upcoming events, from speakers to parties to sales. It is among these that I see the widest variation in design, and the greatest range in relative success or failure. The variety is so great that it is almost impossible to address in this space; I think I’ll try and write up some comparative evaluations later.

... that's made for you and me?

Susan Willis’ essay “Disney World: Public Use/Private State” is a critical evaluation of the Disney World theme park in Orlando, Florida. Specifically, it examines her personal experience of touring the park; the behavior of her fellow visitors; how Disney World orchestrates every activity and rigorously controls every aspect of its public image; and finally, it attempts to decipher what these things might signify in terms of our society and culture.

Willis argues that to experience Disney World is to confront an almost pure expression of industrial capitalism: every aspect of life seems to be a commodity, which is to be administered as efficiently as possible to the customers. The customers, for their part, are passive participants: everything they do at the park has been anticipated and scripted. Yet she describes how the Disney corporation also makes every effort to present the image of Disney World as a place of freedom, a place where the customer has no cares or fears, a place where impossible fictions are made real. It is a place that is nowhere on Earth.

Willis refers repeatedly to an “utopian impulse,” which I understand to mean “a desire for a better, more ideal world.” She suggests that by billing Disney World as an ideal place, they have successfully sold an otherwise creepy, de-individualizing experience to millions. Willis then draws an analogy to mass culture as a whole.

As I have said, Willis’ essay looks at several aspects of Disney World, from the experience of queuing for the attractions to the environmental impact of the park’s garbage. Each element is introduced through her own observations. The theme is then developed into a broader pronouncement about how this aspect is related to tendencies in the broader culture of industrial America, whereupon she turns her attention to a different but related aspect. What emerges is a foreboding portrait of a society dominated by corporations that, though informed by good intentions, is essentially inhuman.

An interesting aspect of Willis’ arguments is that although her evidence is primarily anecdotal, it hardly needs corroboration. As one of the most massive bastions of the common American culture, any American reader, at least, already knows nearly everything about what Disney sells. Anyone who had also attended any theme park would likely find that their own experiences were similar to hers -though they probably did not have quite the same attitude that she did.

One thing Willis does not mention, which I have wondered about, is the contrast between amusement parks and old-fashioned carnivals and fairs. On the surface they look similar, except that the parks lack the best things about the fair: the exhibits of all the interesting stuff everyone’s been up to for the last year. Willis would probably say that those are precisely the sort of thing that corporations are incapable of caring about.

A Few Words of Introduction

My name is Paul Edward Fetherolf. I’m a nontraditional student at Ohio University with junior standing. I'm a journalism major. That is, I intend to major in journalism. They're sort of particular about who gets to do that around here. Never mind, that's my problem. So, what does a journalist do? Well, from Lois Lane taking notes on some nefarious activity she’s uncovered to dry debates over proper grammar and usage, journalism is all about writing for the public.

I should add that I’m thinking mostly about news writing and editing here. Broadcast journalism has similar goals, but involves a different process. Traditional journalism- such as newspapers and magazines- is more my area of interest, even if it is dying by inches. As I currently understand it, traditional journalism involves two major activities, reporting and editing.

Reporters are professional writers: in the end, it’s their job to tell the story. Although most people probably have an image of journalists howling questions at politicians and murder suspects, the interviews are just one part of the process. They have to research their subject, and come up with an ‘angle,’ an overall approach that will generate interest. Though reporters are the most visible journalists, they are on the receiving end of a fair amount of input and oversight. That’s where editors come in.

Editors have many different responsibilities. Copy editors are the essential quality control of a newsroom. They correct factual and grammatical errors, and they revise manuscripts so that they are clear and concise. Copy editors also design the page layouts that will be used when the magazine or newspaper goes to print. Managing editors direct the entire process; the guy who’s always yelling at Peter Parker is a managing editor (actually, he’s the top managing editor, the editor-in-chief).

The Ultimate Role of journalism is to inform the public as best it can, with integrity and clarity. All the activity I have described is directed toward publishing a newspaper or magazine that members of the public will find to be relevant, interesting, and informative. That’s what I want to be part of.