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It is not what we want
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3 min read
“This notion that ‘These media companies are just giving us what the public wants!’ No. They’re giving us what the media companies want; they’re giving us what the advertisers want. And they’re packaging it in such a way as to make it sound like it is our fault; it’s not.” –Jennifer Pozner Giving people “what…
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The Gilded Age of Media
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3 min read
When faced with something they find confusing, most journalists give up. They don’t do the real legwork of engaging the story. They write the “process story” instead. You’ve read the kind in which the author doesn’t actually write the story about the intended subject’s work, but how confusing that work is. They trot out tired…
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Forward living or backward obsessing?
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4 min read
My brain is intent on proving me wrong. More than a decade ago, when my two closest friends were living in East Lansing, I moved down to join them. Having only visited the apartment once or twice, and not knowing the area very well, I was confident that I knew the way to get there;…
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On Ecclesiology: Leadership, Emergence, and #Occupy
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4 min read
In the Premodern world, humanity was led by “the divine right of kings,” in other words, authority was bestowed upon a singular human authority from a divine source. In the Modern world, humanity was led by singular representation. Authority was bestowed on an individual to represent the people, either through fiat or election. The Enlightenment…
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A shocking lack of historical knowledge
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5 min read
We all know the paraphrase, if not the real quote by George Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to fulfill it.” And we seem to believe it. Sort of. Considering the ease with which we warn each other that such a leader as our own is the second coming of Hitler, it…
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Mixtape Monday: meaningful song
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1 min read
Personally, I like my music to mean something. And If I’m putting together a soundtrack, it has to include at least something seriously cool and pertinent to our lives at the time. So here it goes: Billy Bragg & Wilco covering Woody Guthrie’s “Christ for President”
Make a New Normal
