corrente

Okay, cheap attempt to get you to read a story by making it sound dirty.

But when it comes time to reform the Mighty Whirlitzer which is the modern ConsolidatedMediaCorpInc, both the recipient of this award and the man for which it was named provide useful models of what journalism can and should be.

(via Bangor News)

WATERVILLE - Studs Terkel, a common man who rose from the Depression-era streets of Chicago to give voice to the everyday people that helped defend and rebuild a nation, is the 2004 recipient of Colby College's Lovejoy Award for journalism. The 92-year old Terkel is recovering from a fall and was unable to attend the 52nd annual Lovejoy Convocation at Colby's Lorimer Chapel on Sunday night. He did, however, speak to the gathering by video.

"I can think of no one more honorable than Elijah Lovejoy," said Terkel. "To win the Elijah Lovejoy Award, even the award itself recalls another time, and the time of Elijah Lovejoy is the time when someone spoke out against the mob. I accept this award in his name."

In the anti-Communist hysteria of the 1950s, Terkel was blacklisted for signing petitions and for refusing to sign a loyalty oath. When told by his employer that communists were behind the petitions, Terkel replied: "Suppose communists come out against cancer. Do we have to come out for cancer?"

Anybody not familiar with the name Studs Terkel--and I will concede that if you're not from the Midwest or deeply involved in progressive reading you might not be--should google for biographical details. Unlike Robert "Douchebag of Liberty" Novak, if he suffered a fall it was from kicking too vigorously and getting his foot stuck too far up the ass of some abuser of the Common Man.

The guy the prize was named after may ring a bell from high school civics, if you're old enough to have had such a class:

Elijah Parish Lovejoy was the publisher of the Alton Illinois Observer, a newspaper that supported the Anti-Slavery Society of Illinois. His writing so enraged slaveholders that on Nov. 7, 1837, an angry mob set fire to a warehouse where the Observer's new press was stored and gunned down Lovejoy as he attempted defend it. He was buried on his 35th birthday.

Oh, and then the mob took his presses and all his type and threw them into the Mississippi River so nobody could come along and restart his paper. That reading stuff, you know, it can be dangerous. Can give people ideas.