“There are also less obvious reasons, which all of us—everyone who is invested in the mission of using independent media to change the world for the better—should reflect on.”

I’m not going to sugarcoat things: Progressive, independent media outlets like ours have made tremendous strides over the years, but in the aggregate, we are still getting our butts kicked by corporate and rightwing media.  There are obvious reasons for this: one side is incredibly well funded by a host of powerful actors with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, the other is not; one side has its coverage artificially boosted by black-boxed social media and search engine algorithms while the other is regularly downgraded or shadow-banned; etc.  There are also less obvious reasons, which all of us – everyone who is invested in the mission of using independent media to change the world for the better – should reflect on.

Whether we’re talking about individual voices on social media or independent podcasts, YouTube shows, magazines, and multimedia outlets like TRNN, the digital media ecology’s built-in incentive structures train us to see ourselves as competitors in a zero-sum battle royale to secure our share of viewers, listeners, donors, clout, and so on.  In short, we are encouraged to think like capitalists, to see others’ successes as our failures, and to greedily lord over our own personal fiefdoms of followers while the world continues to burn.  This is the oldest trick in the book: divide and conquer.  It is this every mindset that has pushed so many of us to fight with and clamber over one another in our daily lives to secure whatever scarps of wealth, status, and security we can for ourselves, all while the vast majority of wealth and power is concentrated in the hands of a few.  In the world of media, the situation is no different: the more we are fighting and competing with one another, the more the powers that be are able to shore up their dominance.  If we – all of us – are going to pose a serious threat to the power-serving propaganda machines that have been stoking imperialist desires to invade Cuba, fomenting manufactured outrage over “voter fraud” and Critical Race Theory, providing cover for police brutality, etc., we need to get serious about pooling our resources, bringing our respective audiences together, and working collaboratively.  And that is precisely what we are doing here at TRNN.

In the first installment of our six-part video series of special reports on under covered political struggles in the state of Wisconsin, we premiered our documentary on rural Wisconsinites’’ fights to protect their communities against Big Agriculture and the factory farming industry.  This video series is a testament to what we in the media (and all of you who support us) can achieve if we collaborate: By teaming up with In These Times magazine for their investigative series “The Wisconsin Idea,” we have been able to create something special together that neither of us could do on our own.

We at TRNN are making a concerted effort to get our amazing, committed, and talented team out there in the media bloodstream to engage in important discussions happening beyond the confines of our website, to share our work and critical perspectives with new audiences, and to send a message that TRNN is a collaborative hub for people around the world who are serious about building a better world.  For instance, TRNN Managing, and Baltimore Editor Lisa Snowden-McCray published a stirring piece on Audubon magazine about the beautiful, necessary struggle for green spaces in Baltimore’s underserved neighborhoods. Jaisal Noor has been giving powerful and incisive interviews about worker cooperatives in the age of COVID-19 on a number of radio, podcast, and YouTube shows, including FAIR’s Counterspin and Means Morning News. I spoke with the great Jacqueline Luqman and Sean Blackmon about striking Frito-Lay workers in Topeka, Kanas (the interview begins around the one-hour mark).  Eddie Conway dispensed more of his legendary wisdom on the This Is Revolutionpodcast, and Police Accountability Report hosts Taya Graham and Stephen Janis have been drawing much needed attention to the injustices of the US policing system and getting much deserved acclaim for their documentary, The Friendliest Town. We are out there, and we’re only getting started.

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