Dot Commie Versus Dot God
I am one of that new breed of writers, a web content provider. Foregoing my morals and values, whilst gritting my teeth, I write what I am hired to write. But, my various employers always get a little bit of a surprise when they get my finished product. Every piece, from a 250 word essay, to a medical research project has a bit of leftist leaning. Hey, I never said that I was an unbiased chronicler when they hired me, just a good one! Besides, the power of the Internet is in the ability to empower folks through more diverse viewpoints and dissemination of information. Yeah, right.
My witty lefty barbs got me in trouble in my last job. In fact, I got canned two weeks before Christmas. Now, as a good Jewish gal, this shouldn't have annoyed me, except for the constant barrage of Etoys wish lists in my inbox from my kiddies. Right now, my wish list includes things like food stamps—forget the Lego sets, little buddies.
I was hired by a hotshot, up-and-coming, dot-com news source, Streetmail.com, in May, 2000. I was to provide them with what they called a "product," but what is really a weekly online community newsletter. Entitled South Sound Streetmail, I would write for subscribers in my oh-so-cool town, Olympia, WA, which was recently voted "hippest city in the U.S," by Time Magazine. Little did they know I was a dot commie. I figured that I could provide them with what they needed, I mean a job is a job.
Streetmail hired me in spite of my politics. I knew my topics and surveys would get loads of attention from all the cool types around here. You know, the black bloc of young anarchists, the vegan dreadlocked hippie kids, older community activists, the Wobblies, and the ubiquitously pierced progeny of liberal parents whose kids attend the Evergreen State College, the institution whose student body chose political prisoners Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu-Jamal to be graduation speakers.
So, what does being a writer for Streetmail entail, you may ask. And who would get the damn thing that I write? Streetmail partners up with local Internet service providers in small towns and cities. They hire writers to write a weekly, highly formatted and structured newsletter, with lead stories that are under 300 words, complete with surveys. This gets sent out to all of the partnered local ISP's subscribers, a truly captive audience. In other words, if America Online partnered with Streetmail, every AOL subscriber would receive a weekly newsletter on their account, written by yours truly.
Not very smart capitalists, Streetmail inserts advertisements in every nook and cranny of the text that the hard-working journalist has sent to the big office in New York. When it gets regurgitated back to the local yokels weekly, it looks like a gigantic ad. One has to stare very hard, or wear those cheap magnifying glasses to actually read what the local correspondent has written. Smart money-makers would have more of a long-run vision and at least make some attempt to create a more aesthetically appealing product in lieu of bending over backwards and kissing ass to their advertisers.
With about 168 local correspondents nationwide, and two million or more captive subscribers, Streetmail purports to provide an oh-so-vital community news source, a favor, really, to all of us living in the backwaters of society. Maybe I am a cynic, but it seems as though these greedy marketers are really looking to suck up the bucks of those who aren't already in with the game. A story on Streetmail in Business 2.0 Magazine says that the smaller markets can offer big returns for those who break into them, "Although only 14 percent of U.S. Internet users live in rural areas or small towns, according to eMarketer, big-city markets are already saturated with every type of local Website and service. That's made regions from Littlefield, Texas, to Cape Cod, Mass., look very attractive to new online content businesses." Olympia is one of the bigger communities Streetmail slinked into, with over 200,000 people, three colleges and a state capitol to boot.
Streetmail was so proud when People Magazine carried a describing the company as a snazzy example of the proper type of Internet marketing, linking up real people, with, drum roll please, real ads, and lots of them. The actual newsletter, or what little is left after the strict word limits are enforced and the ads inserted, can be read in a little under three minutes. Now, that's important stuff, I say!
Writers are supposed to consider themselves "hosts," says Barbara Johnson, CEO. Be personal, provocative, but welcoming and fair, states the writers guidelines. And keep it under 250 words per section—and snappy, for god's sake. In Digital Mass, an industry rag, CEO Johnson says, "We encourage writers to have their own voices...there's a certain unvarnished feel." Johnson stresses that Streetmail is "not a cookie-cutter product." Okey-Dokey, sure. When I dared write about local sweatshops, I was told that the topic was too dour and "not current" enough. A piece I did on dioxin in the local lake was "too long." So much for that, short items about parking and garbage services are the bread and butter topics of Streetmail.
This extreme version of "the news" extends the general media trend of recent years towards shorter articles, so more room can be had for advertisements. De facto, this keeps non-mainstream voices out of the media, you cannot present alternative viewpoints that go against the conventional mainstream wisdom without concurrent explanation and documentation. This is a central point of Noam Chomsky's critique of the media. For example, look at the case of a journalist stating that Iraq is a terrorist country. That short sentence is accepted by the public in a wide-spread manner, no explanation required. But the public will think that a writer is a total quack if they say that the United States is a terrorist country, without citing the history of slavery, oppression and colonialist attitudes, or including an analysis and statistics of U.S. world power and control. Better yet if the writer talks about things like the exploitation of the world's resources by U.S. corporations causing further inequalities and misery world-wide, and cites current statistics, on top of that. I guess the one sentence statement is much easier.
Streetmail uses contingent labor, that bane of workers, to provide the writing. All writers are at-will contracted employees, the "no bennies, I can fire you at any time for no reason at all" variety of worker. Screw up and you're out on your literary fanny. If you write something that ends up being censored, or gets you fired, no legal remedy exists, since you are not a real employee. Besides which, for some obscure reason, Streetmail makes all of its prospective employees sign a "confidentiality contract," kinda like the CIA. You will never talk about us in any form, to anyone, at any time. What exactly does this "news source" have to hide?
Either way, I am a blabbermouth, muckraking type...so sue me for my 1987 Camry. Hey it still runs, kind of. Anyway, Streetmail shouldn't care about me, they booted me out on my proverbial butt on Election Day, me and Ralph Nader. Ya know, I was really, really trying to be "current." I covered the AFL-CIO protest of Labor Ready, the temporary worker agency that pays laborers minimum wage, disregarding prevailing wage standards. I wrote with earnest about the student and faculty protests over the arming of campus police at Evergreen. That did not get me in too much hot water, although you could hear the sighs of disapproval a modem away.
For the Election Day issue, I wrote a 278-word piece on Ralph Nader. The day before, there was a Greens for Gore rally in town, which got disrupted by the local Green Party (the real one) and a few anarchists. Geez, I was trying to be current, I really was! Plus, I carefully followed Streetmail's own policy, which states that the writer must, "welcome the readers to the discussion, clearly and forthrightly express his or her viewpoints, then encourage the readers to express themselves the same way." Here is what I wrote, the piece that ruined my career, in all its marginalized (keep it under 300 words) glory:
"THIS ELECTION BITES. I don't like Al Gore and don't want to vote for him.
But, I'm under some heavy pressure. The Nader constituency is being asked to
cast our consciences and votes aside in order to prevent a Bush oval office.
People keep saying that if I vote for Nader, the Dark Ages will be ushered
in, with a sure Bush win. My social security will be frittered away by
yuppie dudes on Wall St., my abortion rights will be wronged, and
corporations will rule the world. Thurston County Democratic Chairperson
Walt Bowen sympathizes, saying, "I agree with many of Nader's positions and
I can relate to what Nader says." But, Bowen warns, "If you vote for Nader,
you won't get Nader, you will get LESS of what you want." Casey Kanzler,
spokesperson for the South Sound Greens disagrees, saying, "A vote for Gore
IS a vote for Bush-a vote for either of two candidates ushers in the same
center-right structural policies. A vote for a deep and vigorous democracy
isn't wasted, nor is it automatically for someone.other than that for which
it was originally intended. Shouldn't we fight for a greater
plurality, allowing more voices, ideas and values into the debate over the
direction our public policies and program priorities should take?" I'm
casting my vote for my ideals, via Nader, damn the torpedoes. **Is a vote
for a third party a wasted vote? Take a Streetmail vote at
After the piece was okayed by the regional editor, (who in his issue told people to straight-out vote for Gore), the issue got sent out to my 3000 subscribers and posted on the Streetmail website. Many folks signed onto the survey, which by the way ran 10 to 1 in favor of third party voting as legitimate. Heck, I even got a nice letter from an Alan Keyes supporter telling me I was patriotic for asking the question. I better go and bury my burned upside-down flag.
The very next day (the day before Election day) the company sent out an "apology" to all 3000 of my subscribers, and yanked the offending piece off the website. Umm hello, thanks for nothing, guys. Like I wouldn't mind being informed Beforehand if I am doing something wrong. No word forthcoming from the company, I signed onto the internal Streetmail writers forum and noticed that another correspondent had seen the apology and was questioning the editorial ethics of it. Checking back a couple hours later, I noticed that the offending posting had been "removed," disappeared like a bad puppy slinking under the table, only later to be put back by the very same manager.
Still no answer to my phone calls, with a bad feeling in my gut, I checked out the forum again. On it, the managing editor was "discussing" my case with other correspondents. She said that I was not fair. My piece did not meet the editorial standard. Editorial standard? What, where, when? A mysterious policy I hadn't been informed of. You would think that the policy would have been made known to the folks who are supposed to follow it.
Oh well, the poop hadn't really hit the fan yet and my election party wasn't totally ruined. Besides, Nader got 6 percent of this county's vote, a cause for celebration. After three full weeks of waiting to hear that everything would be cool if I would just be a little less, umm, political, I finally received "the call."
Funny, the liberals didn't get me in the end, the Christians did! I think, anyway...
I was informed that the local Internet service provider, Connect Corporation—whose subscribers all received Streetmail—had been just been bought out by a company with national aspirations, ReachOne. ReachOne, in case you don't know, is a code word for the Christian Right, as in reach one, convert one (after a long annoying proselytization process, no doubt, filled with reams of apocryphal easy-to-read magazines, etc). The new ISP is run by the local Helstrom Foundation, affiliated with the Church of the Nazarene. All the employees are on God's payroll, wages are paid out of tithes to the church. I wonder how big a tax break God gets anyway? More to the point, I was told that ReachOne was dropping Streetmail due to the fact that I covered "gay themes." Guess they didn't mind Nader but they sure hated my gay-friendly stance.
Fundamentalist groups like the Nazarenes are really concerned with "converting" ex-gays to be "normal" people. But what about the Golden Rule (about the only thing I know 'bout Christianity). Love one another. Or did the Beatles say that? Toleration, etc. Oh well, these Christian geeks just don't seem to be able to get with the Jesus program. According to these dot-god folks, their ISP would be happy to filter out things like "anarchy and alt. lifestyles" off your Internet access, as well as other "undesirable content," all for no extra charge.
Gay themes I wrote about in the Nader issue included a listing of political endorsements from the right-wing Log Cabin Republicans and an event listing for an orthodox gay Christian group. You know, I thought I was being pretty fair and balanced by including these items, appealing to the conservative right! Guess I can't please everyone, or rather I didn't please anyone, except my readers, who sent me droves of positive email.
When informed that ReachOne had bought out the service provider and discontinued Streetmail, Olympia City Council Member Laura Ware had this to say, "I can't believe this! I have been a customer for as long as we have had our computer, because we wanted to patronize a local company. They will be hearing from me very quickly! And will probably be mentioned at the next Council meeting." Curt Pavola, another of Olympia's City Council Members says, "This is exactly why we need a local, countywide non-discrimination ordinance."
Now, I was informed, and it is stated, in the Streetmail writers guidelines that ISP's have "no control over editorial content." Streetmail, not following their own policy, let ReachOne dictate the whole nine bigoted yards to them. Streetmail's managing editor, Deirdre Terry, called me and informed me that they were trying very hard indeed to find another local ISP to carry my issue. This self-same person was the one who had written and sent out "the apology" for my writing without informing me beforehand. Yo, she is really on "my side." Hold up yuppie dot commers though, you cannot sell an Internet newsletter when you have an "apology" up at the website for the writer you are trying to sell. A fine example of the "product." Bad capitalist, no donut, or should I say: stock option.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch—fast becoming a hovel—I am still somehow subscribed to the Streetmail internal writers list. They have taken to sending all writers more stringent guidelines, with tidbits of information like this: "In addition to the tired holiday topics we want to avoid, there are a couple other danger zones for Streetmail. The first is this presidential election mess. In the interest of freshness and staying local, let's just ignore the dang thing for the moment. Then, there's a longer term policy directive that has to do with not writing topics about your local ISP(s). Apparently this has the potential to wreak havoc in the ISP relations department." Lastly, the directive from above included the very scary notion of editorial dictatorship, saying "So don't be overly alarmed when I question everything you do." So much for allowing the journalist freedom to creatively control what they cover!
In different ways these two companies worked together with a final outcome of suppressing any kind of critical local online community news. ReachOne makes no bones about their bias, their world-view is one of the religious fundamentalist. Streetmail claims to be non-biased, but by keeping the topics non-controversial and short, the effect is the same; the outright censorship of news that doesn't support the status quo. The growth of Internet McNews makes strange bedfellows. Online news will continue to be delivered to our inboxes, but reader beware of behind-the scenes collaborations designed to crush journalists who refuse to parrot the mainstream discourse of our society. Needless to say, in my case I won't get the chance to cover anything, no local ISP signed up, I got relieved of my source of income in early December, 2000, and my kids wish lists sit unread in my in-box.
Amy Levinson is a freelance writer in Olympia, Washington, a
mother of three, has a graduate degree from Evergreen and is one of the
usual suspects at protests and demonstrations.
E-mail: olympiagal@aol.com
Writing interests: Poetry, Politics, Social Issues
I.D. Theory articles:
"Apocalypse Pie" |
"Sex Workers Art Show" | "Dot
Commie Versus Dot God" | "Picking
Up David"
Links: StreetMail.com |
CanDo.com