Skip to main content

A Tale of Today

A Tale of Today
        
Often when learning something I like to see connections in it to history. It helps me to understand applicable topics much better than I otherwise would as it allows me to see reasons for certain actions, and ultimately to see their consequences. Putting a curriculum in context can show people's actions to be what they are. Ican often apply history in our journalism class as, after all, both subjects are just different attempts at covering all meaningful human endeavors. 

In our last journalism class we discussed, among other things, conglomerations and monopolies. We talked about how distribution companies have gotten into the content creation business and how content creation companies have gotten into the distribution business. Netflix now makes its own shows, for example. They have the data of what everyone wants, and can make content accordingly. This seems like they are just filling a niche and appears benevolent, but what could they do with all that data that translates to power? What can Facebook and Google do? These companies that have broken the wall between content distribution and creation can now control their entire supply chain. That made me think, wasn't this vertical integration a crucial step that the Gilded Age's "Captains of Industry" took towards becoming some of the most powerful men in American history? Having this complete control of supply lines through vertical integration was and is a robber barron's dream.

 We also learned about horizontal integration in class. This is where businesses buy up competition in their industry. Fortunately, horizontal monopolies are illegal in the U.S. However, mega-mergers are commonplace. America's largest corporations buy out competition and fix prices for the benefit of the few. That rings some bells for me. The richest people in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in America had built up monopolies horizontally and vertically, destroyed competition, and bought elections for pro business candidates that they had in their pockets. Wages were low. Working conditions were egregious. Trust busting was unimaginable. 

Talking about conglomerations and monopolies made me think about the past, but it also made me wonder if that past was also our future. If Jeff Bezos is the Rockefeller from our time, then who will be our Ida Tarbell? If the Koch brothers are our Carnegie, then who will be our Theodore Roosevelt? Who is our Upton Sinclair and where is our Sherman Antitrust act? Wall Street's power is usually compared to that of Main Street. We must have people act before Wall Street is more powerful than Capital Hill. 
                
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Drop by Drop Upon the Heart

Drop by Drop Upon the Heart A response to a class discussion on recent hate crimes   Hate is not the thing with feathers.  It is not natural, it is not innate to anyone. It is learned, which is what is most frightening about the three heinous hate crimes that rocked the U.S. in the past three days. In our own hometown a man shot and killed two black people at a Kroger in a racially motivated attack. The man that mailed pipe bombs in an attempt to assassinate a former president, a presidential nominee, a former attorney general, a billionaire and members of a news organization was captured. A man shot and killed eleven Jews in a synagogue.  Many have come to the consensus over the past three days of hatred and gradually over the past couple of years that some newfound hatred is gripping America. It can certainly feel that way. There is evidence that hate crimes are on the rise. That is startling. Not to copy Franklin Roosevelt, but the scariest thing from this m...
Post a Comment
Read more

Not with a Bang but a Trickle

Not with a Bang but a Trickle The history of mass communication has inevitably become intertwined with the history of technology at large. When learning the history our lessons usually start with the advent of a new invention. Lessons have started with the metal moveable type printing press, the phonograph, and the camera. On the surface, the picture some lectures paint is that history has hinged on critical individuals and that broader social phenomenon have been propagated by the "great men" of history. This posit is based on discussions from multiple classes, but the idea came back me because of the discussions about music and sound recording technologies.  I have multiple problems with the aforementioned implications of some lectures. When our class learned about music, it all started with Thomas Edison. We learned about his phonograph, and Berliner's gramophone and then all of modern musical history as if these late 19th century inventions kickstarted an imm...
Post a Comment
Read more

All the Facts

All the Facts On the 6 o'clock news on Monday WDRB aired a story that was not well researched or well reported. There are plenty of stories like that that are aired, but this was the lead story on the 6 P.M. broadcast. All the details on the story viewers were given was that there was an incident that might have involved gunshots in an apartment complex and that the police had showed up. The reporter added that no ambulance had shown up at the time it was reported.  Not only is this a meaningless, fear-mongering story, but WDRB made it the lead story of the broadcast. They thought that a possible incident that may or may not have involved gunshots was the most important thing for Louisvillians to know. They didn't wait to air the story until they had more details than "something happened!". They aired this hollow nothingness and tried to make it have the semblance of a news story. They said they would come back to the story if they got any more details, but why...
Post a Comment
Read more