My First Newsbreak Story
The Twenty-First Century Media defines itself through mutual participation
I am now on Newsbreak. I submitted two stories and one was published, the other rejected. The guide says a story could be rejected for a small reason and if one fixes it, it can be resubmitted, but one is left clueless to play the guessing game which is a waste of time.
The published story is Thoughts About the Text of Maine's Latest Bill to Create a State Electricity Monopoly
The rejected story is What Do the Real Estate Migration Statistics for Maine Tell Us?
The main reason that most content providers want to be on Newsbreak is that it is said to pay quite well but one has to have 200 followers on Newsbreak before one can be a candidate for paid articles. I would like to be paid but I am first and foremost interested in Newsbreak to become an effective voice in local politics. Right now I am in the mists - a metaphor borrowed from the Mists of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley. The mists are a metaphor for the receding pagan culture during the time when Christianity was taking over. In Maine, it’s a metaphor for the receding rural culture, as the corporate grid of central management and its megalopolis “progresses”,
Followers impact exposure.
I can’t find my article in the Newsbreak stream for Maine State. Being that I have no followers yet, that is not surprising. So far my story has only 10 impressions and 10 page views. I am not clear on the significance of those terms or on how an impression is generated. I decided not to invest in trying to understand it further today. You can vote me up by following me on Newsbreak HERE.
However, although I have no followers, I have a high CV rating. CV stands for “content value”. If one has followers and a high CV rating the CV rating will raise one’s exposure to an even higher level.
I found myself re-writing a story in a style that I do not expect to find on Newsbreak in which I am integrating my own story into another story, using the first person personal voice, at times. I thought “How perverse of me!” Are you begging for rejection?, but later I realized the best time to test the boundaries is at the start. The worst that will happen is Newsbreak will reject my article, and I can submit something more conventional, but if they accept my article, then I will have broken a truth barrier in local news. How far can we go in true confessions in 2021? The media is always transforming, Donald Trump certainly taught us that. I fully believe that the media needs to reincorporate the genuine voice of the individual as a counterbalance to the corporate worldview.
Since my own story is about our family business, Andersen Design, I have to walk the line carefully between what might be considered self-promotion and what is the story about the larger context. One can write about one’s own business, but it can’t be more than 50% of the story. For now, it is more about the museum, which is a different category than a personal business but I treat the balance the same. Even when writing about my interests, it is not exclusively about my private interests, but categorically an alternative voice, as in a voice not represented by the interests of the power elite, which dominants media in a one-party town and a centrally-managed state.
One has to craft a persona for each media portal. Some material can be recycled between portals but each portal should be considered uniquely.
I first started blogging because I was tired of media that did not represent views with which I resonate, and I was tired of media that represents the facts selectively.
For instance, in my first published Newsbreak article, I provide a link to the working legislative bill that charters a Maine state electricity company. Until I signed an online petition, I did not receive a response when I wrote to my state representative. The response to the petition said the bill was attached but it was not and so I requested it. The bill was sent as a PDF file. I created a downloadable link by uploading the bill to my own website and included that link in the Newsbreak article. I am used to reading articles about the proposed legislation that do not include a name, number, or link to the text of the proposed legislation. That means the public’s understanding is formed by hearsay.
One day, in 2009, I read an act that was passed by the Maine Legislature only a few days previous. I analyzed it and posted my analysis on my blog, Preserving the American Political Philosophy. I considered my blog to be so obscure that barely anyone would be reading it, but I used it as my own reference library so that if I was looking for a particular reference, such as the text of a bill or act that I was writing about, I knew that I could quickly find it on my blog, and I referenced the link to the act on numerous occasions during the next few months.
About six months later when I clicked on the link, a completely different text was displayed, as if the act had been completely re-written but not through proper legislative channels. I have never seen another transformation like it, before or since.
However, at the time I didn’t want to invest the time to explore in detail what had been changed. I was on to other things by then, but one change that was very identifiable with little effort was that where ever the act had previously referenced the Small Enterprise Growth Fund (now called the Maine Venture Fund), it was now the Financial Authority of Maine (FAME).
Even though I considered myself to be nobody writing in the middle of nowhere, I was being tracked because of the subject matter I wrote about. That’s the modern world. Whose reading me? The agencies that I am writing about. Interesting- but for some reason, I have never gone back to analyze what the deeper difference was in the two texts of the same act. My initial reaction was- it was a lot of work to do the first time around and now I am supposed to do it again?
So twelve years later, I am still blogging and the entire media world has changed, When I looked at my Newsbreak homepage a while back, all I saw were the same media publications that motivated me to craft my own voice in the first place, the ones that to my perspective mostly present the monolithic views of one political party in Maine. They might as well be called state media.
So now I am in a mutual stream with state media. I can barely be found, even I cannot find my article on my home page stream but I don’t have any followers yet so in the era of decisions made by algorithms. of course, I am still invisible. Visibility requires followers.
So if you are tired of the same old same old and want to see other voices in your media stream- follow the offbeat and the out of the ordinary, even if you don’t always agree. If you think it is time for big changes- then follow third parties and scientists and artists and thinkers and very weird people. Newsbreak should take a cue from South Korean TV. South Koreans create truly weird characters and that is what makes South Korean TV so humanistic and addictive. I am thinking that I am writing the kind of local news story that should be in the mix, that alongside the mainstream media telling their stories, there should be stories told by the not-yet-ready-for-mainstream people. Newsbreak cannot achieve this vision if no one submits the stories to counterbalance the mainstream. Social media is interactive. We are all creators of social media. Followers create our new media because they are the critical mass that becomes the next algorithm. Swim with it. Be here now, and follow me so I can rise like a lightweight feather catching a breeze!
Or a microscopic creature churned up by the sea?
Upcoming In other news
I have been getting more deeply involved with the Green Party. I will be writing about that in future posts but today, a simple introduction.
Michael Barden is the Green Independent candidate for Governor, a person worth knowing about.