Ever since I learned to read at five years old I have been hungry for “news.” For information that occurs beyond the reach of my five senses. The larger, the more encompassing the news, the better. Local, regional, national, global, galactic! I’m hungry, hungry.
In my early 30s, while married to the editor of my hometown newspaper, I wondered why the paper only sought out bad news. On what’s wrong with the world. What about good news, I asked myself, and then him. “What about good news? There’s good news everywhere; all I have to do is go outside and walk through town. All sorts of stories suggest themselves that would lift spirits, warm hearts.”
Well, of course I got the predictable response. Basically, bad news is what sells. Advertisers, he claimed, would not pay for “good news;” would consider it, basically, fluff.
Even earlier, in my 20s, I had I learned, beginning with the absurdities surrounding the Kennedy assassination, that “news” doesn’t mean “truth;” it just means some kind of supposed “facts” according to an agenda being pushed by somebody. But I didn’t want to apply that understanding to my home town newspaper which I assumed, rightly or wrongly, was innocent of those big-time machinations.
Oh, and even earlier, in my studies for the doctoral degree in philosophy, I focused on epistemology, theories of knowledge. To me, Kant’s theory was basically correct. There is a permanent S/T framework inside our mind, a window, through which all sense data must pour. Or, I should say, he thought it was permanent. I did not. I could, even then, imagine larger and larger frameworks.
Nowadays we’d call what frames our perceptions the Overton Window, and view its actual size as depending on what you want to get across, its “context.” I’d say that comes close to what’s really the case. Context is everything.
But then again, there’s always another window within which that window is enclosed, and which limits the perceptions that can come in through it. An infinity of larger and larger, or smaller and smaller windows. No end to it. That’s in “space.” For “time,” cf. Wittgenstein: “It’s hard to go back to beginning and not go further back.”
Let’s face it. All our stabs at infinity fail.
And that’s good! Stay right here and now. Stay in the body. Learn, keep expanding one’s “point” of view so that it really does become a space, a presence, the present moment, which endures, undulates, which flows; no end to it.
Over the last, oh, I don’t know how many years, ten? 20? I’ve begun to realize, and that realization has been mushrooming by leaps and bounds, that given the centralization of political power that is accelerating a break neck speed (including the news, msm news) that above all else, if we want to get back to our roots, rather than be confined to this digitized, censored, virtual world that we are all urged to both enter and remain, then we will have to decentralize, in all ways. Get back to paying close attention, in fact, most of our attention, to our specific localities — first, to my own inner (and often conflicted) world; next, my household, then my neighborhood, and then my town, in that order. Stay there, mostly, with my attention.
Of course I fail. I’m as addicted to my ipad news (mostly twitter, some telegram) as anyone. On the other hand, I’ve watched what had been our local newspaper, the Herald-Times, get sold off a couple of years ago, and now functions as “PART OF THE USA TODAY NETWORK.” The Herald-Times building has been sold. Now without an actual physical location, the H-T is published five days a week, rather than six, and we are encouraged to subscribe online only. As of a few months ago, the print version is no longer dropped off at the front door in the morning, but comes in today’s mail.
I still subscribe to the print version. I am a stubborn old fool.
Local sports are still covered, but not much else, except for the rare local story that might be featured once a week.
In its growing absence, other local sources are stepping up: the bloomingtonian (which began after its founder, a photographer, was fired by the HT), which started out mostly covering crime and seeks to widen its coverage; the B Square Bulletin, whose author does a great job covering local government. Then there are a few magazines, for example, the very successful Bloom Magazine, a glossy, gentrified print publication full of expensive ads that bills itself as “the Culture and Lifestyle Magazine for Bloomington”; the Ryder (it’s founding publisher just died), the Limestone Post and a few other hyper-local, and hyper-focused rags, covering entertainment of all kinds, mostly on-line.
Oh and one other, the Indiana Daily Student, which, despite its gestures towards woke (some reporters include their “pronouns”) is still not just online but in print, and still my favorite local news source. Just this morning, I read a very well-written, thorough piece which warmed my heart. In a nearby town, Martinsville, a local decided to start a real local print newspaper, just like the olden days, and it’s working!
For now, it’s once a week. More often soon?
START THE PRESSES AGAIN!
