A Moment For Independent Media

I don’t know what the next couple of months hold. I will not pretend to. A lot has been happening, and it feels quite chaotic. (As I said recently, Tedium is not well-equipped for this.)

But what I will posit is this: Independent media matters more than ever right now, because it is less susceptible to the triggers that hold back less flexible corporate media outlets.

Publishers like myself have an internet connection, a small array of hosting tools, and a web domain. And despite all that, we can punch above our weight.

Tonight, news broke about Jimmy Kimmel getting suspended after a comment he made about Charlie Kirk did not go over well. It comes mere months after something similar happened to Stephen Colbert. The concerning part about the Kimmel thing is the fact that it seemed to have been driven by FCC interference, as FCC chair Brendan Carr made comments insinuating that he would go after ABC if it did not do something. Combine that with an on-deck merger involving one of ABC’s largest affiliates, and you have a combustible formula.

The internet, for all its good and bad, has been less tethered than this. Brendan Carr is not going to knock on Tedium’s door for its spicy takes on salsa jars. But this is an excellent reminder of the machinations that come with corporate media that is owned by a large conglomerate.

Are there risks with a platform in which things get published? Yes. But the democratizing of digital publishing means that thousands of small, modest voices will always have more room in the conversation. We must be scrappier, but we can move faster. We are the bendy straws of modern media.

Earlier this evening, Ben Collins, the journalist-turned-Onion-publisher, wrote this over on Bluesky:

There’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for people to build on the rubble of what’s being destroyed before our eyes. Private corporations bending over to forcefeed everyone government-approved speech is evil and amoral, but more than anything this creates boring, inauthentic, unwatchable shit.

Care must always be taken in which we talk about charged topics, but we don’t have to live in a corporate ecosystem if we don’t want to. (Side note: Watch this Jeff Jarvis clip from CNN this evening. Dude gets it.) If a media outlet feels compromised, support your favorite blogger. You don’t have to stick with Hulu—there are plenty of YouTubers that can do the job instead. The ecosystem isn’t perfect, but there is room to breathe.

But if we must build many tiny empires to work around the compromises of the big ones, that’s what we shall do. Support a tiny media outlet near you.

(image via DepositPhotos.com)