Baby blue-eyes after the rain

 

On the morning of April 2nd, after rain the previous day, I went wandering through Springfield Neighborhood Park in southeast Austin. Not unexpectedly for the place and time of year, I found some baby blue-eyes, Nemophila phacelioides. Here are a couple of those flowers that were in different orientations; together the two views give you a good sense of what these flowers are like.

 

 

Curious about the two brown drops and the brown traces farther down, I asked about them in the Texas Flora group. One person suggested nectar.

 

 

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In April of 2022—coincidentally in the post where I last showed baby blue-eyes—I quoted from and linked to an article by William Deresiewicz in which he explained how he, a self-styled progressive, became disillusioned with media outlets he used to love, in particular NPR (National Public Radio).

On April 9th of this year Uri Berliner, a senior business editor at NPR, levied a similar complaint against the organization in his piece for The Free Press “I’ve Been at NPR for 25 Years. Here’s How We Lost America’s Trust.” And here’s a section of his article:

 

Back in 2011, although NPR’s audience tilted a bit to the left, it still bore a resemblance to America at large. Twenty-six percent of listeners described themselves as conservative, 23 percent as middle of the road, and 37 percent as liberal.

By 2023, the picture was completely different: only 11 percent described themselves as very or somewhat conservative, 21 percent as middle of the road, and 67 percent of listeners said they were very or somewhat liberal. We weren’t just losing conservatives; we were also losing moderates and traditional liberals. 

An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now, predictably, we don’t have an audience that reflects America. 

That wouldn’t be a problem for an openly polemical news outlet serving a niche audience. But for NPR, which purports to consider all things, it’s devastating both for its journalism and its business model.

 

And look at this later on:

 

… Concerned by the lack of viewpoint diversity, I looked at voter registration for our newsroom. In D.C., where NPR is headquartered and many of us live, I found 87 registered Democrats working in editorial positions and zero Republicans. None. 

So on May 3, 2021, I presented the findings at an all-hands editorial staff meeting. When I suggested we had a diversity problem with a score of 87 Democrats and zero Republicans, the response wasn’t hostile. It was worse. It was met with profound indifference. I got a few messages from surprised, curious colleagues. But the messages were of the “oh wow, that’s weird” variety, as if the lopsided tally was a random anomaly rather than a critical failure of our diversity North Star. 

 

You read that right: 87 people from one side of the political scale and 0 from the other. Sure sounds balanced to me. Doesn’t that sound fair to you?

 

You’re welcome to read Uri Berliner’s full indictment of National Public Radio, which I’ll remind you gets some of its funding from the American government, which is to say from us, the taxpayers.

 

© 2024 Steven Schwartzman