Big headline yesterday concerned the further the decimation of print news, "Tronc Fires Half the Staff of the New York Daily News in Latest Attack on Local Journalism." Juan Gonzalez of Democracy Now said,

That was the company that when I first got to the Daily News in 1987 was running the Daily News and provoked a strike of the 2,500 employees of the newspaper back then. And back then, I would say in the late 80s, early 1990s, there were about 450 people in the newsroom. I think there were more in the 50s, but by the late 80s and beginning of the 90s, we had about 450. So to go now to 45—one tenth of the staff—you’ve got to think that New York City back then had maybe seven, seven and a half million people. Today, New York City has eight and a half million people. So you’re talking about a much bigger city, many fewer reporters. It’s just a tragedy, what’s happening to the newspaper business. Not the fact that papers are not publishing as many papers, because obviously they have websites, but that the staffs continue to shrink of the people who are actually producing original news. It’s ludicrous to think that you can put out a major news site covering New York City with just 45 people.

The two main working/middle class papers for the past few decades have been the Daily News, and the NY Post, which Rupert Murdoch bought in the 1970's and turned from a liberal paper started by Alexander Hamilton into a ghoulish RW arch-conservative, racist paper with an emphasis on the tawdry (like his British counterpart the Sun, sans the Page 3 topless women titilation) with clever and catchy front page headlines (which the Daily News of late has been upping their game on and in some cases surpassing). Still, the Daily News leaves a lot be desired in a populist town when they rest mostly on Neoliberal stances, though they've done some really good reporting on police brutality and some on the economic downturn. For many years now I purposely don't read them, although you can't walk down the street without noticing the attention-grabbing headlines and peer in to see what the masses are going to be talking about next.

The Editor-in-Chief tweeted,

If you hate democracy and think local governments should operate unchecked and in the dark, then today is a good day for you.

— Jim Rich (@therealjimrich) July 23, 2018

Seems there's more to the story. Check this out, "How Is This Shit Legal," in something called The Concourse by someone called Albert Burneko:

This past spring, Michael Ferro resigned as chairman of publicly traded media-looting hell-company Tronc, Inc., just ahead of the publication of sexual harassment allegations against him. As a parting gift, Tronc paid him $15 million, voluntarily bundling up the total value of a three-year consulting contract into one lump payment expensed against the company’s earnings and putting itself $14.8 million in the red for the first quarter. Today, Tronc gutted the New York Daily News, laying off at least half of its editorial staff to cut costs. In a society not crippled and driven completely insane by capitalism, motherfuckers would go to prison for this.

When people talk pejoratively about “class warfare,” they almost never are referring to things like the above sequence of events. But what happened to the Daily News at the hands of Tronc is class fucking warfare, a massive redistribution of wealth from the paper’s working people to a disgusting handsy shitbag multimillionaire, in a decision made far above those working people’s heads by a small handful of executive- and investor-class vampires. The journalists who lost their livelihoods today in effect had their salaries and benefits re-routed to Michael Ferro’s bank accounts. Against their wills, they were made to pay him for being a fucking pig.

Versions of this are happening all across the media industry: Ownership parasites writing checks to themselves and each other that must be cashed out of the livelihoods of real people with no say in the matter. Deadspin’s parent company, Univision, recently bought out dozens of people across our network of sister sites—originally they’d intended layoffs, before negotiating with our union—not because we’re doing unprofitable work, but simply as a means of passing along the outrageous debt the company’s owners took on when they purchased Gizmodo Media Group in the first place. Next they’ll sell us off—altogether or piecemeal, as best suits their wallets and nothing else. It is, pretty much exactly, the Fuck you, pay me! sequence from Goodfellas, playing out in real time.

Hot damn! That's some righteous, beatdown rant. I like him being on our side.

The bestial sleaze of venture capitalism, stock buybacks, corporate hierarchy and CEO swindle reminding us of a system so antithetical to human society. #KapitalismKills #SocialismSaves. When will it all boil over so that the 99% stand together to put aside their dreams of getting rich aside and rest easy in the solidarity of a socialist economic system that provides the cornerstone of a peaceful and dignified life for all?

Naturally the sneaky and nefarious Neoliberal Nightmare of NY, Andrew Cuomo, is desperately trying to make some political hay to bail out his moribund campaign by vowing to inject some State money to keep it afloat. I doubt many believe in the irony of this empty political posing.

Here's why I think a story about newspaper layoffs dovetails into something equally or more important in larger sense: the stories of our collective lives, as citizens, who have been reduced to an existence of barely subsisting during this ongoing economic slog (albeit with lots of glitzy gizmos and gadgets) directly because of the unrelenting and vicious grinder of unbridled capitalism, are not being told by the media or MSM. The lower wages and overworking, the myriad reality of depressed living, the lack of healthcare, the enforced bank slavery encroachment of medical/student/mortgage/consumer debt, etc. etc.

The motives of the people who own and run the media, which shape all the narratives (go back through our lives and think of all the bullshit the media has had us talking about), are expressly to limit discussion about the fallibility of or downright evil inherent in a governing system that is beholden to money. Instead they seek to fill our heads with captivating and non-stop distraction, manufactured controversy, celebrity gossip, et al. Or as the brilliant writer and Socialist Kurt Vonnegut called one of his books, "Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons," which he defines here: "a "wampeter" is an object around which the lives of many otherwise unrelated people may revolve. The Holy Grail would be a case in point. "Foma" are harmless untruths, intended to comfort simple souls. An example: "Prosperity is just around the corner." A "granfalloon" is a proud and meaningless association of human beings."

Narratives. When our lives are not reflected back to us (which has been the MO in general of oligarch-run media from time immemorial) human nature has a way of making us then believe that these things either aren't really happening to us or are not as bad as we may think. Because, we think, if they aren't being discussed on the "news" they can't be all that important or even true - if they're not there when you go looking for it. This deep psychological deception works. Along with state propaganda it keeps us repressed in a brutal inertia that leads to apathy and creates the malaise in which we can't make sense of the controlling factors of our lives.

When these stories, the ones we're living with every day for years and decades, are not being given airtime, the catastrophic result is that people are more inclined to think things aren't as bad as they really are, and then not look and ultimately demand workable solutions for the 99%. "Well, I hear the job numbers are up. They say the economy is booming again...yada, yada, yada." Repeating all the propaganda lies from the Corporate Narrative Shapers. It's a case of "don't believe your lying eyes, we smart people will tell you what's happening." And when you're constantly barraged, multiple times a day with the same BS headline or meme, it's a psychological trap designed to make you think that this must be important, even though it's a complete distraction/obfuscation/ fabrication to avert your attention from how you're really getting screwed.

Who is this owner guy anyway, Tronk? Apparently he also owns The Chicago Tribune, the Baltimore Sun and the Hartford Courant. Bezos is the richest bastard in the world, owns WaPo. Off the top of my head, Gawker and Gothamist, excellent sources of local news and investigative journalism (though they have recently been bought by Neoliberal NPR local affiliate WNYC) were closed down last year by yet another oligarch.

History reads like a litany of very wealthy, money-moving con artists who secure their power by buying up as many media properties as possible. Why? For the same reasons they always have. To block any negative news about their other properties, while also maligning competitors' (a favorite book of mine on this subject, which is filled with such examples, is "Freedom of the Press," a work published in 1935 by investigative journalist/ muckraker George Seldes, that goes into great detail behind the scenes of this monopoly and specific examples of their malignancy). And, to control the narrative (i.e. capitalism = good, socialism = bad, American Exceptionalism and the purposely elusive America Dream, celebrity distraction and manufactured controversy, etc. etc).

When you've got the masses talking about bullshit, and comparatively inconsequential things dictated by a homogenized lapdog press, they won't notice how they're getting their pockets picked in a thousand different ways, or how a Pay-to-Play government allows their Wall St and Corporate America bribers to literally write the legislation that keeps this maniacal status quo in place. They run off with the bag of loot, while we stay fixated on dumb distraction yelling at one another. Divide and Conquer. Incidentally, Bernie has, or his staff have, been doing a great job of seeking out, collecting and airing the voices of the maligned not being covered by the MSM (skip the Trump stuff and watch some of the powerful firsthand stories of workers being ground down by Corporate America or lack of healthcare).

Lastly, I wanted to leave you with a good conversation I listened to yesterday about this sort of thing and related subjects.

Voices From The Rust Belt- with Anne Trubek, Ben Gwin, and Thomas Frank

This part of an essay written and read by Trubek, a journalist and founder of Belt Publishing, jumped out at me:

This book offers another way of looking at the Rust Belt. Another way to grasp its contours through dozens of individual stories finally told. These essays address segregated schools, rural childhood, suburbia on weed, lead poisoning, opiate addiction and job loss. They reflect upon happy childhood, successful community ventures, warm refuge for outsiders and hidden oasis's of natural beauty. But mainly there are stories drawn from personal experience: a girl has her bike stolen, a social worker in Pittsburgh makes calls on clients, a journalist from Buffalo moves away and misses home, a city manager stops fighting the urge to relocate and decides to make a life in Akron, an ecologist takes her students to a CVS parking lot, a father gives his daughter a bath in the lead contaminated water of Flint, Michigan.

We've come to recognize the major trends, popularized topics, opinion pages, and stump speeches that have come to shape the narrative of the region. But there is power in simply bearing witness to learn about individual lives in specific places. To appreciate the writers abilities to render experiences. And to resist the urge to make of this place a static incomplete cliche, a talking point or polling data set in lieu of a thesis or some prescription. These essays offers gorgeous turns of phrases, heartbreaking experiences and raw emotion. There's an urgency to them. We've created not only income in a but narrative inequality in this nation. Some stories are told over and over, while others are muted. So the writers in this book seek you and say: this is me and I am here. But more they say: please pay attention; please listen; let us tell you our story. We can tell it ourselves.

(emphasis mine)

Isn't this where we find the impetus for compassion and empathy, from firsthand stories, which are the engine of society and the building blocks for a socialist revolution?

It isn't any wonder then why the media goes into overdrive to avoid at all costs these narratives and pummel us instead with endless, mind-numbing distraction.

When we tell our stories to one another, on a blog or on a park bench to one another or at an assembled community meeting, that's when we begin to understand that Another World Is Possible.