One of Merriam-Webster Dictionary’s definitions of the word “impeach” is:

to cast doubt on especially : to challenge the credibility or validity of 

I wonder whether it may be important at this moment to be applying constructive criticism to at least some processes, and not just people.

As distinctly unrelated as the concept appears at first glance, ever since beginning to read about the cases (and there are many recent examples) of wildlife poachers who have utterly changed course and become protectors, I have wondered about whether this phenomenon could potentially be portable into economic terms. 

As the key in these particular stories, it appears, so often seems to be a willingness to recognize the difference between poachers and buyers, I wonder there may be value in applying lessons learned to arguably analogous challenges within publicly-traded brands. 

Units of Measurement 

Much has been made recently of the problematic role some for-profit companies have played in social and environmental justice contexts in prioritizing the building of brand equity over the provision of real value. 

Although it is a big concept, I have wondered whether in a stock market economy this may derive from what is termed the doctrine of corporate personhood as this doctrine appears to result in what ultimately turn into attempts to set as equal two expressly unequal variables – people and companies – for the purpose of enabling a betting, rather than an arguably more productive, economy.

A foundational concept in our republic is the doctrine of human equality, which is fundamentally incompatible with the doctrine of corporate personhood, because setting unequal variables as equal would seem to prevent the solution of problems. (When brands are bet on, what mechanisms are available to prevent the practice of what could be termed predatory – or poaching – behavior within the umbrella of individual brands in ways similar to what takes place within some parks?)

Just as with any outcome on which people are placing bets, isn’t there always a danger of the temptation to make an operation more predictable than productive? Such an outcome would result in marketed and actual brand value no longer being reliably correlated.

While the following analogy is imperfect because people are responsible for themselves, and animals are not, it is worth remembering that in even less humane settings in which physical advantage and disadvantage are artificially amplified for the purpose of increasing the predictability of outcomes within forced conflict, all creatures included in such schemes are deserving of different forms of rehabilitation.

Should It Be Possible to Be Paid to Watch the News?

I wonder, just as it is logical and essential for journalists and journalistic teams to be paid for their contributions – should not audiences who pay attention and respond?

I am trained as a journalist and have noted that a major disadvantage of the advertiser-funded model of news is that, from a business perspective, the success of an organization whose brand is publicly traded, seems only to be measured at the scale of the company. But the acknowledgement individual human rights within organizations matters too.

To the extent that their central purpose is working to uphold the basic American premise of human equality, it is worth noting that the news and non-profit sectors, at least in theory, share a fundamental compatibility. Why, therefore, do we put so much focus on their respective relationships to corporations and practically dismiss the relationship between problem discovery and problem-solving in funding apparatuses?

Could the provision of an alternative to an advertiser-funded model that still manages to keep these distinct but, crucially, correlate purposes separate extend the half-life of funds so directed?

What if we could replace “breaking news” with “problems not yet solved?”

What if social and environmental responsibility initiatives, rather than being side projects for corporations were integrated into virtually all of a more responsible kind of organization’s behavior instead? What if progress, rather than only being privately measured at the scale of a single organization’s KPIs were also measured in helpful ways by a better journalism sector?

In the cases of unequal algebraic expressions featuring the same multiple variables, the logical step towards solution for a common variable is not to set the expressions as being equal to one another but, rather, to add them together.

From the Superficial to the Genuine 

As I have written about before, what might be most exciting about an evolution from an appearances-based model in news to a more genuine and productive one may be a shift in attention from what appear to be fixed resources to the cultivation and growth of more abundant ones. 

Maya Angelou once wrote “you can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.”

If, for the purpose of optimizing predictability, some have historically been given greater or lesser advantage based on fixed characteristics such as race and gender, how much more exciting would a framework be in which outcomes are driven by the development of dynamic qualities such as persistence, industry, optimism, inclusivity, ingenuity, and imagination?

We all learn and grow under the right amount of pressure, and both over-confidence and under-confidence impede progress. Increasingly, I believe that the central difference between coaching and bullying is in the presentation of challenges for which the other is believed to be ready. 

As we evolve into an economy in which dynamic qualities matter more than fixed ones, and collaboration is privileged over conflict, there needs to be a path forward that is open to including everyone. 

People who have historically been given advantage based on fixed characteristics in preparation for conflict and nonconsensual relationships rather than collaborative ones have arguably at times had insufficient occasion to develop dynamic qualities. 

It is as if positions of advantage and disadvantage are presented as roles in a play that, to be sure, some glance at and run with, but many adopt grudgingly. 

What is to be done to help everyone get onto the same page as we move on together from this form of “soft bigotry of low expectations”? It might not make sense to expect a person to advance from negative seventh grade, so to speak, to positive twelfth grade overnight.

If the cases of poachers who have changed course is any indication, illustrations abound of the absolute value of such a background once it is repurposed. 

A Matter of Scale 

With the fundamental mandate of journalistic organizations in mind, I have often wondered about the distinction between two – certainly not incompatible – but different – solutions to the present problem: organizational differentiation by theme and organizational differentiation by geography. 

I sometimes wonder whether differentiation along topical lines, specialized when needed, as with The Marshall Project, but nested under the umbrella of a collective mandate to support the notion of human equality, is a most important tool, given that the achievement of such an ideal would in turn help address a variety of social justice and environmental justice challenges automatically, as important as local news will always be. In conservation, the attention of the world can help protect species endangered from afar. 

As I have written before, I believe it might be possible that, as we have evolved to appreciate developing views of the diversity of our world better and better, we have realized that brand markets are simply not good measurers of brand value.

Need for Collaboration

In news, paywalls and memberships make sense, but I still wonder whether there is a need to be more nimble in changing gears when relying on various sources of information and expertise, by way of a mechanism more like a manual transmission.

As I have written before, I believe the educational sector – to the degree that it recognizes preserving the idea of human equality as its central mandate, could have an increasingly important role to play as it begins to see itself less as a linear pipeline with a beginning and ending, and more of a cycle that purges tutorials on how to succeed in a broken system on a continual basis by asking wisdom and feedback of young people and other historically marginalized groups, able to give continuous and dynamic feedback about which sources of information are most helpful in problem-solving. (Notably, many young people understand naturally basic concepts of right and wrong, including the difference between distributive and procedural justice that has historically seemed to divide American political parties. What’s more is that, very often, they do not hesitate to say something about it, even in the face of a bully. These are indisputable executive functions.)

This is a big and long-term idea in need of a ton of input, but, as I wrote in 2016, I wonder whether a mechanism that does not necessarily compete with, but rather offers a complementary alternative to investment in the stock market, such as the listening agency Lung Media, could be helpful.