Christopher Schroeder

Category: politics

  • Not Again WBEZ

    WBEZ is fund-raising again this week.

    The ostensible goal is replacing the remaining rescinded federal funds — around $150,000 of about $3 million as of yesterday morning — by the end of this week. The station in other words has reportedly replaced about $2.85 million, or ninety-five percent, as of this week and had about five percent more to go at the start of this “pop-up” fund-raiser.

    I still believe in public media, and wish these were fully funded with our tax dollars although I’m less sanguine about such a model than ever. I just think WBEZ is still operating on a flawed assumption, and in so doing insulting its listeners’ intelligence.

    One on-air person for example suggested yesterday that this loss was the equivalent of a month of broadcasting. She asked listeners to imagine eleven months of news and then one month of nothing.

    Such a scenario not only is unrealistic and unnecessary but also would be irresponsible. Moreover, this funding loss shouldn’t have surprised any perceptive person who knows that federal funding threats appeared long before the second Trump administration, which only increased their likelihood.

    Budgets are obviously choices. As a result, WBEZ could, and perhaps should, reconfigure its budget without this federal funding, and only expand it based on additional reliable funding.

    The station obviously should pursue additional reliable funding now perhaps more than ever. It could also reimagine its contributions and function, especially now that it needn’t worry about placating politicians anymore.

    WBEZ at least is no longer beholden to the federal government for the equivalent of one month of funding. Now it can boldly, and even brazenly, reimagine its role in metro Chicago and American democracy.

    Such a response would reassure existing donors that the station has been a good steward of our contributions. It also could inspire individuals, both new donors and existing ones, to contribute to this bold and brazen alternative, one that gives hope to the future of public media and our country.

    That beats begging for bucks to replace what this bully has taken.

  • Revolutionary Thinking

    I had been encouraged after a conference session to read Heather Ford’s (2022) Writing the Revolution, and can understand after having done so why this book was recommended.

    Ford in it offers her decade-long digital ethnography of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution Wikipedia entry from its emergence and through its evolution and uses it to challenge conventional ideas about facts in the digital world. To do so, she outlines a framework for facts that includes allies, or those who author or edit Wikipedia content, and companions, or sources that validate and verify these assertions.

    Ford uses these results to challenge conventional Wikipedia principles, such as neutral point of view, verifiability of facts, and prohibitions against primary research. Instead, she argues that facts are contested and change, and as such illustrate the reality that knowledge is not objective but rather situated, especially in a digital world.

    This account systematically examines her observations and consistently supports her claims. Moreover, it establishes context through interviews with central participants, including those who led early efforts to establish this page, and in so doing shaped the narrative around this event, such as whether, and when, to call it a revolution.

    I wanted more synthesis, implications, and even application, especially beyond the Wikipedia world, but I admit that at least the latter wasn’t the ostensible purpose of this book, which is a successful account of academic research. As such, it illustrates a way of bridging the academic and the public, and offers a way of thinking about more relevant research.

    And I found it to be useful in ways I didn’t expect. For me, its engaging style consistently demonstrated a grad school tenet — knowledge as situated — that seemed intuitively true, and yet to have wide-ranging implications, especially for institutionalized practices, which I could never confront.

    I think Ford’s account clearly illustrates an interim step in an effort to transform a grad school stipulation into a useful foundational principle.

  • No Kings Chicago

    No Kings Chicago
    No Kings Chicago
    No Kings Chicago
    No Kings Chicago