Important tidbits in a growing story:
- College endowments drop like a rock.
- In earlier news, NPR decides to drop News and Notes.
- Newspapers like the Detroit Free Press go virtual, while other newspapers won’t survive 2009.
- Book publishers have slashed their budgets.
Now this may sound like a doom and gloom story. But it isn’t…necessarily. I choose these stories because they point to the growing reality that “cultural creatives” (writers, artists, musicians, intellectuals, journalists) like the institutions that sponsor them may need to rethink the way they work. With colleges and universities losing their endowments more and more graduate students will need to go outside of the academy for work. People on the tenure track will be placed in a much more tenuous position–assuming that tenure continues to exist. If the days of big advances are gone, then writers are going to have to figure out some other way to make ends meet.
And unlike the New Deal, when FDR created programs for artists…I’m not sure Obama has anything like this coming.
There are a whole set of conversations about the future of publishing, the future of the academy, the future of the music business. Black intellectuals haven’t been significant voices here.
We should be…because our futures are on the line as well, even as our future IS online. For me what I’ve had to realize over the past year is that the model with which we train graduate students, the model we pursue as assistant, associate, full professors, no longer works. And will NOT work. We need to be much more supple, much more entrepreneurial, and much more fluid in the types of questions we ask, the types of projects we undertake, the types of venues we pursue them in.
As an aside by the time you read this I should be on the road to Detroit, for a combination of pleasure (family), and business (collecting data for my next book project).
I hear you! The question though is, knowing that spaces like academic fundamentally resist change, how do demonstrate value in non-traditional spaces. I know we have electronic journals, but being on the other side of tenure, I've been advised many times to even look in that direction if I want to get a pub out. Additionally, entrepreneurialism is often read as opportunism, and lord knows the backlash for that among Black academics is harsh already. So what are some of your thoughts on those two dilemmas elder?
Dumi, take a look at this:
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/12…
…and holler back at me. I promise after you read this I'll give you a response.
Funny, I hear that… but I know what tenure contract I came in under, so I also look forward to your response. Though I imagine you have quite a few more interesting comments to respond to given the conversation that has unfolded since my initial commentary.
agreed….
I believe a lot of the issue is the white elephant in the room as far as black intellectualism is concerned… it starts low on the ladder… the education of our children…
our white elephant, the so called “digital divide' makes how we teach our children antiquated, even as our children become expert at hacking into the music and porn websites while sitting at the few computers available to them.
Perhaps the new administration will act upon the way intellectualism is “rescued” at the top by getting the patient off life support at the bottom…
we shall see…
in the meantime, I will continue my job teaching those willing to learn, how to think critically, and how to hone the intelligence that is there within them…
good luck to us all…
This was an interesting post.
Sometimes people fail to realize that the academy has always been “our domain” from our own schoolhouses built deep in the country, to HBCU's, and to the places where we've been able to more than hold our own predominantly white institutions.
As a recent college graduate, the question of how we fund studies in the nation's colleges and graduate schools is of great interest to me.
How we make sure these institutions continue to serve and meet all our needs continues to interest me.
Hopefully despite the economic challenges, the intellectual challenges will be surmounted and educational institutions will be able to focus on holistic education of the generations to come.
Producing lots of uneconomical art and philosophy is a way for a society to flaunt its economic excess and the superiority of its political-economic system. In austere times or what are perceived as austere times, a society's resources will move towards wealth-generation activities and away from what it perceives as superfluous art-generation and philosophy-generation activities.
Only the societies that perceive themselves as being economically mighty will bother to support lots of unprofitable art or philosophy. They will use some of the excess wealth their inventors, their entrepreneurs, or their soldiers accumulated for them and invest it in prestige-granting institutions led by the cultural vanguards and scholars. Those institutions will distribute the most prestige kudos to the artists and philosophers that do the most to maintain or increase the politically and economically dominant culture's prestige.
When societies are very wealthy, many of their smartest citizens, particularly those unable or unwilling to take on the most rough and tumble elements of political and economic competitions, will have strong incentives to retreat to the ivory towers or their studios to compete mostly for prestige rather than compete mostly for power or wealth.
But the societies that perceive themselves to be in economic dire straits will look to their most economically valuable scientists and their entrepreneurs for economic heroism, and, if their scientists and entrepreneurs fail them, their soldiers. In hard times, the capital moves towards what the society values most, away from what it values least. So, in hard times, artists and philosophers, particularly the least entertaining or least inventive ones, see their budgets dry up.
I choose these stories because they point to the growing reality that “cultural creatives” (writers, artists, musicians, intellectuals, journalists) like the institutions that sponsor them may need to rethink the way they work.
What do all the “dots in decline” that you arranged in the post anchoring this thread have in common?
Why might training be of greater value than educating for a minute, and then, if masterfully crafted, function as a gateway for educative processes currently in decline?
The essence of the thing is “rethinking the way you work”. How might the new media subserve rethinking the way you work?
Do dominant – though not necessarily fully monetized – new media organs have greater value as training or education tools?
What barriers to educative entry do some of the tools potentially solve?
Aside from advertising, what are the most prolific monetization models online?
What does this factor have to do with what has proliferated online and what has failed to proliferate or peaked far earlier than its architects envisioned?
Thanks for this post–and happy and safe travels
I understand what you're saying here, Spence. But as E.C. has noted, a culture caught up in a massive economic contraction has much bigger fish to fry than promoting the arts and humanities. I tend to believe this is especially true for a subculture, such as Af-Ams, who are perceived by most reasonable measures as marginalized. Part of the Black intelligencia's dilemma, IMO, is a preoccupation with aesthetics and philosophy over industry (i.e.; durable goods, agriculture, etc.) and infrastructure. However, I accept the Tribune Co.'s bankruptcy, and the depreciation of endowments for education, health care, and the arts, with other developments in the media and financial industries as canaries in the coal mine.
Internet access is an extremely important economic tool today, and its importance will increase in the future. But the true value of the medium will be realized only for those who possess the fundamental skills, knowledge, and creativity in commerce, manufacturing… even entertainment… to sustain themselves anywhere, with or without the technology. The problems experienced by the Free Press and NPR, for example, can probably be addressed by relatively simple adjustments to the respective corporations' business models. Such are acts of courage and vision; two commodities in short supply among the Black intelligencia.
Perhaps the Black intelligencia would be better characterized as the Black establishment.
That would explain the lack of vision thing. I think it also explains how Black people allow ourselves to be easily displaced and/or gentrified — as in the case of NPR — and why the Black Folks Who Ought to Know Better seemingly never have a solution at hand.
For a minute, you gave the appearance of endeavoring a new blog strategy Les…,
http://blacksmythe.com/blog/2008/11/16/obama-and-the-southern-strategy/
http://blacksmythe.com/blog/2008/11/11/the-obama-election-and-its-symbolic-consequences/
http://blacksmythe.com/blog/2008/10/31/what-next-crossposted-at-blackprof/
and then stepped back from it.
I hope Jimmy Izrael didn’t back you away from it with this HILARIOUS bullseye comment at Cobbs;
Jimmy is closer to the truth here than any 8 dozen afrodemics/creatives swirling around the bowl and trying to figure out why the enterprise to which they’re only feebly attached is in decline.
Was this a new blog strategy Les, or, was it an inherently doomed experiment with old wine funneled into a new wineskin?
For a minute, you gave the appearance of endeavoring a new strategy Les…,
http://blacksmythe.com/blog/2008/11/16/obama-and-the-southern-strategy/
http://blacksmythe.com/blog/2008/11/11/the-obama-election-and-its-symbolic-consequences/
http://blacksmythe.com/blog/2008/10/31/what-next-crossposted-at-blackprof/
and then stepped back from it.
I hope Jimmy Izrael didn’t back you away from it with this HILARIOUS bullseye comment at Cobbs;
Jimmy is closer to the truth here than any 8 dozen afrodemics/creatives swirling around the bowl and trying to figure out why the enterprise to which they’re only feebly attached is in decline.
Is this a case of old wine in new wineskins?
A new blog strategy. That I'm hoping will evolve into a new academic strategy.
Leaving aside the novelty of Lester Spence as the featured talking head, what exactly is “new” about it?
I’m thinking about this on the ground. What I can say right now is that
there’s got to be a better way of taking our academic work and translating
it for popular consumption and for critical development. given the
conversations taking place about the future of the city (much less the
future of the COUNTRY) we’ve got to figure out a way to get into this
conversation and to give folks the tools to participate themselves.
Perhaps the Black intelligencia would be better characterized as the Black establishment.
just not established well enough to endure underlying contraction, thus, not particularly well-established at all.
Necessity really IS the mother of invention. How could those working most strenuously to escape the exigencies of “necessity” ever be looked to as a source of invention?
It's contrary to the demonstrated nature of the persons and processes in question.
There are a whole set of conversations about the future of publishing, the future of the academy, the future of the music business. Black intellectuals haven’t been significant voices here.
We should be…because our futures are on the line as well, even as our future IS online.
Soulja boy showed everybody the way and got called on the carpet by old-heads for having done so.
In the entrepreneur's world, before we'd attempt to assemble the resources we'd need to bring a product or service to market, in addition to figuring out how to a) protect our property rights; b) get sufficient capital as inexpensively as possible; c) obtain and manage our resources profitably; d) limit our tax exposure; e) anticipate and navigate political, governmental-administrative, interest group, and market forces; f) defend against or beat our competitors (without breaking antitrust laws), and g) eventually exit from the venture profitably, we'll usually ask at least 5 basic questions:
1) What is the product or service?
2) Who, if anyone, is willing to buy it? (Good entrepreneurs will also want to know why)
3) How much of it are they willing to buy? (Good entrepreneurs will also want to know for how long)
4) Can it be made, marketed, distributed, and sold profitably?
5) What is the most profitable way to make, market, distribute, and sell it?
For professional scholars who want to go after individuals' dollars directly, a good way to start thinking entrepreneurially is to ask and answer those 5 basic questions. After working through those, they should call in a management consultant before they get serious about entering a serious business competition or, if they have money and time to burn, they could try to develop their own plan by working through questions similar to a) through g) on their own.
I suspect our professional university teachers who moonlight as scholars (their scholarly ideas, research, and writings work are not their biggest revenue streams) will likely find that outside the educational services market, the biggest markets scholars' products and services compete in are our entertainment and journalism markets. And scholars' products and services don't do very well in those markets for all sorts of reasons, not the least of which is the esoteric, rather than exoteric, language they often use in their attempts to communicate credibly or authoritatively to the initiated.
Our modern universities have not prepared our modern professional teachers and scholars to compete against entrepreneurs who go after individuals' dollars directly. At best, they have prepared some professional teachers and scholars to compete well for institutionally-controlled dollars (the sort of dollars that follow the political winds) and institutionally-distributed prestige (the sort of prestige that's difficult to cash-in on outside the educational services market).
Les, let me see if I can boil what E.C. wrote and what I've experienced over the past 6 years down to an even more fundamental litmus.
1. Assuming that your product is information – what could you package for a consumer – with an approximate 4th grade reading and comprehension level – that would confer practical knowledge or technique to that consumer that he/she would at a minimum be willing to pay attention to? (potential ad revenue)
2. If 1., might that same consumer be induced to pay more than just attention for access to and use of your informational presentation?
… and before I play myself any further,
i-n-t-e-l-l-i-g-e-n-t-si-a.
I shouldn't drink and surf.
Is it really a crisis of the black intellectual? It seems like the current system was only serving a handful of company Negroes anyway, yourself exempted. I can imagine the boring parade of fumbling white academics are scared, but they should be scared. Publishing is in a bad way, but really, that racket has been too insular to begin with. If the next generation of Jonathan Safran Foers have to miss a meal or get real jobs, then so much the better.
It's sad about News and Notes, but this is a complicated issue, and I was not in love with the direction the black presence in the media was going.
Hey Bro,
Interesting take on the impact of new media. Here's some more fuel for your cogent arguments: http://www.twistimage.com/blog/archives/mass-me…
As for your insight into the boundary of old and new–that is the preparation of graduate students, here's a another dimension to consider:
http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_mag…
Enjoy home!
I need to know what the existing 'model' was. I don't have a clue.
My assumption is the Black intellectual appear on TV as a pundit and plug their book at the end of the show.
Is that correct?
Hm.
No.
When you think of black intellectuals who are you thinking of?