Editorial

Am I the only Ohioan who has mixed reactions to the blasting news of the highly secretive and delayed announcement of Intel’s aspirational plans to build the “world’s largest” computer chip manufacturing “fab” in New Albany/Licking County? Am I the only reader disturbed by the no-longer-daily, little-news Columbus Dispatch’s Saturday, Jan. 22, front page and much of the first section’s unchecked press release for Mike DeWine’s and Jon Husted’s re-election campaign? This continued in the Sunday, Jan. 23, edition. I hope I’m not.

I support all responsible job creation and economic development. Let there be no doubt about that.

A public relations and marketing campaign called FL4ALL announced itself in a full-page ad in the New York Times on August 3, 2021. It represents a dangerous fiction and threat to students and unsuspecting “hard working citizens,” to repeat its promotional language. The campaign’s actions follow what I declared in my 1979 book, The Literacy Myth, the exaggerated importance of literacy by itself, taken out of context. To borrow terms from the field of literacy studies, “reading” the advertisement as “written” is revealing. 

Let’s look at the text. It misrepresents both literacy and economics, and is a danger to the population this corporate coalition claims to serve. 

First, no reputable person says or writes “FL” for “financial literacy.” Perhaps for a football league. Second, only marketers and business corporations seeking to derive financial profits would consider promoting a flawed slogan like “FL4ALL.” In corrupting well-established public civil rights movements, such sloganeering is a shameful misappropriation. The ad proclaims that “financial literacy is a civil rights issue of this generation.”

Readers viewing this essay online may no longer recognize or appreciate how important a city’s daily newspaper is. It contributes to a city’s identity. It unites its readership in shared information, which is the potential for building a community of discourse and exchange. The best newspapers provide both a constructive critical voice and a forum for responsible airing of differences among members of the local population. This is not, and has never been, the function of the Columbus Dispatch.

Since childhood, I have avidly read my city’s daily newspaper(s) and the Sunday New York Times. From college, I subscribed in every city where I lived. In retirement, I read three dailies including two national editions. I have read the Columbus Dispatch since I moved to Columbus in 2004. I have witnessed a roller-coaster of journalistic and commercial ups and downs and published opinion essays and letters to the editor.

The Constitution begins, “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Prosperity.” All states endorse this “founding,” if aspirational, text. American history, even before 1776 and 1787 and long after those dates, has been devoted to making those aspirations a reality for all Americans.

A dominating conception of “the public” is central to the U.S. in theory and centuries-long struggles. Today represents an extraordinary retreat, especially for people other than white males. For the partly empowered peoples from 1863-65 “emancipations” through women’s suffrage in1920 and civil and voting rights legislation in 1965, an inclusive public has always been contested. The battle increases anew with the combined and interconnected assaults on public health, public education, public safety, genuine choice and freedom, right to vote, right to control one’s body, right to gender determination, right to....

Columbus, Ohio, is the rare large U.S. city (14th most populous, second largest city in the Midwest, and third most populous state capital) that requires its state’s name for recognition. This is one sign of many that derive from the city’s identity crisis (as I have named it), its weakness as an urban place, and the failure of its major institutions and media. (“Columbus’ identity crisis and its media,” Columbus Underground, July 23, 2021.)

“Texas patriots,” as they call themselves, call for secession from the Union, harkening back to their fictionalized idyllic days of the short-lived Republic of Texas. They fantasize about the war for independence from Mexico (fought to preserve slavery in Texas) and the recently reinvented “glories” of the battle at the Alamo. Texas Republicans legislate not only for “patriotic” history but for the removal of depictions of Mexicans in accounts and displays of the Alamo.

Maddening media misconceptions

1.     Can the media, popular culture mavens, and politicians begin to remember yesterday? Or last week, last month, six months, one year, four years, two decades, etc., let alone a significant amount of historical time? They need to remember the Trump Agenda and its damages—economic, health, civic, unemployment, inflation, racism, violence, divisiveness, for example; and cease unsupported comparisons with Ronald Reagan/ism, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, LBJ, FDR, and so on.

2.     Avoid the myth of the “educated American.” Understand today’s failure of American education, especially the dramatic expansion of nonpublic schooling and STEM, decline of history and civics, but still recognize that there was never a golden age to which to return.

Note: area readers are aware that the local “daily newspaper” is no longer either daily or a newspaper. Following USA Today/Gannett, the Columbus Dispatch does not publish on Dec. 24 or 25, 31 or Jan. 1 (as well as Thanksgiving or Labor Day). They do not coordinate with their carriers so subscribers do not receive the everyday New York Times, Wall Street Journal, or Washington Post. The USA Today managed Dispatch website is chaotic and incoherent. It does not replace even the printed Dispatch’s late and low volume of actual news.

All opinion writers—including New York Times’ conservative columnists—must meet basic standards of journalistic practice and ethics. They are responsible not only for presenting clear and logically coherent opinions, but also for adhering to established facts and objective evidence. In other words, alternative narratives and their rhetoric must be constrained by critical if minimal standards.

Quietly, as usual, the undemocratic apparatuses of the City of Columbus make their moves.

On Friday, Dec. 10, the Columbus Dispatch briefly reported “Massive hanging sculpture proposed for Downtown.”

The next day, Dispatch reporter Jim Welker wrote, “City seeks input on reviving Downtown” (print edition). In this case, the City and the Columbus Downtown Development Corporation, a “nonprofit public development corporation,” a contradiction in terms, “are launching a series of [unscheduled] public meetings to help shape a new Downtown Strategic Plan.

Former president Donald Trump popularized the phrase “fake news” as one of his terms of universal condemnation for any reporting—or stated facts—with which he disagreed, regardless of their accuracy. It became one of his rhetorical trademarks to the delight of his followers and the disgust of the legitimate press and all others.

As it scrambles to fill their pages in the absence of Trump’s daily outrageous statements or behavior, the press fears that it lacks the kinds of attention-grabbing breaking news that attracts readers, and is repeated across the multiple outlets of the social media sphere. In repeated exaggerations and repetition of dishonest messages from right-wing provocateurs and media, the legitimate press recreates the phenomenon of “fake news” that they so loudly condemned.

Several dynamics intersect in this startling development. First is the decline financially and journalistically of the daily local and national newspapers. As more and more go out of business, reduce their staffs and reporting, become parts of large for-profit networks, and face intense pressure to survive, both reporters and reporting decline.