Opinion
SHOHAM GEVA
EDITOR IN CHIEF
CLAIRE BRYAN
AND REGAN DETWILER
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITORS
LAURA SCHINAGLE
MANAGING EDITOR
420 Maynard St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
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The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4A — Wednesday, January 13, 2016
H
ow can we do the serious
work of educating our-
selves politically when
there’s
such
great
stuff
to
watch on Netflix
and Hulu?
Today
the
news media often
has to compete with the likes of HBO
GO and YouTube for our attention,
because if it fails to capture us within
the first 15 seconds, then we switch
tabs on our web browsers and watch
or read something better, something
that’s more entertaining.
No
wonder
the
mainstream
news media covers presidential
campaigns as if they’re unfold-
ing political dramas. No wonder
they try to provoke the candidates
to “attack,” “slam,” “go after” and
(ahem) “schlong” one another, as
if presidential debates were WWE
wrestling matches,or episodes of
the “Real World.” Or, as Trump
would have it, misogynist pornos.
No wonder the mainsteam media
habitually presents the candidates
less as leaders advocating policies
and more as heroes on their own
personal, lifelong journeys.
And how else can the news media
compete with the entertainment
media other than for the former to
play the latter’s game (entertain-
ment)? Today the news media isn’t
just trying to inform us — I suspect
that’s not even their chief goal —
they are trying to entertain us. And
that’s a big problem for democracy.
Perhaps this isn’t news to many
of you, especially the Communica-
tion Studies majors, but it’s a point
worth revisiting during each elec-
tion season.
Today, many of us want to be
politically active without the activ-
ity, the same way many of us want
coffee without the caffeine, cream
without the fat, beer without the
alcohol, warfare without the war-
fare (e.g., drones) and, in short,
as philosopher Zizek puts it, “ … a
whole series of products deprived
of their malignant property.”
How does the market respond
to our demand for political activ-
ism without the activity, without
the work? The mainstream media
supplies us with political entertain-
ment, including everything from
comedy news shows like “The Daily
Show with Trevor Noah” and “Last
Week Tonight” to political dramas
like “The West Wing” and “House
of Cards,” to Bill O’Reilly, to the
Republican presidential debates, to
an article about Trump’s alcoholic
brother in the Times, etc. (Have you
noticed how the sets for the Demo-
cratic and Republican debates look
highly similar to the “American
Idol” sets? Is that an accident?)
These commodities allow us to
feel like we’re participating in poli-
tics and doing the work of educat-
ing ourselves politically without
actually seriously participating or
working. With this entertainment,
we experience politics without
actually doing politics.
Political entertainment requires
little to no work on our part (the
audience’s part) because, like most
entertainment, it allows, and in fact
requires, the audience to be most-
ly passive. The video or TV show
does the intellectual work for us,
much like canned laughter on old
sitcoms laughs on our behalf, fool-
ing us into finding jokes funny that
really aren’t. That is, when we’re in
the passive, receptive state of being
entertained, we’re willing to accept
certain information as news, as
fact, as self-evident and so on, that
we might not accept when we are in
the active mental state of reading,
analyzing, interpreting, etc.
These
entertainments
co-opt
our desire to laugh or politically
engage. Often, the jokes aren’t that
funny and the news isn’t that news-
worthy. And this, too, poses prob-
lems for democracy.
Maybe you’re thinking, “Who
cares if the news is entertaining? I
like to be entertained. Stop trying
to yuck my yum!”
The danger in this news enter-
tainment business is multilayered.
When we trade doing political activ-
ity for being political entertained, we
sacrifice some of our agency as criti-
cal thinkers and engaged citizens.
When we decline to do the work of
educating ourselves politically, and
instead quell, pacify, placate or mol-
lify our enduring drive for political
involvement by having someone else
do the work for us (via entertain-
ment), we risk being misled. We are
probably less apt to notice when and
how we’re being misled with the
information we’ve received because
we’ve received the information in
the passive state of being entertained
instead of the active state of, say,
reading and studying.
I’m of course mostly generalizing
and speculating here. For example,
I personally have learned impor-
tant stuff from watching episodes of
“Vice” and videos on YouTube, but I
would say that shows like “Vice” are
the exception rather than the rule,
and they aren’t always that excep-
tional.
I’m not saying the mainstream
media is entertainment all the time.
TV media generally entertains more
than, say, The New York Times, but
the mainstream media participates
in this news business sometimes;
and when the Times does, it’s often
more insidious because it is enter-
taining behind the highbrow mask
of sophistication.
Look, I’m not suggesting we all
do journalism or scholarship. I’m
not even really trying to convince
you of anything. (Maybe you think
I’m being facetious, but I’m not.) I
believe my observations are true
and analyses plausible, and if they
are true (and plausible), then I sus-
pect they’ll ring true (and plausible)
for you, too. Or, if the stuff I’m see-
ing and saying appears strange or
unfamiliar, and hence rings nei-
ther true nor false, look at yourself.
(I’m not everybody.) Citizenship in
democracy requires work — a tru-
ism, to be sure, but a useful one to
remember — especially in a culture
that so often promotes political
apathy and cynicism over activ-
ism and participation. When many
of us decline this important work
of citizenship, we neglect a part
of ourselves (a part of our souls?)
that wants political activity — that
wants to participate in the polis.
When we allow this part of the
soul to do the political work that it
wants to do, and stop placating it
with unwholesome entertainment
substitutes, the work ultimately
crowns us with eudaimonia.
I look around campus and I see
most of us working pretty hard in
school, so how can I fault us for
preferring to kick back and watch
TV in our free time instead of doing
the work of educating ourselves
politically? I should mention that
I definitely don’t abstain from the
political entertainment that I’ve
been criticizing (nor do I advo-
cate total abstinence). Besides the
human who shares a bedroom with
me, I am my own primary object/
subject of study. And yet, if we
ignore how the maintream media
tries to appeal to us as passive con-
sumers of entertainment — that is,
if we ignore how the mainstream
media tries to entertain us in addi-
tion to informing us — we risk
becoming passive citizens of a
passive democracy, and a passive
democracy is no democracy at all
(which is not to say democracy is
a system I’m ready to advocate for
either — I’m just assuming you all
are fans).
—Zak Witus can be reached
at zakwitus@umich.edu.
Why Protest When You Can
Netflix?
ZAK
WITUS
Claire Bryan, Regan Detwiler, Caitlin Heenan, Jeremy Kaplan,
Ben Keller, Minsoo Kim, Payton Luokkala, Aarica Marsh, Anna
Polumbo-Levy, Jason Rowland, Lauren Schandevel, Melissa Scholke,
Rebecca Tarnopol, Ashley Tjhung, Stephanie Trierweiler,
Mary Kate Winn, Derek Wolfe
EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS
We all have things we think suck on cam-
pus. Many students simply rant to their friends
or internalize their concerns. Most don’t real-
ize there is an avenue to voice their complaints
and bring about real results to their issues.
A request for more bike parking at Palmer
Commons, a request to expand the availabil-
ity of covered bike parking on campus and a
request for installing more bike repair sta-
tions: Other than the obvious fact that these
are all about bikes, what do they have in com-
mon? Each was a concern students expressed
in multiple e-mails sent to LSA Student
Government’s “this sucks” e-mail service
last semester. Thissucks@umich.edu is an
e-mail address created for the student body
to directly communicate changes they’d like
to see on campus.
As a frequent biker on campus, when I saw
an e-mail about the limited number of bike
parking spaces in front of Palmer Commons, I
decided to take on the project. I reached out
to some connections in Facilities, and less than
two weeks after the Student Life Committee
meeting where I took up the project, I was
meeting with Steve Dolen, the University’s
director of parking and transportation, to dis-
cuss the issue.
During our meeting, it quickly became
apparent that a huge underlying obstacle for
bicycle parking was the number of abandoned
bikes on campus. According to Dolen, approxi-
mately 25 percent of all bikes parked on cam-
pus are abandoned bikes. The cost of adding
that many more parking spots would be hun-
dreds of thousands of dollars. I left that meet-
ing with a project, albeit slightly different than
the one we started with, but nonetheless an
important one: to reduce the number of aban-
doned bikes. I am still working on how we can
do it, but the thought and effort is being made.
Students often do not have the time or the
resources to push for the changes they would
like to see on campus. LSA Student Govern-
ment exists to be the voice of the LSA student
body. It is our responsibility to engage with
students to find out what issues and projects
they think would be most impactful for us to
work on.
This past Sunday marked the 10th anniver-
sary of this e-mail system service for the stu-
dent body. We really have made a difference
on campus with your help over the years from
these e-mails — buses have increased their
route frequency, bathrooms have been redone
and minors in religion and entrepreneurship
have been implemented, just to name a few.
On another occasion, two of our elected
representatives were inspired by a “this
sucks” e-mail titled “The Ugly Truth About
the UGLI,” which pointed out a need for a
feminine hygiene product dispenser in the
Shapiro Undergraduate Library. Within a
few weeks, a meeting had been secured,
money had been found and the idea was
implemented. These same representatives
are now working with University Health Ser-
vice to provide feminine hygiene products for
free, as is done with condoms.
When it comes to thissucks@umich.
edu, no issue is too large or too small for us
to address, and we promise to answer every
e-mail. We will do everything in our power
to address your concerns and work to build
a better University for everyone. If you’d like
to help LSA-SG celebrate 10 years of problem
solving, send us your issues and concerns at
thissucks@umich.edu. Your problems are our
projects, and that’s how we like it.
Jason Colella is president of
LSA Student Government.
10 years of problem solving
JASON COLELLA, LSA STUDENT GOVERNMENT | OP-ED
Replacing newspapers
“H
as anyone ever seen one of
these before?”
My class laughs a bit as my
professor holds it up. It’s a
beautiful work of art, filled
with
stories,
pictures,
people and places. There’s
both triumph and failure,
coupled
with
laughter
and sadness, along with
hope
and
horrors,
all
put together to make the
folded
broadsheet
the
masterpiece it is.
“This is a newspaper.
You read stuff in it.”
He knows he’s being
facetious. Yes, everyone in this class of
computer science majors has seen a newspaper
before. Even in a class of technophiles, the role
of the newspaper might change, but its history
does not.
“How many of you still read a newspaper?”
Not a single other hand goes up. It’s not
particularly surprising, as daily newspaper
readership fell to 17 percent in the 18 to 24
age demographic in 2014, and certainly a class
called Mobile Application Development and
Entrepreneurship is full of students more
likely to read from a screen than from print.
But the conclusions are stark: Not one of my
classmates will pick up a printed copy of this
edition of The Michigan Daily to read my
column or anything else in it. Nor will they
pick up anything else off newsstands.
He then read the article he intended to
share, regarding General Motors investing
$500 million in Lyft, noting its placement
on the front page as a sign of its importance.
Terms such as “above the fold” and “below
the fold” were familiar to someone like me
with experience in newspaper jargon, yet the
science of guiding the eyes of the reader along
the page has seemingly faded away like the ink
of old papers. The role of print media, while
not disappearing yet, is becoming drastically
different, driven by the behaviors of our
generation.
When our professor asked where we
get our news, web-driven content was the
predominant answer; social media sites such
as Facebook and Twitter, as well as the content
aggregation site Reddit have become delivery
platforms for news sources. The online edition
of The New York Times was mentioned, as was
CNN and web-only content providers like The
Huffington Post. It’s not that millennials don’t
consume news: 69 percent of them still read
the daily news. But the medium has changed:
The sources aren’t print, and the information
comes from a breadth of sources far greater
than a local paper.
It’s a strange scenario even for someone like
me, whose job as a columnist at The Michigan
Daily has also become replaceable. Anyone
can set up a blog, post their own writing and
become their own self-employed columnist as
a hobby, or with some luck and talent, watch
it blossom into a full-time job. Even those
unwilling to set up their own blogs can submit
any content they wish to syndicated blog sites
and become published writers. It is clear that
journalism is no longer monopolized by the
print industry.
The newspaper has always been tangibly
impressive, with tremendous physical value
even with the advent of web-based news.
Framed in my house, along with other
Michigan memorabilia, are the front pages of
the Detroit Free Press from the 1989 Michigan
basketball national championship and the
1997 football championship. Not only is there
historical importance in these events — there
is also personal importance in newspapers.
My grandfather has framed the newspaper
announcing the wedding of his parents, and
the clippings of mentions of my siblings and
me in the local paper were always saved by my
parents. Newspapers are icons of the stories
that make up our world.
Even though the future of print paper is in
jeopardy, there’s no reason to believe that the
societal mission newspapers carry is in the
same peril. Just as music made the transition
from physical to digital, so will the news.
There’s some sadness in the change; the
prospect of the annual trip in which graduating
seniors visit the printer to see issues of The
Michigan Daily rolling off the presses could
be replaced with a trip to the server room to
see a bunch of computers hosting the content
is a strange scenario. But whether in hard
drives and web databases or printed in ink, the
artistry of the words remains. Journalists type
and write, because the stories around us need
to be told.
David Harris can be reached
DAVID
HARRIS
— President Barack Obama, during his final State of the Union address Tuesday night.
“
NOTABLE QUOTABLE
We don’t need to build them up to show that we’re
serious, nor do we need to push away vital allies in this
fight by echoing the lie that ISIL is representative of
one of the world’s largest religions. We just need to call
them what they are
—
killers and fanatics who have to be
rooted out, hunted down and destroyed.
E-mail anniE at asturpin@umich.Edu
ANNIE TURPIN