These are heady times for political bloggers and
journalists. The President is
daily breaking new ground, yesterday a bankruptcy restructuring of Chrysler,
today a possible Supreme Court opening, tomorrow, who knows? The changes wrought by the economic meltdown
and by a more progressive approach to dealing with it are extraordinary and are
rippling throughout the country. There’s so much to write about, some that’s
exciting and much that’s quite disturbing— from the staggering unemployment and
residential dislocation across the country to the potential for disaster in
developing nations now facing an unprecedented falloff in capital from abroad.
The problem, both for journalists and for bloggers, is
that we’re all being hit hard by the economic meltdown ourselves, making the
act of writing into a financial drain on those we support. For my own part, I’m responsible for
salaries and for keeping up on overhead for office and equipment at my
documentary production company.
For many journalists, their means of plying their trade, the newspapers
of America, are failing at a record rate.
The bailouts of financial companies and the restructuring of automakers,
while tremendous fodder for discussion, are not replicated in our world of the
art and media of political and social subjects.
During the Great Depression, the US government hired many
of the best writers, filmmakers, and photographers of the era to document the
impact of the economic slide on the people of the country. The memorable and publicly owned photographs
of Walker Evans and Gordon Parks and the prose of the Federal Writer’s Project
were but a bit of the product of these programs Franklin Roosevelt’s
administration promulgated to keep not just America’s blue collar workers on
the job, but also America’s most prized intellects and artists.
Might it not now be another moment in American history for
the government to infuse the art and trade of comment and image with a bit of
public investment? The addition of
some money for the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment
for the Humanities— even some small bit of capital to disburse to the thousands
of journalists, media makers, writers, and artists whose contribution to
memorializing our nation’s response to crisis will help guide the way into the
future. Perhaps we should think of
it as a stimulus for those who always look to find a way to contribute their
insights and visions, but who need just a small bit of support to leverage our
talents with the nonprofit community and to wrest further support from
individuals. The imprimatur of the
national endowments was once an important gateway for other funders to look
towards when supporting projects and artists.
Over the last few decades of conservative, market-oriented
politics, the once proud seed investments the US made in our public endowments
for art and the humanities have barely survived. Filmmakers and artists, writers, and media makers have
endured, but have only done so by utilizing the increasingly inexpensive means
of producing work: small and affordable cameras, the internet to publish on,
and other innovative technological means.
The courage of American artists and the innovations that make American
writers available to us are not a limitless panecea, however. Some financial support is necessary in
order to make this work available to the American people— and by doing so, to
help rejuvenate the public discussion that comes of a lively American scene of
art and comment.
I
haven’t got much more to say on this at the moment. I need to go put some more CDs for sale on eBay and
advertise my edit suite online.
But think about it. Maybe
we should write to our Congresspeople and insist that they remember us, too,
when they address the flotsam and jetsam of the meltdown.
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