About a month ago I had a discussion with a prominent progressive media publisher. During our chat he told me he thought Z diverse progressive media institutions that aggregate content from around the internet routinely ignore Z content or reprint it only when they can link to it from somewhere other than Z.
I replied the problem had a long history and had to do largely with positions we had taken over the years that have annoyed others. In the early days Z elevated race, gender, and power to importance equal to economy and class. Then, that was a sacrilege. Similarly, our views on the Mideast were also reviled, back then. These reasons have pretty much disappeared, however, as the views are in the first case nearly universal, and in the second, quite acceptable.
Not long after, it became our views about fund raising that isolated us. That still exists, but again, given changed times - it is not so great a factor, any more. Next our commitments to self management, equitable remuneration, and what we call balanced job complexes as preconditions of alternative media irked others.
The media publisher agreed that perhaps the commitments are part of the problem - but he wasn't attuned to all that. He was confident, however, about another factor. He felt my trips to Venezuela, my articles about Venezuela, and in general Z's continuing coverage and commentary regarding events and projects in Venezuela, were devestatingly harmful to Z's image on the left. Our interest in Venezuela had lead, he felt, to a kind of ghettoization. This took me by surprise. I thought such a dynamic would be just too sectarian and, really, too politically ridiculous, to be true.
