I’m a creature of cultural journalism. I read it; I write it; I buy it; I read aloud juicy bits to my kids. And so I want it to live. By “cultural journalism” I mean slower-burn, long read commentary about current events, some of centered on books, though not necessarily, even though most of the titles contain “review” and “books,” such as the august stalwarts like New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books and the newcomer European Review of Books. Yet I’m also thinking of EuObserver, Eurozine, Global Voices, and the Texas Observer, where I was a contributing writer from 1998 to 2004 or so. (I’ve also had a piece in the ERB.) There are many others.
Last week the editor in chief of Eurozine, Réka Kinga Papp, announced that she was stepping down. Her problem statement was grippingly sad:
The European public sphere is inundated with content, and the core experience in here is noise. This public sphere has been digitalized in a very lopsided fashion, and the intellectual dream of a humanist world wide web has been put to bed in the past few years.
Cultural journals and quality journalism in general are in a conundrum: our work is as needed as it has ever been, to reflect, provide insight, and ultimately, give space to developing ideas. Our work is, however, harder to finance than ever in my lifetime.
Many stand their ground; many are working on changing this public sphere, and all hope isn’t lost. But for most of us sustaining publications, every day is an uphill battle. Whoever sets out on this path has to be aware of this fact.
The other day, after reading an appeal for funds by Malka Older, who now heads Global Voices, I had brief fantasy in which I fundraise for cultural journalism outlets. In that fantasy, I drop my own writing and throw myself at the problem of making sure that these publications have the resources they need to thrive. I'd do it for any audience: rich students, poor financiers.
Then I realized, what arguments would I make for these publications, for this sector? Here's a start at what I would say:
1. I know and you know that we live in sociotechnically complexifying societies, and that understanding that complexity is a dizzying, never-ending task. Cultural journalism is necessary because it offers ample discussion of current events and cultural produtions in their broader historical and social contexts. It plunges in to that complexity. It has to survive because it’s the antidote to conspiracy.
But not everyone grasps the fact that this complexity exists, much less the complexity in itself. Also, not everyone realizes this complexity is happening to us, that it’s not something produced via conspiratorial cabals of invisible elites to befuddle us.
If you only get an interminable string of nows in news alerts and headlines, you become vulnerable to co-optation by constructed stories. To remain free, you need to understand the myriad thens (myriad because the variables are multiple, as are their interpretations) and the candidate so-whats.
2. Cultural journalism has to survive because it’s one of the last bastions of a consensus reality. Sure, that reality is negotiable at the edges; in any case, that consensus is more of an agreement about method and about posture than about content per se. In other words, this is how we reason and how we test; this is how we regard what we reason and evaluate the products of our tests. So if you understand the method adequately, there are remarkable degrees of freedom, all of which operate within a realm that offers stability, predictability, symmetry.
3. Cultural journalism has to survive because the academy shouldn’t be sole bastion of the consensus reality. Sure, many of the people who write for those publications are academically trained, if not working academics, but the intellectual depth at which these writers work also requires a journalistic vigor. This is important. That vigor is what gives cultural journalism the ability to reach other audiences. That vigor gives journalism its speed and reactivity.
By the same token, corporations shouldn't be sole champions of the consensus reality, either. So financing cultural journalism is building a solid, independent pillar in civil society that is it's own autonomous source of power. To the degree that the academy and corporations see value in the epistemological function of cultural journalism, they should finance it but leave it alone.
4. Cultural journalism deserves funding because it’s the equivalent of sports journalism, for people who don’t care about sports but maybe also for those who do. If sports are compelling because they provide a site for tribalistic affiliations and harmless ways to experience conflict, then cultural productions, political analyses, and other essays serve the same function. For instance, that new work of autofiction is reviewed because an editor has decided their audience needs an update on the autofiction versus genre literature debate, and you the reader get to decide a) which team you’re on and b) how your team is doing. Who has the best ballet troupe? Here’s what’s going on in Berlin. What’s the fuss about this high-paid writer? Here’s a profile. This activity doesn’t lend itself to the quantified (scores, stats, contract sizes, etc.) but it also has its champions, its heroes, its major awards and prizes. (Somehow I accept that each year the Booker Prize must be awarded again but roll my eyes at the repetition of the Super Bowl. Do we have to do this again? I think.) (Another aside: I often think there's too much coverage of Team Weird's topics -- here is this obscure historical fact, this overlooked place -- and not enough about religion. On which, I'm glad that ARC mag exists.)
I was thinking about what survives in local journalism, and that after classified ads it’s always sports stories, and not just local. Then I was thinking about the analogue to sports coverage. It’s not, in fact, event listings, but things like reviews, profiles, and op-eds. The major publications that I listed earlier do all of that, but more.
All this said, I also have in mind Papp’s comment that the public sphere is awash in content. So full of producers making insight that there’s no signal, only noise. This undermines what cultural journalism is trying to achieve: not only does it fracture attention, not only does it fracture audiences, not only does it distract funders, but it creates many multiple versions of the reality. Here’s a recommendation: journals and newsletters and podcasts should do a better job of joining up and joining forces. Don't start a new thing; join up with a pre-existing thing and negotiate a direction from there.
(Note that I didn't make any references to "democracy" here, as I have my own ideas about what "democracy" entails, which may or may not be shared by others who use the term. I wanted to bring to light the deep assumptions of the arguments for this sector first.) Writing quickly and superficially here because I have to make dinner...
