one perspective on concentration and the media. The capitalist media, back in the "good old daze" when ownership was less concentrated, was more diverse. Sure, we had Hearst and the seemingly Nazi-symp Chicago TRIB. But there were a lot of other newspapers that represented local capitalists that had the advantage of having different views from their fellows. Maybe some were as good as the Anderson Valley Advertiser is supposed to be (despite its stealing of Doug's copy). With corporatization and concentration (two parts of the same phenomenon, which probably can't be separated), the colorful old bastards (like the guy who ran the TRIB, whose name I can't remember) are replaced by colorless corpos. What happens is standardization, _homogenization_. Or put another way, it's like when the barriers between ecological zones breaks down, wiping out local species, so that the opportunistic species -- like pigeons (flying rats to me) -- take over. (Rupert Murdoch, take your bow.) The heterogeneity meant that there were more chances that some info would leak out that the left could use. It also meant that fewer wars (like the Span-Am war) were started to boost newspaper circulation; newspapers no longer seem to be platforms for their publishers' wider political ambitions. And instead of being palsy-walsy with the _local_ oligarchy, the new corporate/concentrated newspapers seek to be the NY TIMES, part of the national/world oligarchy. That said, the main decline in newspaper quality seems to have happened (1) when the old Socialist Party declined, leading to the fall of newspapers like APPEAL TO REASON; (2) when the 1930s left (including the CP and the Trotskyists) declined, causing the ossification and shrinkage of their press; and (3) when the 1960s new Left shrank, leading various "alternative" newspapers to be nothing but smut-selling muckrakers. It's anti-establishmentarian movements that form the backbones of long-lasting high quality media (though obviously high quality Left media can help the movement thrive). appealing to reason, Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://clawww.lmu.edu/Departments/ECON/jdevine.html
