Brainwash

My brains were washed in San Francisco.
I got the whole cliché lefty package-deal when I decided to spend the last winter of my study in SF: a house run by a genuine anarchistic roommate and a university so politically fuelled that explosion sometimes seemed imminent. I had a fantastic professor for First Amendment law, who gave the greatest lectures ever. His nuance seemed to come from another world compared to my professor for Journalism and the Mass Media. I enjoyed her lectures, which were insightful and open, even if at times they seemed to have one soul purpose: the dismantling of the corporate American media system. Revolution starts in the class room, yeh!
She required us to read Robert McChesney's Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times. It was an overwhelming read, in sheer volume of information, ideas and the cry for reconstruction of the media.

I guess my brains never fully dried up after McChesney's rigorous washing. They're dry enough however, to start reading another book on media reconstruction. Dan Gillmor has a new one out: We the Media. On grassroots journalism, blogs and the dismantling of Big Media. It can be downloaded for free online under a Creative Commons license. I don't expect the McChesney mind bashing, but then my brains are hardened since San Francisco.