I wish someone would have told me earlier how much better my running would get if I simply stopped drinking so much green tea. Or, I guess, I wish I would have listened more earnestly to people who have told me not to drink caffeinated beverages at all.

It’s not that I simply ignored such guidance, but even though I consumed zero caffeine when I embarked on a (deeply beautiful and life-changing) summer-long visit to East Asia several years ago, I found it difficult not to drink green tea while there and have done so more or less ever since. One worry to which I paid too much heed about reducing the beverage in my life was that the discomfort so many people talk about would interfere with my running schedule. But I’ve found, perhaps because I sleep so much better now, that, on balance, the opposite seems true. And, to link this to my blog topic, I’ve wondered whether one reason so many media corporation representatives seem loath to welcome dialogue about their business models could be a similarly short-sighted (and unfounded) fear.

Recently, I’ve noted that a number of well-respected journalists, when turning to corporate media careers, seem to have undergone very similar transformations – in both disposition and appearance – and I’ve wondered, why? Like sacraments for the pious to the religion of corporate sovereignty, such concessions to an increasingly homogenous media landscape have felt just as perplexing to me.

But I wonder whether, step by step, even inching closer to a less compromised business model could open the way for greater levels of authenticity and meaningful engagement – not only for citizens in general but for career communications professionals themselves. And, while others may disagree, I personally question whether an earnest discussion about the journalism sector’s relationship to the stock market would harm (I actually believe it would help) advance progress on many of the causes so many public figures seem to have held dear before going corporate. Like caffeine, while stock market integration does seem to boost these organizations’ profitability, I wonder whether they would perform better on the measures that matter without it.