Day 118: Staking Out the Radical Center

Photo by Jannis Lucas on Unsplash

Today, WVU Law hosted Michelle Shanahan as she delivered the annual C. Edwin Baker Lecture in Liberty, Democracy and Equality. Shanahan, former deputy general counsel of NPR, spoke about “Why Media Ownership Matters: A Case for Local Nonprofit Media.” You can catch it here.

I started this blog and my Substack, How We Got Here, earlier this year because I care about the discourse in the modern media.

Mostly, I hate it.

I hate how profit motives drive media to extreme views. Even individual bloggers compete for clicks by saying things designed to outrage.

showing up in the middle

For years, I thought I had nothing to add. Not a radical by temperament or ideology, I refused to take the bait. I would go on quietly writing law review articles that no one reads, thank you very much.

This year, I changed my mind. If only the loudest voices participate in the dialogue, I realized, all we’ll get is shouting, shouting, and more shouting.

I could stay silent — or I could speak. Quietly but consistently. Day after day, I could show up here, on Substack, on social media, and stake out the radical center.

Reasonableness en masse

Silence will never drown out the scream of extremes. But perhaps a low, steady hum of reasonableness, if kept up persistently and spread exponentially, might one day create a different aural landscape.

So if you’re tired of the siren screams too, please join me. Volunteer for your local media nonprofit. Start a dangerously centrist political organization. Write your own blog.

If enough of us join together, a steady injection of reasonableness might have a chance to change the world.