On Quality

One of the most meaningful aspects of mentoring students at the university level has been being able to bear witness to, and support, heartfelt expressions of brilliance. Particularly as I have been able to coach young people interested in addressing social and environmental challenges, it has been especially heartening to see projects that I believe help define the cutting edge of creative expression.

Two such projects come to mind immediately, not only for their prescience but for their quality as, while both preceded similar renderings in two of the most prominent publications in America much later, both high-profile projects were of jarringly lesser quality.

One such assignment (on a self-selected topic) featured a series of distinctive portraits of historical women whose stories and contributions had been minimized if not brazenly erased. Not rote exercises in the tailwind of a heart-directed movement, these, and other projects, were more spontaneous expressions of fluorescent soul that did their subjects justice. Moreover, each bore the imprimatur of the unbought artist, which, while by no means infallible, is still the premier brand of our time.

More than anything, I have enjoyed, as an instructor, but also as an artist, taking time to consider what helps me most in producing work about which I feel good and providing students the kind of time, space, encouragement, and challenges that, as I learn, I believe are most conducive to productivity. So much of the work I am grateful to have witnessed being generated is extraordinary; but, perhaps because I have not ever studied in a dedicated art school, I have been surprised to learn that a large portion of art students go on to become marketers.

Because I believe the work of so many merits broader exposure and more meaningful evolution further into their careers, I continue to feel there needs to be more receptivity to solutions to problems stemming from an outdated informational infrastructure.

On Obstacles

It seems natural to me that good work should find a ready audience but, often, there seem to be obstacles in the way.

I have written before about a belief that two important features of environments conducive to problem-solving are safety and encouragement, although I believe a temporary absence of these need not always prohibit productivity. More often than not, hindrances take the form not of an absence of protectors and nurturers, but of the presence of pretenders to these roles.

In reaching out to even a religious newspaper about insights gained in another media organization a couple of years ago, I felt as though I had reached out to a fire station based on the shingle outside the door about a blaze in progress, only to be told by the person who answered that they did not do firefighting anymore and had changed careers to bullying anyone who smelled smoke. I feel that in journalism it is as if the case is frequently made that, even in a town with no fire department, the presence of a convincing cardboard cutout provides some degree of peace of mind. But there is a reason fire stations are more than just cardboard cutouts.

Of course not all journalistic organizations have abdicated all of their responsibilities. Still, I feel it will be important to halt what seems to be a transition in progress from exposing to investing in problems as a business model, just as would be the case for any organizational equal opportunity department that, in practice, performs the opposite of its stated function.

What are arguably more needed are organizations that celebrate, not showmen or power-accumulators, but nurturers and protectors chiefly.

On Getting To

At one point in a news organization, while much of a company focused on news of significance, one relatively small unit would occupy itself almost exclusively with celebrity culture and royal scandal, dangling a spectacle that would mesmerize the viewer into a stupor and life as little more than a garbage receptacle. But this approach seems increasingly utilized.

One of the most wonderful, and one of the most surprising, realizations of adulthood in my opinion is just how many activities that had once been compulsory, turned out to be the very most enjoyable. Few activities are more fun than writing an essay, composing a painting, or achieving an athletic milestone.

Where one has a civic contribution to make, I believe it is important not to be assuaged by the appearance of vociferous debate. To me, it seems for-profit news organizations are engaged in much more WWE-like than traditionally partisan disagreements, even if the evidence for their symbiosis is largely behavioral.

But even while we are not being heard, there is no reason everyone cannot each practice expressing her or his individuality, sometimes thereby accessing individual intuition, every day. (Otherwise, you are arguably just letting life happen to you.)

Occasionally, when I know it is important, based on experience, for me to write or draw something every day, but I am not sure where to start, I am relieved to realize that more often than not, the answer is as simple as picking up my pencil and beginning to draw a mark. Something helpful almost always happens.

Like lungs, citizens do not only inhale but exhale ideas, be that exhale audible or not.

On Saying So

Especially as many organizations seem to have outsourced the work of journalism to relatively defenseless, not to mention unpaid, individual citizens, there is at least consolation in the fact there is value in good work; and I believe many projects of value will eventually be discovered.

Despite what seem to be a monopolization and degradation of quality in our informational infrastructure, intelligence and creativity will always find cracks in the pavement through which to grow, especially where they are watered and fed.

Shirley Chisholm once famously asserted, “you don’t make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas.”

But there is arguably more to this. You walk on the moon by getting out of the rocket ship. But, first you need to identify, measure, and break away from the earth’s gravitational pull. When attempting to work through and share problem-solving ideas earlier in my career and based on my experience, I often felt as if I was taking the long way around an obstacle in a video game, feeling accomplished for my willingness never to complain, only to run back into it again. It began to feel as if there was no way forward but to talk about the fact that I encountered such obstacles over a period of years. Not to be heard when I did so was surprising. (Would a Commission on Gender-Based Abuse in media organizations be possible?)

I believe the roles of nurturers and protectors need to be more deeply considered, especially where they are occupied without being fulfilled. While I, like many people, believe that major progress is needed now on gross racial justice problems in America, I believe conversations about gender equality must continue too. There was always a danger of journalism remaining as structurally corrupt and exploitative of the vulnerable as ever, only more diverse. Race and gender, while immensely important considerations in surveying fixed characteristics historically targeted for maltreatment, may not always be strictly reliable proxies for the shape-shifter vulnerability.

In the New Testament a fig tree was condemned for appearing to bear fruit that it didn’t. I believe that our answer today lays in more than just innovation, but, moreso, in the rebuke of organizational pretenders.