Congressman Dennis "Presidential Hopeful" Kucinich is guestblogging on Larry Lessig's blog for a little while, taking up where Howard Dean left off in July. Kucinich seems to have studied Dean's style and figured out how to improve on it, notably by avoiding presidential-sounding platitudes and engaging in something more like a blogger's otaku-intense exploration of issues that he cares about. Still, his tone is still slightly off, stilted like he was speaking at a podium and not to a group of pals whom he hopes to sway.
During my academic career, I studied the Failing Newspaper Act, which provided for joint operating agreements (JOA), which presaged the death of afternoon newspapers in America. In my own lifespan, I've seen the city of Cleveland go from 3 daily newspapers, the Cleveland News, the Cleveland Press, and the Plain Dealer, to just one. I've studied the Federal Communications Act of 1934, which set specific responsibilities for broadcast license holders to serve "in the public interest, convenience, and necessity." H.L. Mencken, the famous critic, once wrote "freedom of the press is limited to those who own one." Indeed, the Constitution is liberally interpreted when it comes to the government having any role in directing what goes into print. And that is as it should be (that is not to abandon questions of horizontal and vertical market concentration). However, holders of broadcast licenses have specific responsibilities to the public. It is the public which owns the airwaves. The public provides a license in exchange for service. At the same time the definition of media has expanded to include interactive services, the requirements of service have been largely abandoned as media monopolies have grown more powerful. Community groups struggle for recognition, social and economic causes which run counter to vested interests are marginalized, and our politics are corrupted by having to raise huge amounts of money from one set of corporate interest to buy airtime from another set of corporate interests.
