Let’s Talk About Free Press, Baby!
Hi, my name is Allison, and I’m addicted to long walks, Diet Coke, and yapping my friggen heart out!
“Hi, Allison!”
I am so engrossed in transcribing my inner monologue and being cognitively heard that I woke up this morning and sat down to write this before I even put on pants. I did crack a Diet Coke first, though, but that’s a whole different thing than what I’m here to talk about, okay.
Some of you (who are obsessed with me) know that I’ve been shouting into the void (writing) for the consumption of others for a bit now. In high school I was writing poetry for Tumblr (I wear your cringe like a badge of honor). I rocked out with my cocky word play out on Twitter (until I deleted that account in a billionaire-h8r-fueled-crash-out). About a year and a half ago, I started writing a weekly newsletter as a way to keep in touch with friends and family (it has since become a monthly endeavor to a much wider audience, but remains in the rotation of dopamine-driven side quests). I built this site to serve as a portfolio, and yet somehow this blog has become the priority.
My point is that the heart wants what it wants, and this heart has always been called to compose psychological siren songs (write).
Lately, the concepts of free speech and free press have been camped out in my frontal lobe like the nerds outside of Best Buy when the Nintendo Switch 2 dropped. With Stephen Colbert (btw, would) and The Late Show getting taken off the air, I can’t help but defend our rights to say dumb shit.
I am not saying one thing directly led to the other AT ALL; however, one week, Stephen Colbert called out CBS’s parent company, Paramount, for settling in a lawsuit with President Trump, and the next week, The Late Show announced it would be going off the air at the end of the season for monetary reasons.
So, it does feel a little bit like Steve’s freedom of press is owned by a much higher power, but I’m just a girl, so, this is all just gossip, xoxo.
Given that context…
Something important to me is that my writing always remains free to consume and owned by moi.
this website
The Silly Goofy Newslettere
Everything But the Kitchen Sink: a blog
It is all funded by The Bank of Allison (not a real bank) to allow for that freedom in what I say and recommend to you all.
No one is paying me to share products, podcasts, recipes, or shows. No link is an affiliate link and I do not receive a kickback per click.
I am the full owner of all of this nonsense and I earn nothing from writing any of this content other than this weird little feeling I get in my heart at the possibility of even one of you smiling today because of words I strung together.
That being said, it is a weird and difficult thing to do, with very little reward, and I cannot imagine how I would even begin to pitch it as a good idea to the Shark Tank, but I’m still gonna do it. Because, at this point, if you want to truly publish information and opinions free from censorship, you basically have to start your own damn media company and buy that free press yourself.
This is an interjection because I tried to link you all to an article about interviewer/writer, Andrew Callaghan, and how his YouTube channel, “Channel 5 News,” was started as a response to the owner of his prior channel, “All Gas No Breaks,” telling him he could not get political and to just stick to the funny stuff after buying them out, but it was behind a pay wall.
He gave up the name, started a new channel, built that one up for himself, and recently bought back the original name.
You may be thinking, “Allison, you’re being really self-important and dramatic right now, and, honestly, a little conspiracy-theoristy. Two examples of how you have to own the media to prevent political censorship isn’t enough. There are so many existing small sites and blogs that are ran by individuals and are just offering honest, formed opinions. There’s blogs about what credit cards to get from sources like NerdWallet, and blogs about what TVs to get from sources like this-one-niche-creator-I-like, and blogs about cooking, and everything under the sun!”
NerdWallet, while started independently, is now publicly owned, meaning they have to appease shareholders first and foremost. Almost every “niche” blog that shows up on a Google search is owned by a private equity firm that employs SEO tacticians to ensure those are the results you see on the first page. And when is the last time you found a cooking blog that didn’t assault your senses with advertisements???
Nearly every existing way to exercise your right to free press is owned by a higher power that, let’s face it, is likely intertwined in politics in some aspect, due to the fact that we live in a political society. Which means that your right to publish opinions and information without governmental censorship is really more of a beautiful phrase than it is an implemented practice.
The reality of the situation is that, on any given day, we experience dramatically less free press than we assume.
That being said, I don’t know what the solution is. I’ve studied enough of everything to know that we’re fucked but not enough of anything to know how to fix it.
All I can really do is hope that we as a society return to a craving for authenticity and thus we see a new boom of small media companies rise to destroy the current existing media monopolies.
Until then, can somebody send me $25 for my SquareSpace subscription this month? (That’s how you write irony)
