In previous issues of the Chicago Media Action (CMA) newslettter, I have written about media and connections to the group Chicago Media Action and its history. In this issue of the newsletter, I want to write about this very newsletter itself and what I have in mind for its future.

I started this newsletter in November 2022 to mark the 20th anniversary of the launch of what became Chicago Media Action. My intent was to help bring back CMA in some sense after the group fell into inactivity for nearly a decade, to help highlight some of the extraordinary history of CMA and the media reform movement of which it was/is a part, to tie these efforts and successes to others past and present, and in so doing to inspire other like-minded activist efforts.

During its heyday, CMA had maintained a monthly newsletter of media-and-CMA-related updates and events and factoids, which we distributed via email and which at its peak had a mailing list of nearly nine hundred email addresses. When I made the decision to bring back this newsletter, I didn't want to resurrect the CMA newsletter exactly as it was, but I was inspired by the many, many newsletters distributed via platforms like Substack and Ghost which have come online in recent years, which are providing long-form essays and commentary (and even journalism!) for distribution, sometimes every day. I thought, if people are doing that, I could do that too -- not every day, mind you, but at least once a month.

And so I have. I should also say, I didn't have an end or a goal in mind when I started. I simply intended to start writing and share what I knew and what I thought, media-related, and to keep doing it as long as I could. During the course of writing these essays, the idea occurred to me that I could compile the essays into a book, to share with other audiences still and to provide an additional measure of posterity to these efforts. Writing a book about CMA echoes a previous unsuccessful attempt I made 15 years ago to produce and publish a book about CMA. I think/hope I can find a publisher with this more recent attempt at a book, or at the very least publish a book myself (there are now platforms for that that make it eminently feasible).

And now after 22 months of writing an essay per month, minimum 1000 words (and sometimes much more), certainly enough to fill a book, I have to admit, I'm now finding it more difficult to write these once-a-month essays. It didn't help that I missed my target dates for distribution twice in consecutive months. I think that my difficulty with continuing is a consequence of having said everything I want to say about recounting CMA's history and connections to the present and future, and I'm finding it more and more difficult to find something pertinent to say on this topic that I haven't already said.

As a result, I've made the decision to end these newsletters as a regular monthly project, in early 2025. Let me also say, however, that I reserve the right to write and publish again in the future, if I feel the itch to do so. I still maintain this mailing list and the CMA website, so that if I want to write again I have a platform ready to go. I just don't think that I have enough grist for the mill to keep this effort ongoing.

My plan then is as follows.

1. A bit of background for this first step: In 2011, I gave a presentation where I summarized (or tried to) the history of media reform efforts throughout American history, entitled Corporate Media Control and Media Reform Struggles. Even as a summary, the presentation is massive -- more than six thousand words long in its original unabridged form -- and is now somewhat out of date. I plan to take the text of this presentation, update it to 2024 (along with incorporating some of what I've learned about media history since 2011), and then divide the essay into two sections. I'll distribute each of the two sections as separate emails for the November and December editions of this newsletter. (Even though CMA is but a small part of this essay, I want to include this essay in the book, to put CMA and its sibling media reform efforts in a wider historical context. I will need to revise the essay for publication, so I figured that I could do so for this newsletter and then it'll be ready when the time comes to publish.)

2. I would then write two additional essays after that -- one about the media reform movement of which CMA has been a part. Then, my final planned scheduled essay will be about CMA the group and effort, then and now, to be distributed on February 2, 2025 (Happy Groundhog's Day!).

3. After that, I will shop around for publishers for the book. Should my efforts to find a publisher prove unsuccessful, I will, as I mentioned earlier, publish the darn thing myself. Regardless what should transpire, I reserve the right to send out updates in this endeavor to this mailing list and to the CMA website as events warrant.

I count myself fortunate that I have been able to contribute in some small way to efforts for a better media and a better world, and that I have been able to recount the story here and elsewhere of these efforts. Even though some may consider the matters I've discussed in this "dated" or "legacy" or flat-out "old" or out of date, the struggles and the victories they engender show, as I wrote elsewhere, that "everyday people can fight and win these struggles...and reminders about these victories can inspire future victories to come."

Thank you for reading and for understanding.

P.S. On the topic of Chicago-based grassroots efforts to change the world for the better, the same day this email goes out (October 2, 2024) marks the 15th anniversary of the day Chicago did not win the bid to host the 2016 Olympics -- an effort successfully derailed by grassroots activists and now told in a book that got published just last month.

DISCLAIMER: The opinions expressed on this website are those of the individual members of Chicago Media Action who authored them, and not necessarily those of the entire membership of Chicago Media Action, nor of Chicago Media Action as an organization.

FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.