M and I saw LCD Soundsystem perform last weekend at DR Konserthust, which was the kick-off to Strøm, an electronic music festival held in and around Copenhagen. On Saturday we headed over to Vesterbro to see another Strøm event. M was really excited about seeing Four Tet and he/they were quite impressive and definitely the highlight of the evening. In true Copenhagen style there were lots of young couples with small children sporting protective ear wear. I kind of wish I had been wearing them at LCD Soundsystem, as it took two days to recover my hearing, but the concert was incredible even if the opening act was bizarre.

I am an avid podcast listener, which grew out of a childhood that had NPR as the default soundtrack. One of my favorite podcasts from NPR is Radio Lab, a production of WNYC. This past week their show was based around the theme of words, and they included this video as a supplement to their podcast.

WORDS from Everynone on Vimeo.

It was created by the bicoastal production house Everynone, which has made several short video-based projects. Some stand alone and some are elements of larger projects. The following is my other favorite video from their current portfolio. I appreciate the creativity and the painstaking editing that went into both of these films, and I revel in the creative spark that in has awoken in me. Enjoy

Moments from Everynone on Vimeo.

and this

I made this picture while out on an evening walk with M and the canine kids on Amagar Strand. It reminds me of the poem that Robert Frost wrote for his daughter on the occasion of her wedding.

The Master Speed

No speed of wind or water rushing by
But you have speed far greater. You can climb
Back up a stream of radiance to the sky,
And back through history up the stream of time.
And you were given this swiftness, not for haste
Nor chiefly that you may go where you will,
But in the rush of everything to waste,
That you may have the power of standing still-
Off any still or moving thing you say.
Two such as you with such a master speed
Cannot be parted nor be swept away
From one another once you are agreed
That life is only life forevermore
Together wing to wing and oar to oar.

Despite being written more than thirty-five years ago, John Merrill’s The Imperative of Freedom resonates deeply within current debates unfolding in communication academia and the mass media today.  Merrill’s unapologetic interpretation of the definition of the journalist takes significant cues from his own position as a scholar and journalism ethicist. His focus throughout the book is on the journalist as defined by a set of criteria both internal and external, rather than journalism itself. The thesis for The Imperative of Freedom is that institutionalization and the movement to professionalize journalism are degrading journalistic autonomy and it can be restored by greater autonomy on the part of the journalist with an internal ethical compass.  The Imperative of Freedom is equally contextual in journalism studies to the utilitarian environment of the Vietnam War when it was written as it is now during the rise of New Media and the decline of print journalism.  The points that Merrill stresses about the importance of autonomy for the journalist and his interpretation that journalism is not a profession nor should it be venerated as an institution create a broader definition of journalism that is in keeping with New Media’s emphasis on the spread of ideas through social networks and electronic self-publishing on the internet.

In piecing together Merrill’s definition of journalism it is necessary to lay out his argument about the paramount importance of the individual journalist. Merrill is an unabashed advocate of radical libertarianism because he believes it is a system that will prevent authoritarian control of journalists, “It permits maximum personal freedom, leads to more informational pluralism, forces the responsibility on the individual medium for its actions, and finally, permits greater creativity—and fun—for those exercising their own freedom.”. Merrill’s fear of authoritarianism comes from a concern that it will come to dominate journalism and negate the freedom of journalists and thus impact their Kantian search for truth. The way Merrill writes about journalism as a “mechanistic monster increasingly controlled by outside forces” that journalists are oblivious to is the grounds for his suggestion that journalists take up a code of ethics to guide them through the imperfection and nefarious forces of authoritarianism and institutionalism. Merrill has no misperceptions that his radical libertarian model exists in any ideal form, but he is dogged in his determination that journalists should seek internal truth and freedom regardless of the reality of their circumstances.

Merrill sees the individual journalist as being less susceptible to corrupting forces of an ethical stance, but he readily admits that this has been a problem that has and emphasis on the ‘collective good,’ along with increasing emphasis on professionalizing and institutionalizing journalism, are forces helping to dissolve journalistic autonomy.”  Merrill goes on to argue that journalism should not be thought of as an institution because it places the emphasis on the relationship between the journalistic media, government and society as opposed to his view of it’s proper focus on the relationship between the journalistic individual and their relationship to their media and their society .

Merrill sees autonomy as the cornerstone of libertarianism, and thus because he also views the prestige conferred by professional status as a substitute for the loss of autonomy, he concludes that the professionalization of journalism is detrimental to the journalist. While he never expresses it explicitly, Merrill is fond of imagery evoking a mechanistic control of society that emanates from the elites. One suspects that he is a fan of Orwell and Bradbury, and he does not disappoint when he cites Yablonsky’s robopaths to illustrate institutionalized journalists as, “machine-like men who exhibit ritualistic behaviour patterns in the context of well-defined and accepted norms and rules, who are not spontaneous and creative, who are ‘other-directed rather than ‘inner-directed,’ and who are alienated from self by being only a ‘component of a social machine.’”  It could be argued that this is a somewhat irrational fear, but in light of recent failures of the journalism institution to report on the origins of the Iraq War it does not seem so far fetched.

Merrill also has choice words for journalism education, which he believes is hindering the freedom of journalism by becoming standardized at the college level and possibly leading to an incubator for robopaths. He cites the importance of the balance between journalism professors anchored respectively in the practice of journalism, the scientific study of journalism, and those straddling that chasm as the key mix that has thus prevented journalism from becoming a codified profession (although these groups are now being undermined by professional societies and the growth of journalism programs).  Merrill is hopeful that some students will survive the one-size-fits-all curriculum with their creativity intact or perhaps nurtured by their journalism education, but he is fearful that it is leading to further indoctrination of future journalists and effectively limiting their autonomy by teaching them to be journalistic persons within a predetermined status quo.

Merrill takes issue with journalism education primarily because he sees it as unnecessary for the development of the journalistic person that a libertarian society should create. Merrill cites creativity, insatiable curiosity and the pursuit of truth as the primary ingredients for a journalistic person – none of which are things that can be taught in a traditional academic setting, but all are attributes that can be fostered and developed through greater personal exploration. The counter argument of journalism schools would likely be that they teach professional skills and values to their students and provide a valuable practical education for the journalism workplace, but Merrill would rebut that argument by saying, “As I see it, you cannot have both individual concepts of responsibility and a professional concept of responsibility. The latter would naturally tend to stamp out deviant and ‘eccentric’ concepts and, ultimately, also the ‘professionals’ who might embrace them.”  Merrill’s fear of the standardization and intuitionalism of journalism is rooted in his concern that journalism is being falsely professionalized. The better alternative to false professionalization (which is really the only alternative he proposes because he juxtaposes truth and falsehood as opposites) is the imperative of freedom, which he argues is the greatest possible protection for individual autonomy and thus for the journalistic person and journalism itself.  The imperative of freedom is antithetical to a professionalized journalism because, as Merrill writes, “the imperative of freedom, therefore, is really an imperative for the individual journalist, although its spirit may be injected into the total fabric of his press system.”  Thus he sees the journalist as being the truly independent person who seeks journalistic truth with an ethical compass and does not kow-tow to the influence of social good, authoritarianism or institutionalism.

Merrill’s journalist is uniquely suited for the New Media environment because it provides the distribution network that he never fully explicates in The Imperative of Freedom. While he makes a convincing argument for the necessity of the imperative of freedom and its importance in the distillation of truth and undermining of authoritarian regimes and false civic good, he does not entertain how one such autonomous journalist would get published or broadcast to any sort of significant audience.  The Internet has opened the doors for the autonomous journalist (as well as many other less savory characters) and allowed for the mass distribution of the work of individual journalistic persons. This dissemination has been furthered by the development of social networking tools like Twitter and Facebook, and the early results support Merrill’s desire for a greater diversity in journalism through a cacophony of individual voices, whether they will continue to have the staying power of the legacy media outlets is still up for debate, but the URL sharing statistics from Twitter show that new media outlets are outpacing the legacy outlets in the scope and speed of their spread of news links.

M and I spent Sunday at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen with my 50mm. It is an architectural gem and the paintings and the sculptures aren’t bad either. It was our Carlsberg weekend, first the beer festival, and then the museum built by beer fortunes. The most amusing part was the exhibit on prosthetic noses for Greek and Roman sculpture. There is also a fascinating exhibit on polychrome ancient sculpture. And the current show by the Danish photographer Trine Søndergaard titled “Strunde” was incredible, my only criticism was that it I was sorely disappointed when I realized it was only a single room of images.

Alex Farcet offered me an opportunity to make a video for the Startup Bootcamp website. The idea was to create a 1 minute story of what the Startup Bootcamp is about to attract potential applicants. I used Creative Commons images licensed for commercial use from Flickr, headshots gathered by Alex, video footage from Wonderful Copenhagen and Startup Weekend Copenhagen, and some music I created in Garage Band. I went through about eighteen edits in total, and this is the current version.

Startup Bootcamp Video from Meghan Krane on Vimeo.

So I thought I was being profession and proactive by updating my blog today with my new video project for Startup Bootcamp, but instead I moved a file that I shouldn’t have a wasn’t able to figure out how to fix the problem. Yes, I moved the file back but I seemed to have done something fatal to my blog, so I am setting up this one to fill the gap while I try to retrieve all my posts and photos.