Now I feel like I'm blogging.

Over here at the Chicago Reader, they posted a story about the layoffs that took place at WBEZ and :Vocalo on Friday, December 5. To preserve my own, ahem, professionalism in commenting on something that I regard as fairly unprofessional and back-biting (but alas, such is the nature of the Internet and independent print media), I'll just direct y'all down to the comments and make my observations about those. My own opinions about :Vocalo, WBEZ, and the management of both will be reserved for personal emails.

What's fascinating to me is the insane amount of them that have accumulated in the week in a half since the post went up. (152!) In some ways, it is reassuring that this many people care so passionately, and at times stupidly, about public radio. But the personal bent of so many of the comments is disconcerting/makes me feel icky . It's a bummer that readers are adding their thoughts here, anonymously, as opposed to emailing CPR or the Vocalo staff. It's public media! Board meetings are open. Radio stations have phone numbers. And it's particularly ironic that so much of the bashing of or support of :Vocalo and WBEZ and Torey Malatia is the exact type of dialogue that the :Vocalo wants to foster: angry opinions that bounce off each other, find no resolution, and get broadcasted all over the Internet. Like a collectiuve of journalists who simultaneously cover the press conference and then throw their shoes as a hard as they can at the head of the Head of State.

And this also makes me think of the nature of independent media, which is competitive and nasty and makes me weight the merits of being a journalist every time my work is published/broadcast. It's striking how independent media outlets try to out-indie each other all the time. I'll wager that almost every American city has seen this little battle take place at some point. To cite specifics, take Newspeak in Colorado Springs. Started up by former writers for "The Independent" (quotes used to indicate title and irony of publication's title considering that it is... not alternative, to put it concisely), Newspeak used to spend at least 200 words of every issue shitting on the Independent. Be it taking them to task for boring features, quoting its writers and editors on off-the-record comments, or just generally being snarky, it was sad to read. The "alternativeness" of Newspeak was built on comparing themselves to the more "mainstream" rags in the Springs, rather than being built on providing voices to marginalized community members, like in the Homelessness issue, or advocating for government and media accountability. Newspeak is now all online and has finally cut that shit out for the most part, instead replacing it with YouTube videos, so who knows if that's an improvement, but I'd rather watch a kitten be all sleepy than read about one newspaper's thoughts about another newspaper/newspaper's thoughts about a radio station/radio stations thoughts about a newspaper.