Brook Gladstone

Yesterday I went to a book reading by Brook Gladstone of NPR's On The Media. She has a new book out, The Influencing Machine about the news media. It's in comics form, with a cartoon version of herself talking directly to the reader. It's premise is that while the media seems broken now, it's always been broken.

England banned the press for six years in the mid 17th century. Sure America created the first amendment, but John Adams signed the Alien and Sedition Act just 7 years later. Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1807 "Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle." George Washington invented the political leak. She seemingly covers every important president from then until now. War coverage has never been good, it's usually controlled by the government and if you see the number 50,000 in a story, question it, it's more than likely some's expert's guesstimate that's probably wrong.

She walks through several problems the press has, how it's hard to be unbiased and what counts as bias changes over time. In 1896 Adolph Ochs bought the New York Times and famously said "It will be my earnest aim that the New York Times give the news ... impartially, without fear or favor, regardless of party, sect, or interest involved ... to invite intelligent discussion from all shades of opinion." She prints the little seen rest of his quote "Nor will there be a departure from the general tone ... unless it be ... to intensify its devotion to the cause of sound money and tariff reform ... and in its advocacy of the lowest tax consistent with good government and no more government than is absolutely necessary to protect society."

Her talk yesterday was quite good. She first answered her most common question, which is why did she write this in comics form? Her answer surprised me, she said "It's the most like radio. I could speak to you through a voice balloon." She does shorten some of her statements as opposed to how she's phrase things on the radio, and said the process of learning to write for comics improved her radio writing greatly. Also, she always wanted to be Buffy the Vampire slayer and she could be all these different things (including the Statue of Liberty) in the comics. And finally, the medium ads a tone of "Don't Panic" from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy that seems to match the thesis.

The art is done by Josh Neufeld who wrote A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge which I also liked and went to a book signing of. Working with him she learned that a comic is not an illustrated book. In an illustrated book the pictures augment the words, in a comic they replace words. If this wasn't in comics form it would have been much longer. Also she started out with vague descriptions to Neufeld and he told her she needed to be much more explicit in what she wanted, which forced her to figure out what should be told in words and what should be in pictures.

At the signing I told her I still had 50 pages to go but I wasn't encouraged to learn that everything I thought was broken about the media has always been broken. She said she found that realization comforting and wrote in my book "The media have never been worse, or better."