Episode 39: Challenging Assumptions of Permanence

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Oh, odometer moments! Those tickings of the calendar or clock or whatever metric timey thing happens to land appropriately on a nice round number. What would journalism or any of us do without them? Episode 39, Challenging Assumptions of Permanence, uses the ten year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's landfall as just such a jumping-off point, noting how our assumptions that the way things have been in our lifetime in too many cases seems to be the way we assume the future should unfold. Sadly, our newspaper industry today struggles under the same delusion of future permanence, at least when it comes to a funding model based on advertising, that only emerged—indeed, that was only possible—in the latter stages of the Industrial Revolution. That funding model evolved to what we had, and now it is moving on, and in my opinion it ain't coming back.

In this episode, I read about historic newspaper production from Eric Burns' book "Infamous Scribblers"; and an excerpt from an article from a Professor Ross, originally printed in the Atlantic Monthly in the March, 1910, edition, and quoted in Upton Sinclair's 1920 book on the newspaper business, The Brass Check (the entirety of which can be read online at the link). I also quoted Soryu Forall, a meditation and mindfulness teacher and the founder of the Center for Mindful Learning. He shared his insights into, well, assumptions and preferences on KMO's C-Realm Podcast Episode #480, "Assumptions and Preferences."

Musically, I played two pieces by Jahzzar, "Brighter" and "Become Death". I opened the show with the Jan Wong KMFDM intro.