And other revolutionaries who promoted free speech and the overthrow of tyrants

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	Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more You’re reading the My News Biz newsletter, which I will be sending you every other Thursday. My goal is to help you and other digital media entrepreneurs to find a viable business model that works for you. If you were forwarded this email, you can sign up here. Tired of selfie pics and influencers? Blame Thomas Jefferson And other revolutionaries who promoted free speech and the overthrow of tyrants James Breiner Aug 28   READ IN APP   You’re reading the Your News Biz newsletter. My goal is to help digital media entrepreneurs and small businesses find viable business models. This week I thought I would explore the roots of our current media environment, which focuses on individuals and their voices, their right to speak freely, and their often annoying push to attract our attention. To see how we got here: We’ll take a look 200 years back Then 60 years back Then we’ll look at today’s digital ecosystem And the way forward Revolution in the air The roots of these ideas about the rights of individuals go back to the end of the 18th century. It was only amid the uproar of the American Revolution (1776) and the French Revolution (1789), that entirely new voices were heard. The English poet William Wordsworth witnessed the French Revolution firsthand, both its ecstasy and violence. Image rom Wikimedia Commons. "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, / But to be young was very heaven!" wrote Wordsworth of the early days of the French Revolution, which he witnessed firsthand while a university student. In his autobiographical poem “The Prelude,” he also wrote of the violence that disillusioned him and drove him to flee France for England. All across Europe, revolution was in the air. Many factors contributed. Scientific discoveries in geology, medicine, astronomy, and physics made all of the traditional views of the world and human beings’ place in it obsolete. The old authorities — king, country, church — were being questioned and overthrown. It was, to some extent, the young rebelling against the old. Echoes in the 1960s As an undergraduate studying French and English literature in the late 1960s, I saw how the poets and philosophers of those revolutions inspired student uprisings. Caroline Schelling, one of the German Romantic intellectuals, from Wikimedia Commons Free speech, power to the people, equal rights for all, freedom from tyranny, rejection of traditional authority: these were some of the themes of Jefferson and Locke in the Anglo world, and Rousseau and Voltaire in the French. (For some, liberty also meant free love.) But it wasn’t just them, argues Andrea Wulf in her book “Magnificent Rebels” about the German Romantic movement. She points to intellectuals like Caroline Schelling, who inspired the poet Goethe and the philosophers Friedrich and August Schlegel. As a college student I immediately recognized kindred spirits in the British Romantic poets — Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth, and Byron — and in the American Transcendentalists like Emerson and Thoreau. There was a rush back to Nature, to find the essence of human beings and their relation to the world. Walt Whitman, from Wikimedia Commons Traditional religion was left behind. Somewhat later, Walt Whitman expressed this in his great epic poem “Song of Myself”: “I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least. /Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself.” And later, “I am large, I contain multitudes.” His powerful American voice knocked my socks off. But this wasn’t a pure ego trip for Whitman. He was celebrating the American spirit of inclusion, solidarity, self-help, equality. Again, the celebration of the self as part of a social whole. Previously, on current media: The medium is the message (and often a weapon) When Big Tech controls the message Lazy, selfish, and ruthless That brings us to today. I don’t remember which brilliant analyst of digital media described internet users as lazy, selfish, and ruthless, but my internet writing is still informed by those ideas. I design my blogs and newsletters to be scanned quickly. Internet users scan and don’t necessarily read every word. The text is designed so that lazy visitors can find something interesting — boldface type, headlines, pulled quotes — so selfish visitors can find something about them and their interests — hashtags, SEO, key phrases — and so ruthless visitors aren’t driven to jump to the next thing by slow-loading and intrusive ads or promos. It’s the digital ecosystem we live in, and we have to adjust to its rules. But my basic thought piece is the same: 750-1,500 words on a topic relevant to digital media but with some of the elements mentioned above. They weren’t saying, ‘Be selfish’ Although we are flooded with self-centered, self-obsessed content in all media channels today, I don’t think the revolutionaries of the 18th and 19th centuries would be pleased. The celebration of the individual — even Whitman’s “Song of Myself” — wasn’t about putting oneself and one’s personal goals ahead of society’s as a whole. Those revolutionaries were urging the transformation of society to recognize the value of each individual, and each individual’s right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” And that included, according to most of these philosophers, property rights. The government can’t take away your property without just compensation. The message was that each individual’s voice should be heard, not just that of an absolute monarch. No more tyrants. Those who ruled would do so “with the consent of the governed.” This new form of society, which we call democracy, would include, on an equal footing, many religions, many languages, people of many colors. Out of the ashes of war This idea of democracy, which we started to take for granted in rebuilding the world after the disastrous destruction of the Second World War, departs radically from the social models humans developed over millions of years of trial and error — evolution. In those ancient models, our ancestors granted power to a few in exchange for security. They gave up freedom in order to survive. This was the model exploited by dictators like Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco. This model appeals to many still today who reason that it’s better to keep quiet, keep your head down, and maybe they won’t come after you, your property, or your reputation. But the price of liberty is eternal vigilance; if we let our guard down, the cost to us is servitude. We become the slaves of tyrants. The way forward In media, the models that counter these trends toward authoritarianism and The One Message are community based grass-roots efforts. They’re all based on the notion that the most effective and trustworthy sources of news and information begin with listening. A few examples: El Surti of Latin America, ‘Don’t just create content — drive social change’; The Listening Post Collective of the U.S., Don’t trust the news media? he gets it and has a plan; and digital marketers, Get real: back to the basics with people, not bots. The mass media models of the past, which put a premium on scale, have given us an avalanche of attention-seeking media based on creating fear, anxiety, hatred, and voyeurism. It’s algorithm-driven sensationalism designed above all to sell advertising. Final thought: public service The media alternative is clear: build credible news content around the everyday issues that people face, such as finding a job, getting an education, taking care of the kids, creating safe communities, getting health care, finding affordable entertainment, building businesses, providing public transportation, being a watchdog on the authorities. In short, we in the media need to provide public service. And public service is not something that the markets can provide, despite what you might hear from libertarians and other anti-government voices. We have to provide that service through our public institutions. They are OUR institutions, warts and all, and the represent US, warts and all. They deserve our support, not the scorn of billionaire tech moguls. Democracy is not perfect, and it is fragile. We need to keep working to make it better. And we in the media can help make that happen. Leave a comment Thanks for reading Your News Biz! 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