New American Journal graphic by Walter Simon [Art Market Place]

The Big Picture – 
By Glynn Wilson – 

LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN, Ala. — The whole world is in shock.

If the coronavirus doesn’t kill you, the stress from the economic collapse may.

What to do about it?

Maybe look on the bright side?

This will probably be the coolest summer in a couple of decades. It’s certainly been a cool spring, since everybody stopped driving so much and flying and staying in hotels, the most carbon intensive thing humans can do besides burning coal for power.

While brick and mortar businesses of all kinds are suffering, more and more people are learning how to buy online.

Education

Colleges and universities are in big trouble, with those expensive campuses nobody can use now anyway. The good news is they are rapidly learning how to conduct online classes, but what will happen to those antiquated, beautiful, historic campuses?

Maybe they can make a comeback in a year or two if scientists can find a vaccine.

News

While newspapers are dying at an alarming rate, more people are learning to read news online, and they seem willing to at least pay for the New York Times and the Washington Post.

But other news outlets are in big trouble, as reported by the Columbia Journalism Review.

One of the problems is that local newspapers are still paying huge power bills for brick and mortar buildings along with train loads of paper and ink. Instead, they should consider paying writers to write things people actually want to read.

People can find out the score of the football game on Facebook or TV and see pictures too. Considering the pedestrian nature of local sports writing, like much of the content, perhaps local newspapers should consider finding something else to write about, especially since there probably won’t be a football season this year anyway.

Use this as an opportunity to rethink what you are doing.

The New York Times is rethinking. With no major sporting events and barely any travel going on, management plans to stop printing hard copies of the sports and travel sections in the Sunday edition and replace them with a section called “At Home,” focusing on life while sheltering in place.

Surely not that many people are titillated by mug shots of people arrested for small time drug crimes. Why waste the ink and paper? Even online this does not seem like much of a traffic generator. Cover the big, sensational crime I guess, although it doesn’t much interest me and many people like me.

Weather news? If people are not staring at the weather radar and coverage on cable TeeVee, they can get a weather report and watch the severe weather radar on their smart phones.

What can local newspapers do?

Hire somebody who can actually write interesting news features about people that other people might take the time to read. Cover important public affairs stories and fight the battles that need to be fought. Pandering to the local conservative base is probably not helping much. Conservatives tend to get their news from Fox News and talk radio. They’ve been turned away from “liberal” newspapers and aren’t going back.

Also, do it online without a bunch of popup ads and a silly paywall nobody is going to use anyway. You just rob yourselves of traffic to the Google ads, which I understand don’t pay much of anything either.

There has to be a better way to do this and pay for it.

We at the New American Journal have a plan, and it’s not really so different from what Ben Franklin did in Philadelphia in 1776. Notice the new categories of news we feature. Instead of Sports, Sports, Business, Entertainment and a little Politics, we have Public Affairs, Science and the Law, for example. If we could find enough sponsors to pay for news in all those categories — or well situated individuals willing to pay somebody to cover that kind of news — we could do way more.

Politics

What about local political parties? How you are going to keep paying rent to Republican landlords on a brick and mortar headquarters you won’t be able to use for the foreseeable future?

Most of the work of calling constituents is being done on cell phones these days, which can be used at home or anywhere else. Raising money for rent is not going to get Democrats elected. Helping to fund a better online press might.

Manufacturing

Manufacturing is another story. There is a chance here to bring back some local manufacturing home from abroad at this time, especially making masks and other products for the health care industry.

This is what’s being suggested in Alabama by U.S. Senator Doug Jones, the Democrat from Birmingham.

U.S. Senator Doug Jones Urges Alabama Governor Kay Ivey to Establish a Health Care Manufacturing Task Force

It’s also being worked on by the political campaign of Rick Neighbors, running for Congress in Alabama’s Fourth District.

Coronavirus Stops Politics in its Tracks: Rick Neighbors’ Congressional Campaign Switches Gears to Helping Neighbors and Making Masks

We are going to have to get creative here, in politics, news, education and business. If ever there was a time to throw off the chains of the past, this is it.

Let’s work together altruistically to find the solutions we need to survive and move forward.

This is not the time for selfish competition within groups.

“In a group, selfish individuals beat altruistic individuals. But, groups of altruistic individuals beat groups of selfish individuals,” Alabama native E.O. Wilson once said. “Competition between groups selects for pro-social groups. Competition within groups tend to undermine groups. The rest is commentary.”

Can Altruism Trump Selfishness to Save Democracy and Planet Earth?