Sounds like a great tag line.

“Our party has relied on two barrels, the barrel of the gun and the barrel of the pen. The old revolutionaries came to power with the barrel of the gun. Guns are still in the hands of the party, but public opinion is now much harder to control.”

There are many significant differences between China and the United States, but how is this quote any less relevant to the Bush government’s media hegemony?

“Greetings to the Imprisoned Citizens of the United States! Too long has your attention been waylaid by the bright baubles of extremist thought. Too long have fundamentalist yahoos of all religions (except Buddhism — 14-5 vote, no abstentions, fundamentalism subcommittee) made your head hurt. Too long have you been buffeted by angry people who think that God talks to them. You have a right to your moderation! You have the power to be calm! We will use the IED of truth to explode the SUV of dogmatic expression! ”

Man, if only this wasn’t a creative and well written joke.

I found this quote from the Charles Kuralt book ‘A life on the Road’. I’m reading it now and it’s amazing and quite funny. This bit of advice from Mr. Murrow seems very important for podcasters. (Like myself. I’m taking it to heart.) Kuralt in the same paragraph as he quoted Murrow said, “Overweening pride is a occupational hazzard.”

Podcasters are in the same “occupation” as early TV. Let’s learn from our media forefathers. Not all of them were government propaganda business dupes.

Quotes from ‘A Life on the Road‘, Chapter 14 – Celebrity, p.150, by Charles Kuralt.
The book ‘A life on the Road’ is Copyright © 1990 by Charles Kuralt.

Though I’ve read several of his books it was only a few months ago I learned about New Journalism. Here is a blog post I never finished about this:

Once again Doc Searls points me to the fine links. He reminds me how nothing is really new, just altered. Busting the myth of objectivity in journalism is being altered by blogs and podcasters. [Thank Buddha] Gonzo Journalism “has been called outlaw journalism, literary cubism, new journalism and other words I can’t repeat here.”

Many of us bloggers are New Journalists. We put ourselves in the story one way or the other blending hard news and fiction. Ruby Sinreich says that the best part of blogging is the first person voice we use. When we insert our bias, our opinion, and send objectivity to hell we are being the most real we can. I mean how could you possibly have any objective faculty when your high on more than one substance at a time? This was the essence of Thompson’s Gonzo Journalism.

It seems to me that the best way to understand others is to understand yourself. I don’t mean superficially but introspectively. Deep, deep, deep, searching within your mind. Long hours exercising your body listening to what it tells you. When you understand yourself you can be honest with the world. Let loose all your creativity. Then when you listen, really listen, to others you can process effectively their complicated communications. This way we don’t need societally guilt trip objectivity. We just need to understand our own truths and put others beside ours for analysis.

This might have been a too flowery an attempt at an epitaph and possibly a stretch to connect you to blogging but GODDAMN IT you sure opened up a lot of eyes Mr. Thompson! Thank you.

Quote: “Education and assistance to the former audience will be a piece of the enterprise I’m going to be creating, and I’m all ears on how to approach it.”

I’m writing a grant right now to do just what he’s sugesting. Hmm… maybe I’m reading his mind or just part of a group consiousness. Grassroots journalism is going mainstream!

Hopefully I’ll have something to share soon. Maybe when you come to Chapel Hill in Feburary we can talk about it, Dan.

Aparently it’s based on a “speech, given by Bill Moyers at a Society of Professional Journalists conference on Sept. 11, 2004.”

Here is the entry & quote Jim Thompson has:

While bloggers aren’t the be-all/end-all of journalism (note the small ‘j’), this does help explain the impending death of corporate/big-J Journalism:

“I’m going out telling the story that I think is the biggest story of our time: how the right-wing media has become a partisan propaganda arm of the Republican National Committee. We have an ideological press that’s interested in the election of Republicans, and a mainstream press that’s interested in the bottom line. Therefore, we don’t have a vigilant, independent press whose interest is the American people.

You don’t get rewarded in commercial broadcasting for trying to tell the truth about the institutions of power in this country, I think my peers in commercial television are talented and devoted journalists, but they’ve chosen to work in a corporate mainstream that trims their talent to fit the corporate nature of American life. And you do not get rewarded for telling the hard truths about America in a profit-seeking environment.

We have got to nurture the spirit of independent journalism in this country, or we’ll not save capitalism from its own excesses, and we’ll not save democracy from its own inertia. — Bill Moyers

Did you know that Bill Moyers was Deputy Director of the Peace Corps? How cool is that! Very!