Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff,
Speaker 2: your weekly podcast that whenever there's bad things happening, there's
Speaker 2: people trying to do good things, including not introduced their
Speaker 2: podcast badly. I am your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and this
Speaker 2: week my guest is Sarah Marshall.
Speaker 1: Hi. How are you? Hi?
Speaker 3: I'm so happy to be here. I like how you
Speaker 3: started that off big and then he got it nice
Speaker 3: and small. You know this week, Sarah Marshall, that's true.
Speaker 3: It's an intimate salon.
Speaker 2: Inviting people to get a little closer to the Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, I've been watching a lot of Kathy Griffin's specials
Speaker 3: because I realized how much I missed Kathy Griffin. And
Speaker 3: she had like nineteen Bravo specials in the two thousands.
Speaker 2: Do you know who that is? Magbie, Nope, no idea.
Speaker 3: She was on Suddenly Susan in the nineties.
Speaker 1: Magpie also doesn't know what that is.
Speaker 2: I've heard of it. I don't know what it is.
Speaker 3: Well, I have this thing called suddenly, so you put
Speaker 3: on pasta salad always makes me think of Suddenly Susan.
Speaker 3: But Kathy Griffin is a stand up comedian. Does this
Speaker 3: thing where she like will start kind of like speaking quieter,
Speaker 3: and she's like while doing a giant show on a
Speaker 3: giant theater, and she's like, I'm talking like this because
Speaker 3: this is GISs between you and me before like a
Speaker 3: particularly juicy piece of celebrity gossip. So like, we're talking
Speaker 3: like this because this GISs between us and all the
Speaker 3: people listening as well the guests, between all of us,
Speaker 3: no one else.
Speaker 2: No one else can listen except for the people who
Speaker 2: are currently listening. Don't tell your friends about this podcast
Speaker 2: because they can't hear it.
Speaker 3: We really need to keep this in a tight intimate circle.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I got to keep them numbers down.
Speaker 3: That's what keeps That's what no one ever says on
Speaker 3: a podcast. I want you to go out and rate
Speaker 3: my podcast. Go ahead and give me a one star rating.
Speaker 3: I hate it when people are like, give us a
Speaker 3: five star rating, because that's presuming that the person listening
Speaker 3: liked it.
Speaker 2: What if they didn't, I know, although it is a
Speaker 2: good reason to do it at the end of the episode,
Speaker 2: So at the beginning of the episode, because by the
Speaker 2: end of the episode, if you may get that far,
Speaker 2: you probably don't hate it.
Speaker 3: Like I probably liked it if I listened for this
Speaker 3: whole hour.
Speaker 2: Yeah, although I say that is if I don't regularly
Speaker 2: listen to podcasts that I do not like at all,
Speaker 2: because I pick a like new interest like every month.
Speaker 2: I mean, you can tell by the theme of this
Speaker 2: podcast that I like new interests. And then I'm like,
Speaker 2: I need to know everything about r ving or sailboats
Speaker 2: or I don't know those are two recently, and then
Speaker 2: I listen to all the podcasts about them, and I
Speaker 2: don't like most of them.
Speaker 3: Yes, because it's hard to find something that's on both
Speaker 3: a topic you like and you like the person doing it.
Speaker 2: I think, I know. Yeah, And if you're listening and
Speaker 2: you're one of those people who kind of hates me
Speaker 2: and just likes my content, I'm not sorry, nice, but
Speaker 2: I do have a producer. I'm Sophie.
Speaker 1: Hi, Sophie, Hi, Mike Pie Hi, Sarah, Hi, Sophie.
Speaker 3: Nice to be here with you wearing your hat that
Speaker 3: says potatoes.
Speaker 2: I am. I know, it's so good. Everyone sends me
Speaker 2: potato memes all the time and it's great, But Sophie's
Speaker 2: the real.
Speaker 1: A potato head.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the word I was thinking you are, and.
Speaker 3: I am too. It's a very pre potato group today.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I had potatoes and couscous for lunch. Oh nice.
Speaker 2: It was just sort of random storre fry food and
Speaker 2: it was so good.
Speaker 3: I had several mini croissants that I got discounted at
Speaker 3: fred Meyer.
Speaker 2: I like croissants, Sophie, did you have a starch for
Speaker 2: lunch today?
Speaker 1: I had two Italian sausages and an apple sauce.
Speaker 2: Oh. I think you're the healthiest of the three of
Speaker 2: us right now, you're the one.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well. We also have an audio engineer named Eva hi
Speaker 2: Eva Hiva hi Eva, and our theme music was written
Speaker 2: forced by unwoman and you have unwittingly come in in
Speaker 2: the middle of me. It's not a series, but it's
Speaker 2: kind of a series. I've been talking a lot about
Speaker 2: the alter globalization movement of the late nineties and early
Speaker 2: oughts for the past couple months because I've been talking
Speaker 2: a lot about the sort of protest infrastructure that people built,
Speaker 2: and so I've been focusing on various groups that came
Speaker 2: together to create the modern protest infrastructure, and specifically this
Speaker 2: grand movement of movements that relied on decentralized organizing I'm
Speaker 2: going to do this long build up before I give
Speaker 2: you the topic. And the movement of movements especially kind
Speaker 2: of came from decentralized organizing techniques developed by the Zapatistas
Speaker 2: in Chiapus, Mexico, as well as anarchist traditions, and they
Speaker 2: challenged neoliberalism and the challenge the way that structural adjustment
Speaker 2: programs are destroying country's economies and basically just destroying the
Speaker 2: global self. We talked about how the Zapatistas in Mexico
Speaker 2: broke from traditional leftist organizing by introducing indigenous ae ideas
Speaker 2: around decentralization and bottom up democracy, and we talked about
Speaker 2: how they started to organize various grassroop groups and movements
Speaker 2: from around the world to call for a movement against neoliberalism.
Speaker 2: And what we're going to talk about today is one
Speaker 2: of the mechanisms by which they were able to do
Speaker 2: some of that organizing. But I'm still not going to
Speaker 2: tell you what we're going to talk about yet. I'm
Speaker 2: building it up as if it's like this dramatic reveal,
Speaker 2: but I love it. We also talked about the Black
Speaker 2: Bloc protesters that started in Germany and spread across Europe
Speaker 2: to the rest of the world, how they provided an
Speaker 2: alternative to the existing dichotomy with like either regimented nonviolence
Speaker 2: on one side or like armed guerrilla movements on the
Speaker 2: other side. We talked about the National Lawyer's Guild, and
Speaker 2: we talked about street medics and maybe I'm just listening
Speaker 2: to all these things because if you like come in
Speaker 2: on just this one, they're like, oh wow, all those
Speaker 2: things sound great too. We also talked about street theater
Speaker 2: and giant puppets. But this week we were going to
Speaker 2: talk about yet another component of the successful protests, independent media.
Speaker 2: This week are going to talk about the decentralized grassroots
Speaker 2: collective of independent journalists fundamentally changed our media landscape forever,
Speaker 2: sometimes in ways that made it much worse. This week
Speaker 2: we are talking about indie media I N D Y Media.
Speaker 2: You ever heard of them? Hmmm, excellent? Then this will
Speaker 2: be fun. I'm excited. This is the Independent Media Center
Speaker 2: or the IMC as no one remembers it. If people
Speaker 2: remember it at all, they remember it as indie media,
Speaker 2: spelled with the Y. This is still around, but in
Speaker 2: a much diminished form, but its impacts are outsized. I
Speaker 2: am going to draw a direct link from indie media
Speaker 2: to Twitter and therefore the destruction of all of our brains.
Speaker 2: That's my plan today. Oh well, you ever heard of
Speaker 2: Twitter's sorry, that sounded terrible. Certain you've heard of Twitter.
Speaker 3: It is like, don't you feel though that Twitter, like,
Speaker 3: even when it was at its biggest, felt a little
Speaker 3: bit too quaint in a way because it was based
Speaker 3: on words, you know, like you could feel it being
Speaker 3: the last big thing based on sentences.
Speaker 2: Oh interesting, Like it was doomed because it's not going
Speaker 2: to be because the next one was photo and the
Speaker 2: next one after that was video.
Speaker 3: Just yeah, this feeling of like this is sort of
Speaker 3: like the last gasp of language based sort of viral
Speaker 3: media online or language based social media as opposed to
Speaker 3: image based, because you could get really big on Twitter
Speaker 3: as an ugly person, is what I'm really saying here.
Speaker 3: That's true, and those doors aren't open anymore.
Speaker 2: I hate every single time I have to do video
Speaker 2: for something. Every single time someone's like, hey, can you
Speaker 2: promote this thing that you're doing? Sent just just really quick,
Speaker 2: just send us a sixty second video of it. And
Speaker 2: I'm like, oh, yeah, that's a that's a real quick.
Speaker 3: You're like, are you telling me to act like a
Speaker 3: normal person? Who's you know, impression of a normal person.
Speaker 3: People won't pick apart until I want to leave this
Speaker 3: industry forever. Like that's going to take me.
Speaker 2: I know, I know, I have to either wear makeup
Speaker 2: or not. I have to think about it. I gotta
Speaker 2: cut my fucking bangs. I gotta like figure out my
Speaker 2: lightning and backdrop. It is.
Speaker 3: It's a whole production to be a person.
Speaker 2: It really is, well, especially to be like a similacro
Speaker 2: of a person on the internet. Being a person's fine.
Speaker 2: I'll go out in public. Public is fine. It's the
Speaker 2: Internet that's a problem.
Speaker 3: Well, And you know what I think about with that
Speaker 3: is Nicole Kidman and To Die For. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: she plays this character who's like a product of like
Speaker 3: tabloid media and nineties TV news, and she's got this
Speaker 3: speech about how like if everyone were on TV, then
Speaker 3: everyone would be paved better because we would all be
Speaker 3: being watched all the time. But also if everyone's on TV,
Speaker 3: then who's gonna watch us? And it's like that's what
Speaker 3: we're doing right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's the present. Although I feel like instead
Speaker 2: it's just like we've created like weird micro celebrity culture
Speaker 2: and I don't know, I mean not that podcasting me
Speaker 2: into it. But at least it's just my voice. That's
Speaker 2: how I feel.
Speaker 3: About it, exactly. At least you're not performing in more
Speaker 3: ways than the way that you consented to. Maybe that's
Speaker 3: appealing to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah. All I have to do is get on Mike,
Speaker 2: pretend like my day has been wonderful and have energy
Speaker 2: for a little while.
Speaker 3: That's all I gotta do, or at least pretend like
Speaker 3: my day hasn't been distractingly bad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, And I actually had a nice day
Speaker 2: to day, although literally all of my day today was
Speaker 2: writing this script to finishing this script. But it was
Speaker 2: a nice day.
Speaker 3: But if that's a nice day, Benny, I'm extra excited
Speaker 3: for it.
Speaker 2: It was a like moment where I was explaining to
Speaker 2: someone the thing that I've researched, and I've been like,
Speaker 2: I'm going to explain a really niche topic. I'm glad
Speaker 2: I have a good guest. The short version of indie
Speaker 2: media is that, basically in the late nineties, at the
Speaker 2: Big Seattle protests against the World Trade Organization November nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety nine, people were like, we actually need a media infrastructure,
Speaker 2: We need a structure of independent media. And it actually
Speaker 2: comes out of not just like random people who want
Speaker 2: to post conspiracy theory stuff though we'll get to that later,
Speaker 2: but it comes out of like people who are journalists
Speaker 2: who are like, the existing infrastructure is not going to
Speaker 2: work for what we're going to try and do. They
Speaker 2: got together with a bunch of techies and they created
Speaker 2: what's not the first status update based website, but the
Speaker 2: first big one, the first idea that people can be like, oh,
Speaker 2: this is what happened today, and people can all post
Speaker 2: that and share that and see that, and that allowed
Speaker 2: the protest movement to accomplish amazing things. It also allowed
Speaker 2: that protest movement to not be disappeared as much by
Speaker 2: mainstream media, and it led to a lot of knock
Speaker 2: on effects, and not like an indirect way. I'm going
Speaker 2: to like name specific people who are the through line
Speaker 2: between the modern social media landscape and this thing that
Speaker 2: was put together for some protests. That's the basic idea
Speaker 2: of indie media. I love it. Yeah, Indie media was
Speaker 2: like my political awakening in a lot of ways. When
Speaker 2: I was a teenager. I was an art student, and
Speaker 2: I was brand new to politics, and I was living
Speaker 2: in New York City, and I walked in off the
Speaker 2: street to an Indie Media New York meeting and I
Speaker 2: got to play this like tiny minor part in running
Speaker 2: a newspaper, like a print newspaper that's still around today,
Speaker 2: and join a video collective of people putting together video.
Speaker 2: I just spent all of this time talking trash on video,
Speaker 2: but I absolutely well, I didn't worry as much about
Speaker 2: how I looked when I was nineteen years old. A
Speaker 2: year later, I was living in Portland, Oregon, and I
Speaker 2: was essentially working full time with the indie media video
Speaker 2: collective there. In exchange for shooting and editing videos and
Speaker 2: helping run events, I was given a room in a
Speaker 2: tiny apartment over an auto shop, and less than a
Speaker 2: year after dropping out of art school, a film I
Speaker 2: edited sold out a movie theater, and I was giving
Speaker 2: talks at universities to students that were older than me. Wow,
Speaker 2: So I'm really fond of indie media, or I'm really
Speaker 2: fond of what it was in two thousand and two. Man,
Speaker 2: But what is it? Where did it come from? I
Speaker 2: know that you want context. So one of the things
Speaker 2: that comes up all the time when I'm researching this shit,
Speaker 2: and I suspect we didn't talk about what you do.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, you run a podcast called You're wrong about
Speaker 2: I Do. You're right about that? Sorry? Oh shit, Oh no,
Speaker 2: you're allowed to make terrible jokes about That's true. That's
Speaker 2: how that works.
Speaker 3: If you listen to podcast, people have probably like bothered
Speaker 3: you about it at some point, and if you're like me,
Speaker 3: then you haven't listened to it, because at some point
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty one you were like, stop bringing this
Speaker 3: show up, is what I would assume. And so either
Speaker 3: you have or you haven't listened to it, And if
Speaker 3: you haven't listened to it, then like, look, I'm not
Speaker 3: gonna persuade yet. You get to decide what you do
Speaker 3: with your own time.
Speaker 2: It's fine.
Speaker 3: But it started off as a show about misremembered history
Speaker 3: and sort of classic tabloid narratives like Tiny Harding and
Speaker 3: Lorraina Bobbitt and stories that we.
Speaker 2: Sort of.
Speaker 3: That people sort of like kind of could remember but
Speaker 3: would often sort of remember through USNL parodies, which is
Speaker 3: certainly how I learned history. And now it's kind of
Speaker 3: expanded into like, you know, I like to talk about
Speaker 3: things through that lens of historical misunderstanding and misremembering and
Speaker 3: sort of how the truth gets obscured. But also it's just,
Speaker 3: you know, a show about stuff I find interesting. And
Speaker 3: so our most recent episode that we just put out
Speaker 3: this week is on the history of the Corn Maze.
Speaker 3: That was so fun for me to do.
Speaker 2: You do love corn? That's cool.
Speaker 3: I love Coorn, and I'm okay with mazes. I mainly
Speaker 3: love corn and I had I'm Chelsea Webber Smith who
Speaker 3: loves mazes, and so that even doubt a good fit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is good. So do you run across this
Speaker 2: thing where people have an idea about how people were
Speaker 2: in the past, and how ideas that we take for
Speaker 2: granted right now people think just like have been around
Speaker 2: forever and are actually reasonably new.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think one of the really interesting
Speaker 3: sort of aspects of history and historian ship I guess
Speaker 3: to me is like things that are way newer than
Speaker 3: we would think, and things that are way more timeless
Speaker 3: as human behavior than we would think, you know, because
Speaker 3: I think both of those things occur.
Speaker 2: The example that I'm going to use in this script
Speaker 2: although it's not totally related. Is that the idea of
Speaker 2: being a homosexual or of being a heterosexual about one
Speaker 2: hundred to one hundred and fifty years.
Speaker 3: Old, right, I know, And that's the kind of thing
Speaker 3: that like feels shocking, but also when you think about it,
Speaker 3: you're like, hmm, yeah.
Speaker 2: No, totally. The first time someone was like, being straight
Speaker 2: a is about one hundred year old idea, I was like,
Speaker 2: there's no way that's true. And then I read about
Speaker 2: it and I was like, oh, yeah, no, that kind
Speaker 2: of makes sense actually.
Speaker 3: And then you're like, of course straightness is a new
Speaker 3: concept because it's just so weird.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, If it were innate, it wouldn't be so hard
Speaker 3: to make people, do you know?
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. If the gender binary is so obvious and natural,
Speaker 2: then why do we need laws to enforce it.
Speaker 3: It's a great question. There aren't any laws enforcing gravity, interestingly.
Speaker 2: Enough, Yeah, yeah, totally. All objects must fall down. Yeah no,
Speaker 2: one's like damn you birds except hunters maybe, but yeah.
Speaker 2: So another idea that is about as old is the
Speaker 2: idea of being gay or straight is the idea of
Speaker 2: journalistic objectivity.
Speaker 3: Oh boy, yeah, I guess that makes sense.
Speaker 2: The idea that a journalist presents the facts and not
Speaker 2: opinions is brand new in the grand scheme of things.
Speaker 3: Yeah see, and I never thought about that. But then
Speaker 3: you're like, yeah, how long of journalists even existed?
Speaker 2: For not that long? Yeah no, I don't I know
Speaker 2: about the journalistic objectivity. But now I'm like, I wonder
Speaker 2: how long our concept of journalism? I wonder how that is?
Speaker 3: Right, or just like you know, if you look at
Speaker 3: like the Great you know what like all these dead
Speaker 3: guys who like in cells like to have is their
Speaker 3: profile pictures for some reason, right, like all the dead Greeks.
Speaker 3: I don't know how that happened. But like herodotus, it's like,
Speaker 3: what's history about? It's like, well, you just make stuff
Speaker 3: up mainly, and then you sort of, yeah, it's fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we start.
Speaker 3: To care about accuracy and academia probably not that long ago.
Speaker 2: Well, what's interesting is the idea of journalistic objectivity. It's
Speaker 2: not as like a one sided thing as I actually
Speaker 2: kind of would have expected going into this, because it's
Speaker 2: not like before this everyone just lied for fun, right,
Speaker 2: But if you go back into the New York Times
Speaker 2: archives and read their nineteenth century reporting, which I've had
Speaker 2: to do a bunch of times for the show. Nay, yeah,
Speaker 2: it is blatantly opinionated. And the thing is is that
Speaker 2: New York Times is one of the main places that
Speaker 2: the concept of objective journalism comes from, just decades elating.
Speaker 3: And now they've come full circle. So that's really good.
Speaker 2: Well, that's part of the danger. It's actually part of
Speaker 2: why endi media exists, right, is that you have this
Speaker 2: thing where like, oh, we're the objective people. So when
Speaker 2: they have an obvious bias, it's not presented as an
Speaker 2: obvious bias, right, It's presented as the objective truth unless
Speaker 2: it's on the opinion page, you know, which is why
Speaker 2: the Onion is the only true newspaper. All journalism is
Speaker 2: still biased. Some journalists hide that bias, some journalists try
Speaker 2: to counteract their own biases, and others are a little
Speaker 2: bit more blatant about their bias. But journalistic objectivity didn't
Speaker 2: become the standard because it was like better or more moral.
Speaker 2: It was because it's sold better.
Speaker 3: Wow, Okay, that's interesting. I would not have thought that.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't have thought it either, and it doesn't always
Speaker 2: sell better, but it was able to stand out in
Speaker 2: the field, because in the eighteen nineties you have a
Speaker 2: lot of like yellow journalism, which is basically tabloid journalism.
Speaker 2: It's the journalism of scandal and half lies and full
Speaker 2: lies scandal. That is how if I was a yellow journalist,
Speaker 2: I would tell you that that's how it's pronounced because
Speaker 2: it sounds better, it might sell more.
Speaker 3: No, you don't have to tell the truth. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: this is like, how important was Hurst in the history
Speaker 3: of yellow journalism. He's like, based on my seventh grade education,
Speaker 3: I assume, So, okay, it's good to know that the.
Speaker 2: New York Journal I think was his paper. And yeah,
Speaker 2: pullets are in Hurst. Wait, pullets are in Hurst. They
Speaker 2: think we're not. Oh we not. No, it's crazy. We
Speaker 2: did a whole episode. I'm no, I don't think you
Speaker 2: were the guests. No, but I was cheering from afar.
Speaker 2: We did a whole two parter on the actual newsy strike.
Speaker 2: If anyone wants to go back and hear.
Speaker 3: Yeah, everybody should. I mean, it's very inspiring to me.
Speaker 3: How in the actual history you're like, oh, they actually
Speaker 3: did like terrify all these industries who were like, oh no,
Speaker 3: we can't let children get this many ideas about labor unions.
Speaker 3: This could really screw us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's actually a lot of I mean when
Speaker 2: I think back of like twentieth century journalism that claims
Speaker 2: to be very objective and then I see its lies,
Speaker 2: it's very rarely that I'm like, ah, they printed things
Speaker 2: that were untrue, but instead by like choosing where their
Speaker 2: focus is. I'm like, when labor history is written out
Speaker 2: of history, you're like, oh, yeah, there's probably some protests
Speaker 2: here and there, you know, And then you're like, oh,
Speaker 2: protest and disruption is like the engine of progress.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that the reaction against it is like the
Speaker 3: driving force shaping the world we now live in.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, Yeah, and that like the crime of like lying
Speaker 3: by omission is actually seems a lot more serious in
Speaker 3: many ways.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because it's harder to fact check, right, because you're like, well,
Speaker 2: I guess everything you wrote is true.
Speaker 3: God, Yeah, because you can't fact check. Leaving stuff out
Speaker 3: of the record, it's just like, well, we had limited space,
Speaker 3: we couldn't fit in another page.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not one more page. There's a lot of people
Speaker 2: who've been very important in history, and other parts about
Speaker 2: them are left out of it, right, like, it's very
Speaker 2: hard to find when people did sex work. If someone
Speaker 2: did sex work and they did something important, no one
Speaker 2: talks about the sex work. But also if someone was
Speaker 2: a radical leftist and they're not known for being a
Speaker 2: radical leftist, that is left out. Are you thinking about
Speaker 2: Helen Keller, Oh yeah, that's a perfect example. Yeah, it
Speaker 2: is completely left out.
Speaker 3: And then yeah, honorary Wobbly Helen Keller.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So to quote about yellow journalism, I'm
Speaker 2: going to quote Joseph Patrick mccerns from the book History
Speaker 2: of American Journalism. The yellow journalism of the eighteen nineties
Speaker 2: and the tabloid journalism of the nineteen twenties and thirties
Speaker 2: stigmatize the press as a profit motivated purveyor of cheap
Speaker 2: thrills and vicarious experiments. To its many critics, it seemed
Speaker 2: as though the press was using the freedom from regulation
Speaker 2: it enjoyed under the First Amendment to make money instead
Speaker 2: of using it to fulfill its vital role as an
Speaker 2: independent source of information in a democracy. So yellow journalism
Speaker 2: is popular, right, but it is heavily criticized. So it
Speaker 2: creates this niche for someone to be like, yeah, fuck
Speaker 2: that stuff. We're going to give you the truth, and
Speaker 2: do you know what the best way to pay for
Speaker 2: the truth is advertising advertising. It's the part where you
Speaker 2: just say this part's a lie and everyone drops pretending
Speaker 2: like anything's objective, like what's about to happen, and we're back.
Speaker 2: The biggest like turning point for yellow journalism, or at
Speaker 2: least in history, when people look back and they're like, oh,
Speaker 2: that didn't do us any good, at least in the
Speaker 2: United States context, is when yellow journalism and Hurst sparked
Speaker 2: a whole ass war.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that does seem to be taking things too far.
Speaker 3: The Newsy's made out very well though.
Speaker 2: That's true. That's true. Well, no, they actually had to
Speaker 2: fight really hard in order to make out half decent.
Speaker 2: They lived horrible conditions.
Speaker 3: But yes, oh no, but I mean they could sell
Speaker 3: papers about the war.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah. I used to write.
Speaker 3: About that my fan fiction and have my newsies being
Speaker 3: nostalgic for the Spanish American War. That's amazing. Can folks
Speaker 3: find this fan fiction? I hope they don't, but if
Speaker 3: you do, you know, God bless you. It was like
Speaker 3: I was his writing the horniest stuff. Okay, maybe I
Speaker 3: don't need to know it if it's yeah, all right, Really,
Speaker 3: I strove her historical accuracy the entire time.
Speaker 2: I suspect that the average like weird erotic thing historical
Speaker 2: fiction is going to be more accurate than like other
Speaker 2: mainstream things, because I think that it takes a certain mindset.
Speaker 3: You have to be kind of detail oriented.
Speaker 2: Yeah, probably exactly.
Speaker 3: I just want to solve the prop coffee cup problem.
Speaker 3: It would be so hard to put something a little
Speaker 3: bit heavy in those things. You know, when you have
Speaker 3: like actors handling empty coffee cups and they're just like
Speaker 3: flinging them around as if there's nothing inside them, drives
Speaker 3: me insane anyway. Yeah, yeah, when you cause a war
Speaker 3: that does seem rather extreme.
Speaker 2: And what happened was is that the Spanish American War
Speaker 2: was in many ways caused by the USS. Main was
Speaker 2: sunk in eighteen ninety eight in Havana, and the New
Speaker 2: York Journal made a huge, huge scandal out of it,
Speaker 2: and it drove popular outcry to go to war. And
Speaker 2: I don't remember all of the ins and outs of
Speaker 2: it enough to get more into it here, but I've
Speaker 2: known it more before.
Speaker 3: But is it like arguably it just sort of like
Speaker 3: sank for normal reasons.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's what I remember. The last time I
Speaker 2: looked into this.
Speaker 3: Like a boiler exploded or something like that. Yeah, because
Speaker 3: ships do sink famously.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. So by the end of the nineteenth century,
Speaker 2: people are starting to get extra critical about all the
Speaker 2: fake news of yellow journalism, and a local conservative rag
Speaker 2: in New York City with the uninspired name no one's
Speaker 2: ever heard of this paper, The New York Times pivoted
Speaker 2: to being all about being objective.
Speaker 3: That's so interesting that people like, don't you find it
Speaker 3: kind of heartening to think of people being like, hey,
Speaker 3: I actually do not like being lied to, you know,
Speaker 3: like I guess everyone, you know, a lot of people
Speaker 3: are saying that today. But then there's so many other
Speaker 3: people who seem to be louder who were like I
Speaker 3: love being lied too, and it's hard to think straight.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I am sure there are people who went
Speaker 2: in that direction because they felt those their moral duty
Speaker 2: to be objective. But as interesting is even at like
Speaker 2: some of the more tabloidy papers at the time, they
Speaker 2: would have like signs on the wall that are like truth,
Speaker 2: the truth matters. But it was kind of in this
Speaker 2: like tell the truth, but as like wildly and sensationally
Speaker 2: as possible, you know.
Speaker 3: Like tell what's technically the truth, or like you know,
Speaker 3: and beyond belief factor fiction whether like that one's true,
Speaker 3: it's based on actual events, based on our research, and
Speaker 3: you're like.
Speaker 2: Well, that doesn't make sense.
Speaker 3: True, it was like a grain of truth maybe in it,
Speaker 3: but that's not you know, it's like the showing me
Speaker 3: a pearl and saying this is made out of sand,
Speaker 3: and it's like in a way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, totally so, at least according to an article
Speaker 2: in Just or Daily. In the late nineteenth century, being
Speaker 2: really into science was in vogue, and so this idea
Speaker 2: of objectivity was a way to be like the proper
Speaker 2: modern scientific person.
Speaker 3: Actually, that does sound a little bit too like you know,
Speaker 3: male culture today, because like you know, I'm sure all
Speaker 3: these very objective people also didn't realize anger was an emotion.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, but good for them. Well, I mean,
Speaker 2: they only have one emotion, so they're just real good
Speaker 2: at it, and they just not recognize as part of
Speaker 2: the larger palette.
Speaker 3: Just seems like background noise.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah. The New York Times and other papers were
Speaker 2: really into kind of just cashing in on this trend
Speaker 2: of being the like worthy, objective people. We are the
Speaker 2: good scientific people, we are the modern people.
Speaker 3: This is pretty charming as a trend.
Speaker 2: It's true. I do prefer this. I want to be clear,
Speaker 2: I'm being cynical about it, but it's like better than
Speaker 2: just everyone lying. Yeah, exactly, I'll take what I can get. Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2: A trade paper at the time called The Journalist wrote, quote,
Speaker 2: the most successful journalists are those that are able to
Speaker 2: give the facts, the whole facts, and nothing but the
Speaker 2: facts and brief, pithy sentences, the majority of which contain
Speaker 2: not more than a dozen words. And so it was this, like,
Speaker 2: that's the new style of news. So they just kind
Speaker 2: of invented the news one day. Yeah, I mean they
Speaker 2: had the news, but the way we understand the news,
Speaker 2: they invented the news. It's news two point oh yeah, totally. Yeah. Oh,
Speaker 2: which is interesting because NDI media is literally going to
Speaker 2: invent the web two point zero.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The point of view of journalists was slowly stripped
Speaker 2: out of the news journalists present to present themselves as
Speaker 2: to quote another paper at the time of the writer quote,
Speaker 2: to be the unmoved observer of events, to see things
Speaker 2: exactly as they are, without regard to possible motives which
Speaker 2: may have produced them.
Speaker 3: Which is also sexually a Victorian mail view of like
Speaker 3: what's possible, where it's like who could do that?
Speaker 2: Right? And so we start seeing now you can start
Speaker 2: seeing some of the downsides of this turn. Right, You're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: we're not going to talk about why someone was so
Speaker 2: mad that they did this thing. Right, Like a riot
Speaker 2: or broke a window is modern news, right, but not
Speaker 2: someone who has been impoverished by capitalism is lashing out
Speaker 2: against what's happening right, right, And so it's another form
Speaker 2: of lie by emission sometimes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it also feels like just by stating an utterly
Speaker 3: impossible goal and acting like that's the format. It's like saying,
Speaker 3: here at this hospital, no one literally no one dies,
Speaker 3: We hear everyone of all their diseases, and everyone walks
Speaker 3: out alive and with twenty bucks. And it's like, but
Speaker 3: you're not going to do that. You can't do that.
Speaker 2: No one can, yeah, totally, and no one can be
Speaker 2: truly objective either, Right, Trying for objectivity still feels well,
Speaker 2: trying for objectivity in the action fact finding feels important. Me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, yeah, and so I think there's like
Speaker 3: an element of objectivity where it's like, like, if I'm
Speaker 3: going to try and write a story as objectively as possible,
Speaker 3: part of that is me acknowledging my position as a
Speaker 3: person making these observations and acknowledging what my limits are.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, you know, It's like I think about the shit
Speaker 2: a lot, right, I run a history podcast, and I also, yeah,
Speaker 2: there you go. My terrible joke I wrote into this episode.
Speaker 2: I wear my politics on my sleeve, but to be
Speaker 2: more literal, I cut the sleeves off of all of
Speaker 2: my shirts, which reveals my prominent anarchist tattoo on my
Speaker 2: upper shoulder.
Speaker 1: So fucking real, Magpie.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's perfect. But I want to tell the
Speaker 2: truth even when it's inconvenient to my political aims. For example,
Speaker 2: all the times on the show where I've had to
Speaker 2: talk about the popularity of eugenics among political people on
Speaker 2: both sides of the spectrum of the early twentieth century,
Speaker 2: including people I would otherwise look up to, And even
Speaker 2: at the time when all this new objectivity is coming in,
Speaker 2: there's criticism of it that actually meant something. It wasn't
Speaker 2: just like Bob but we want to sell more papers
Speaker 2: by start wars. That's the closest I've done to an
Speaker 2: old timey news voice. Thank you, thank you. I'm a
Speaker 2: workshop that one. In eighteen ninety one, a journalist named W. J.
Speaker 2: Stillman wrote about how journalism went from talking about quote
Speaker 2: the questions and answers of contemporary life to quote collecting, condensing,
Speaker 2: and assimilating the trivialities of the entire human experience to
Speaker 2: get insult I know. And that's like I went into
Speaker 2: it being like, I've had my criticisms of ostensibly objective
Speaker 2: media for a long time, but seeing more of them,
Speaker 2: while still also being like, it's still better if we
Speaker 2: don't do yellow journalism, you know. Yeah, and podcasting really
Speaker 2: is the rebirth of yellow journalism.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, it's interesting, how like, I don't know, I
Speaker 3: like to me, the answer is not format as much
Speaker 3: as just being willing to be boring when the occasion
Speaker 3: calls for it, because there are just some things that
Speaker 3: can't be stated excitingly, and if you can't make it exciting,
Speaker 3: you shouldn't have to in order for it to be
Speaker 3: able to be circulated to an audience, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but what if the area of this circle is
Speaker 2: three thousand, nine hundred and twenty four meters radical. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and you know what that means. That means that if
Speaker 2: you divide it, I can't do enough math to do
Speaker 2: this bit any further, Like I know. So, The New
Speaker 2: York Times and other papers invented the myth or the
Speaker 2: ideal of objective journalism at the opening of the twentieth century.
Speaker 2: By nineteen ten, some folks adopted a code of ethics
Speaker 2: for journalism, and by nineteen fifties most publications had code
Speaker 2: of ethics that were like, we don't say things that
Speaker 2: we know are lies.
Speaker 3: I would love to know which papers were like the
Speaker 3: last holdouts, you know, before getting on that. We're finally
Speaker 3: they're like, okay, we won't lie on purpose anymore. It's
Speaker 3: nineteen fifty seven.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I gotta get with the Times. Ah, get with
Speaker 2: the Times, because the New York anyway.
Speaker 3: Right, the best puns happen purely by accident.
Speaker 2: That's true.
Speaker 3: It's like when you drop your toast and it falls
Speaker 3: jam side up and nobody sees.
Speaker 2: If no one's around to see, did it happen? I know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it really does make me feel like a liar.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, so that's some context around the mainstream news.
Speaker 2: It presents itself as objective, it often tries to be.
Speaker 2: There are upsides and downsides of that. Meanwhile, all along,
Speaker 2: since before the rise of objective journalism, activists and political
Speaker 2: radicals have been presenting counter narratives through their own newspapers
Speaker 2: and radio shows and news outlets, most of the time,
Speaker 2: often to their discredit. Activist papers don't really try for
Speaker 2: the same level of objectivity. Some don't try for that
Speaker 2: because they think objectivity is a myth, and they try
Speaker 2: to be honest about their biases. I will not pretend
Speaker 2: that this is an objective show. I just try to
Speaker 2: be really clear about my biases. It's actually just kind
Speaker 2: of as a side note, It's one of the reasons
Speaker 2: that I like talk about my politics on this show
Speaker 2: is less to convince people of it and more so
Speaker 2: that people can like ignore part of what I say, right.
Speaker 2: They can like be like, well, that BET's just saying
Speaker 2: that because she thinks the following, you know, right, And like,
Speaker 2: I mean.
Speaker 3: Do you ever have a review where you're like, she
Speaker 3: said something that I found stupid or like made a
Speaker 3: dumb mistake, and that makes me not trust what she
Speaker 3: says about other stuff, And I'm like, yeah, you shouldn't
Speaker 3: trust me. Why do you trust me?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I totally earned that totally.
Speaker 3: You don't have to automatically trust everyone who is talking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I am not on a pedestal. I'm on a soapbox.
Speaker 2: These are fundamentally different platforms. Yeah, you know, one of
Speaker 2: them smaller, like yeah, and I have to research a
Speaker 2: new subject every week, like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like yeah, like I would love for you
Speaker 3: to listen, but also like assume that I could very
Speaker 3: easily be wrong right about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, wow, Sarah, Thank you, Sophie.
Speaker 2: Like, I try really hard to be right about stuff.
Speaker 2: But one of the things that I do often when
Speaker 2: I not every single time, but often when I do
Speaker 2: a topic is I'll listen to other people who've like
Speaker 2: done the sort of more pop culture version of the topic,
Speaker 2: and it's always so wrong and it makes me scared
Speaker 2: about my own shit, right, because I'm like, oh, everyone
Speaker 2: just regurgitates the same like ten factoids about a thing,
Speaker 2: and that happens so much.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they get sort of like well worn, like riverstones,
Speaker 3: and you can see a misapprehension getting passed around by sources.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. Yeah, and it it's hard because then I'm like, well,
Speaker 2: I need to try not to do that. And one
Speaker 2: of the main things that messes with my schedule does
Speaker 2: that I'll start researching something, you know, because I'll start
Speaker 2: with the big picture thing, I'll read the big picture stuff,
Speaker 2: and then I'll dive into the details and learn more
Speaker 2: about it. And sometimes I'm like we record on Thursdays.
Speaker 2: Sometimes on like Wednesday night at midnight, I'm like, well,
Speaker 2: everything I read was a lie, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And then you're like, well, now, like our attempt
Speaker 3: to like fit research and acquiring information onto a calendar
Speaker 3: is once again imperfect because like, obviously we'd rather find
Speaker 3: the actual truth than stick to the calendar. But not
Speaker 3: everybody gets to do that, and in fact, it's like
Speaker 3: weird to be able to do that. Yeah, totally, and
Speaker 3: that's you know, so it's I feel like one of
Speaker 3: the things I find interesting is like, by making media
Speaker 3: about how media gets.
Speaker 2: It wrong, you like.
Speaker 3: Learn a lot and I think develop greater empathy for
Speaker 3: the people who get it wrong because that also comes
Speaker 3: to include you inevitably.
Speaker 2: Totally. Yeah, then no one is perfect. Oh wait a second,
Speaker 2: I'm a person if all people are flogged. Yeah, what
Speaker 2: does that say about me?
Speaker 3: Oh no, Yeah, and especially I think people who want
Speaker 3: to like comment on others, there's like a degree of like, well,
Speaker 3: if I'm talking about people, then I'm escaping the problems
Speaker 3: of the human condition. And it's like, no, you brought
Speaker 3: them with you as a carry on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I bet you have a similar problem on
Speaker 1: your research, Sarah, that Margaret has in her research, which
Speaker 1: is she'll researched an entire person and find out that
Speaker 1: they were like horrible to their wife. And it happens
Speaker 1: all the time.
Speaker 2: You're like, what a really.
Speaker 1: Cool guy slash, I hate him and would hit him
Speaker 1: with my car.
Speaker 2: Yes, so many happens all the time.
Speaker 3: Also, because I want to do more kind of little
Speaker 3: bonus like audio book content things, and like it is
Speaker 3: so hard to find a book in the public domain
Speaker 3: that's like interesting to read and isn't racist. Oh yeah,
Speaker 3: like The Great Gatsby is in the public domain, but
Speaker 3: that doesn't do me any Nope.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it's yeah, I agree, old literature. You're like, well,
Speaker 2: I wouldn't work with an audiobook, but when I do,
Speaker 2: like Coolsone Media book Club and I read an old thing.
Speaker 2: Sometimes I have to be like, hey, let me contextualize
Speaker 2: the way that this author wrote about this thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah you know, yeah, but if you're reading the whole
Speaker 3: thing out loud, you're like, okay, yeah, well, oh didn't
Speaker 3: remember that part. I want to do the wind in
Speaker 3: the Willows at some point, but I have to like
Speaker 3: reread it because like, what if Toad hates Puerto Ricans
Speaker 3: or something. I don't know, maybe he does. People just
Speaker 3: did that in books back then, and it was asleep,
Speaker 3: no one even remembered it well.
Speaker 2: And actually, to tie this into when people moved into
Speaker 2: this scientific mode in the late nineteenth century, a lot
Speaker 2: of really awful stuff comes specifically out of that, Like
Speaker 2: the history of anthropology has an awful lot of real
Speaker 2: dark racism that is like specifically around like we're being
Speaker 2: so scientific, yeah you know, and so it's like.
Speaker 3: And we are taxonomizing people of color just like we
Speaker 3: would with sharks or something exactly.
Speaker 2: And it's that same the facts don't care about your
Speaker 2: feelings thing where it's like, actually, if you took some
Speaker 2: humanities classes, you'd realize that these are related concepts, you.
Speaker 3: Know, yes, and using like your commitment to objectivity as
Speaker 3: a way of defending your own lack of objectivity by
Speaker 3: being like, it's science. I'm just saying facts. And it's
Speaker 3: like you're refusing to analyze your emotional response to something
Speaker 3: and calling it facts. But yeah, whatever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So all these activists since me any time will
Speaker 2: write their own papers to try and counter traditional narratives,
Speaker 2: and they will do it in all kinds of ways.
Speaker 2: They will sometimes like like sometimes they're like, I don't
Speaker 2: care about the truth because my goal is more important
Speaker 2: than the truth, right, They're like convincing everyone to follow
Speaker 2: this or that ideology is more important. Yeah, and that's
Speaker 2: clearly the most dangerous and you should run far away
Speaker 2: from any instinct you have towards that and anything that
Speaker 2: you're reading that you realize this was happening. And other
Speaker 2: people are just like trying to be kind of objective
Speaker 2: but fail and whatever. And some people actually, sometimes activist
Speaker 2: papers are reasonably objective and written the same journalistic standards.
Speaker 2: It's just activist whatever has a bad rap because of
Speaker 2: the number of people who are pushing an agenda. First
Speaker 2: and foremost, half of the radicals of the nineteenth century
Speaker 2: that I've talked about on the show run their own newspapers.
Speaker 2: There's also this long history of soapboxing a forgotten art.
Speaker 2: I remember reading about this public square in Chicago and
Speaker 2: the nineteen tens that was, like, what you do for
Speaker 2: entertainment on your like night off is head to the
Speaker 2: square and listen to speakers.
Speaker 3: Isn't that proof that TikTok is like not as new
Speaker 3: as we think it is exactly?
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is the first TikTok, the first tumbler Twitter like,
Speaker 2: and what they show in movies gets it wrong because
Speaker 2: usually in a movie it's like kind of like a
Speaker 2: wild rant or even just an impassion and speech. Right.
Speaker 2: Soapboxers were basically stand up comics with an agenda because
Speaker 2: they are they know how to work crowds. They do
Speaker 2: crowd work real well, and they like because they're competing
Speaker 2: in this real direct way. You go to a public
Speaker 2: square and it's not just like one person on a soapbox.
Speaker 2: There's like thirty of them. I'm making that number up.
Speaker 2: I have literally no idea how many in any given place,
Speaker 2: but like more than one, which is exciting. Yeah. So
Speaker 2: activist media various kinds, both the like written down in
Speaker 2: a newspaper and the you know soapbox kind always existed,
Speaker 2: and there's one more piece to put into place to
Speaker 2: get a st indie media. There's something called an info shop.
Speaker 2: This is a word that I have taken for granted
Speaker 2: that I think most people don't know. This is Yeah.
Speaker 3: I love it, and I've never heard that before. I
Speaker 3: don't think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a kind of storefront. It is part of
Speaker 2: the activist, especially anarchist media landscape. The name is a
Speaker 2: direct translation from German. We talked about a little bit
Speaker 2: in the Black Block episode about the autonomists and their
Speaker 2: stuff that they were creating in the seventies and eighties
Speaker 2: and how that started to spread around the world a
Speaker 2: little bit where they were like, we want lives outside
Speaker 2: of the mainstream culture, and they would build an entire
Speaker 2: subcultural community, and that those communities had infoshops. It's somewhere
Speaker 2: on the continuum between a radical bookstore and a social center.
Speaker 2: You can go in and there's going to be like
Speaker 2: zines and books, maybe a lending library, events and speakers.
Speaker 3: Kind of a feminist bookstore. Yes, if there's any kind
Speaker 3: of a moderndy equivalent.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. The feminist bookstore is a parallel development that Actually,
Speaker 2: I'm kind of curious how much overlap there would be
Speaker 2: between those developments. Infoshops have been around for a while.
Speaker 2: The things have been existing since the earliest one I've
Speaker 2: read about was in Chicago in nineteen ten, but I
Speaker 2: think that they go back further than that. That's just
Speaker 2: the oldest one I've read about.
Speaker 3: There need to be more leftist costume dramas. People don't
Speaker 3: assume there were leftists in because there aren't costume dramas
Speaker 3: about them where they're falling in love or whatever. We
Speaker 3: just need one of those, just one.
Speaker 2: Wait have you seen reds Honey?
Speaker 3: Hi?
Speaker 2: I have not.
Speaker 3: I should because that's like Diane Keaton and Warren Batty.
Speaker 2: Right, Wait, which one did are you talking about? What is?
Speaker 2: What was your pitch, Sophie?
Speaker 1: No, Sarah and I were just going back and forth.
Speaker 3: Oh, okay, what are you doing our Samantha practice? Wait, Sophie,
Speaker 3: should we do? You want to pitch the honey Off?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 1: Yeah, we have this idea to do a honey off,
Speaker 1: which is Tom Womscans from Succession being afraid of his
Speaker 1: wife and going honey and then Samantha Jones from Sex
Speaker 1: and the City being like honey, and then you go
Speaker 1: back and forth.
Speaker 3: We're working on a plane called Sex and the Succession.
Speaker 1: Okay, Sarah, ready, I'm talking.
Speaker 3: Okay, honey, honey, honey, honey. It's perfect, right, mm hmm.
Speaker 2: It's good. You should do an entire show of it.
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is what we do it every time.
Speaker 3: I think we could do like a two hour like
Speaker 3: a Frankie and Johnny at the Clear to Loon kind
Speaker 3: of play. But it's Tom Wamscans and Samantha Jones.
Speaker 2: It's perfect. But can you turn it into a costume
Speaker 2: drama about feminist bookstores and radical bookstorre? Yes, we can
Speaker 2: forget it. Yeah, like what if the none of the
Speaker 2: dialogue is that, But somehow, through like staging and the
Speaker 2: other characters and things happening in the background, you communicate an.
Speaker 3: Entire plot rented a room over a feminist book store.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I feel like we just gave the audience the real
Speaker 1: insight to our personal lives.
Speaker 3: It's well, you know, you get together and you have
Speaker 3: a Sex and the Succession. Yeah, you watch Sharing just
Speaker 3: like that, and then to recover emotionally, you watch Succession.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And my favorite part is when you do your little
Speaker 3: opening theme to succession dance. Yeah, yeah, it's a slow jam.
Speaker 3: Honey honey, honey, honey, honey, honey.
Speaker 1: We're tak an ad brak.
Speaker 2: Yeah sure, fuck it. Here listen are these ads and
Speaker 2: we're back. So you have these info shops and they've
Speaker 2: been around for a long time. In the early nineties,
Speaker 2: you get this other thing, the Internet. The early nineties
Speaker 2: Internet was custom built for people with niche interests to
Speaker 2: set up websites and find one another. God, ain't it
Speaker 2: the truth? Yeah? I sometimes missed that. Yeah. Add in
Speaker 2: the fact that the Internet was proof of the concept
Speaker 2: of decentralization, Like people were really into the idea of
Speaker 2: decentralization as a source of strength in the nineties and
Speaker 2: early odds, right, And so the early Internet was perfect
Speaker 2: for anarchists. And I've met anarchists who've worked on some
Speaker 2: of the fundamental components of the Internet, like the protocols
Speaker 2: that underline all this stuff and like build encryption and
Speaker 2: all this things. But that's a different story that I'm
Speaker 2: we're going to do one day. All of these anarchists
Speaker 2: and catch all radicals are doing shit on the Internet.
Speaker 2: Going back a long way, one of the earliest news sites,
Speaker 2: and literally one of the earliest news sites like that
Speaker 2: isn't part of a print newspaper, is called infoshop dot org,
Speaker 2: which is sadly no longer with us. It was started
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety five under the name mid Atlantic Infoshop
Speaker 2: and it was the online component of the Beehive Infoshop
Speaker 2: in DC. And yeah, soon enough it becomes one of
Speaker 2: the first online only news websites. It's slogan was unthinking
Speaker 2: respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth. And
Speaker 2: I like that. It's still a like, you know, like
Speaker 2: newspapers love using truth in their taglines. You know, I
Speaker 2: love that they played to that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's true. I love that too, now that you
Speaker 3: pointed out.
Speaker 2: Then, in nineteen ninety eight, a man named Evan Henshaw Plath,
Speaker 2: better known under the name Rabble, created a website called
Speaker 2: protest dot net that was a calendar for various protesters.
Speaker 2: He's going to be important later in the story because
Speaker 2: he is one of the people who started Twitter. And
Speaker 2: there's others of these sorts of websites too, but these
Speaker 2: are some of the ones that are important our context.
Speaker 2: People obviously were able to organize massive movements before the Internet,
Speaker 2: but there are some serious and specific advantages of using
Speaker 2: the Internet for these protests. Earlier, I was talking about
Speaker 2: how the Zapatista is built. It was called People's Global Action.
Speaker 2: They built a grassroots coalition of people coming together as
Speaker 2: like grassroots groups, which is hard to say.
Speaker 1: You're able to like contact a bunch of people like
Speaker 1: you're supposed to, like you can have a.
Speaker 2: Chain, yeah, and so you can actually get everyone in
Speaker 2: touch with each other all over the world in a
Speaker 2: way that was much harder to do quickly when you
Speaker 2: had to. I guess. Also, probably most activist groups didn't
Speaker 2: have telegraphs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was gonna say, like email mailing list versus like,
Speaker 1: you know, handwritten mailing list.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so they use an email list and communicated
Speaker 2: quickly to coordinate protests globally. So Web one point zero
Speaker 2: was a collection of information written by and four people
Speaker 2: with niche interests. Right. It was just various documents and
Speaker 2: a kind of closer to them to Wikipedia than the
Speaker 2: modern Web. The main distinguishing feature of what changed that
Speaker 2: with Web two point zero is the idea of the
Speaker 2: status update, the idea that people are posting what's happening,
Speaker 2: and there's a few precursors to what's going to become
Speaker 2: indie media, which kind of propels the status update into
Speaker 2: across the world. One is slash dot, which is still around.
Speaker 2: That's like a tech focused news site. There was open
Speaker 2: Diary in nineteen ninety eight that was a precursor to
Speaker 2: live journal, but nothing really took off on an international
Speaker 2: scaleunti indie media. And there was about to be this
Speaker 2: big world changing protests in Seattle in November nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 2: People are organizing to get ready for it. They're bringing
Speaker 2: all of their skills, techies and journalists get together and
Speaker 2: talk things through. And to quote an article by Harry
Speaker 2: Halpin and that guy Rabble that I was talking about
Speaker 2: who set uprotests dot net quote. One of the fundamental
Speaker 2: problems facing the anti globalization protests was the lack of
Speaker 2: mainstream media coverage. At the time. In nineteen ninety nine,
Speaker 2: large protests in many countries like the United States were
Speaker 2: relatively unknown, and small scale protests were mostly ignored by
Speaker 2: the radio and television based media of the time. So
Speaker 2: folks tried to do something about that. They're like, how
Speaker 2: do we set up media infrastructure? You had things like
Speaker 2: free Speech TV, which did video journalism. But in the
Speaker 2: nineties and early odds it was pretty hard to distribute
Speaker 2: video journalism. You had the well named group Damn Direct
Speaker 2: Action Media Network. In nineteen ninety six, activists in Chicago
Speaker 2: were getting ready to protest the Democratic National Convention. They
Speaker 2: set up a lot of proto versions of later protest infrastructure.
Speaker 2: They rented a building they called the Convergence Center, which
Speaker 2: was where people could meet and organize, and it's a
Speaker 2: term that got later used. In the basement of this
Speaker 2: convergence Center, they set up a media newsroom, and I
Speaker 2: believe there was a community radio station which was almost
Speaker 2: certainly pirate radio, but it just presented as a community
Speaker 2: radio station. But that wasn't legal at the time, so
Speaker 2: good on them. And I believe this is the first
Speaker 2: independent media center, but not under that name yet. In
Speaker 2: the build up to the Seattle Protest of nineteen ninety nine,
Speaker 2: all these media folks started working together to create a
Speaker 2: single website that would allow the activists to become the
Speaker 2: media themselves, indiemedia dot org. The tagline doesn't have the
Speaker 2: word truth in it, which is a terrible shame. The
Speaker 2: tagline was don't hate the media be the media. I
Speaker 2: love that. Wow. Yeah, I actually too, and because there's
Speaker 2: a lot of people being like, well I hate the media,
Speaker 2: and you're like, all right, we'll just do it better. Literally. Yeah.
Speaker 2: They use some open publishing software that had been used
Speaker 2: by earlier protesters in England and Australia. I really like
Speaker 2: how it's techies and journalists coming together to create this
Speaker 2: weird thing. And the idea is that you have a
Speaker 2: news wire where anyone can upload photos and text and
Speaker 2: media like MP three's and videos and all this stuff,
Speaker 2: which is seems like a very normal idea, and we
Speaker 2: can actually sort of immediately imagine all of the problems
Speaker 2: with this, like all of the hate speech that's going
Speaker 2: to get posted and all of these things. Right, yes,
Speaker 2: but no one had really done this, and indie media
Speaker 2: solved two problems at once. One was DIY journalism, but
Speaker 2: second it could be used for on the ground updates
Speaker 2: that were of use to people. So it's not just
Speaker 2: a way to hear about a protest after it's happened,
Speaker 2: but you could hear about what's happening during the day. Yeah,
Speaker 2: although fewer people had phones and stuff, so it was
Speaker 2: like a little bit harder to do, but.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it feels like the basic approach is like, well,
Speaker 3: what if you had a newspaper that updated itself in
Speaker 3: real time?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Totally yeah. And the way to do that is
Speaker 2: to turn all of the people into people who can
Speaker 2: say like, hey, I saw such and such like oh,
Speaker 2: the police are gathering at such and such street, right,
Speaker 2: or I just witnessed three people get arrested or whatever.
Speaker 2: And this is a breath takingly important moment in Internet history.
Speaker 2: Even though it was about protest. It led to Twitter,
Speaker 2: and it also led to podcasts. Yeah, concept of fucking podcasts.
Speaker 2: Well there you go. Yeah, it is indie media's fault
Speaker 2: that you are listening to this right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know what, I'll allow it. Yeah, send them
Speaker 1: your complaints about ads.
Speaker 2: Although they'd probably be like, yeah, no, we agree, fuck
Speaker 2: those ads. Although actually we'll get at the way in
Speaker 2: which it had internal conflict around what exactly its values
Speaker 2: were later cool, but that's where we're at indiemedia dot org.
Speaker 2: I in proper cool people for my one episode context
Speaker 2: one episode stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, speaking of stuff, Sarah, you got anything about a plug?
Speaker 3: Ooh, you can listen to my podcast you're wrong about
Speaker 3: or you cannot. It's really up to you. I want
Speaker 3: to plug corn, have some sweet corn, add it to
Speaker 3: a salad, put it in your ramen. I'm serious, that's all,
Speaker 3: and go to a corn maze.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Ever eaten raw sweet corn on the cub? Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, I grew up next to a guy who
Speaker 3: grew corn in the summer, and so we could like
Speaker 3: go and just like pick corn.
Speaker 2: You know, of an evening.
Speaker 3: And I remember like sitting on my dad's shoulders eating
Speaker 3: a raw ear of corn, And like, I think raw
Speaker 3: corn is the way to go.
Speaker 2: I like it slightly less, but it's so much work
Speaker 2: to cook it compared to eating it raw. Yeah. I
Speaker 2: love grilled Yeah, grilled corn.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well that's I mean, all the corn is good.
Speaker 2: I went to school in a cornfield. In my first
Speaker 2: above the table job was selling corn really like on
Speaker 2: a roadside stand.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It was a farm stand on a under a strip
Speaker 2: mall overhang sometimes and in other times it was at
Speaker 2: the farm itself, like roadside stand by the farm as
Speaker 2: soon as I could get my work permit.
Speaker 3: How does that job rank in your life of jobs?
Speaker 2: Is it better or worse than this one? I have
Speaker 2: nostalgia for it. I worked alone, unsupervised at fourteen years old,
Speaker 2: which means I got a lot of free produce, and
Speaker 2: so did a lot of other people. And I once
Speaker 2: was being trolled by the people who worked at Starbucks
Speaker 2: next door, and so I tricked one of them into
Speaker 2: eating a raw HIBERNERO.
Speaker 1: Your boss is better now, right?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, no, totally?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Okay, cool, We'll be back for part two.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Part two zero on Wednesday.
Speaker 1: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media. For more podcasts on cool Zone Media,
Speaker 1: visit our website goolzonmedia dot com, or check us out
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Speaker 1: your podcasts.