MAP BEYOND THE NUMBERS

The Media Awareness Project was as busy as ever in 2003. Thousands of
articles about the drug war were again archived, and thousands of letters
challenging the drug war were again published. But for the first time in
the organization's history, the total number of published letters to the
editor (PUB LTEs) critiquing the drug war declined from the previous year.
See http://www.mapinc.org/lte/ for many statistics regarding MAP and
published letters.

This decrease caused some discussion among MAP volunteers and supporters,
about what, if anything, is going wrong.

I think we're doomed to reach wrong and misleading conclusions if we try to
assess MAP solely quantifiably and statistically. Nobody loves
number-crunching more than I do, but not every important thing yields
meaningful answers by numerical analysis. All Caruso's recordings have
been in digital numerical form since about 1970, and subjected to massive
amounts of numerical analysis, but nobody's come up with a numerical
explanation of why Caruso was the greatest operatic voice of the 20th
Century. Lots of answers just aren't in the numbers.

On another list we've been discussing the consequences of monopolies in the
cable TV industry -- specifically, that Comcast seems to have banned MPP's
paid reform ads, and there's probably not much that anybody can do about
it. Likewise, we all know that during the last five years, Clear Channel
has aggressively hosed up nearly every important commercial radio station
in the USA and Canada. When the largest single group of ABC-TV affiliates,
headquartered in Baltimore, got pissed off at Bill Maher's "Politically
Incorrect," suddenly one decision in Baltimore blacked out Maher in about
twenty U.S. cities.

In the print media this concentration of ownership has been going on for a
long time. (The Boston Globe now belongs to The New York Times,
etc. etc. etc.) This undoubtedly is going to increase the phenomenon of
"templating" -- stripping formerly independent newspapers of their local
quirks, personalities and policies. Questions like "Should we ban LTEs from
outside our market area?" which were once answered by thousands of editors
in different ways, now will be answered for a dozen papers all at once by
one corporate executive.

That's just the weather, and everybody has to duck and dodge it alike. I'm
sure it frustrates out-of-town Soccer Moms as much as it annoys out-of-town
Reformers.

Though MAP takes huge pride in listing its annual column inches and
translating these into the equivalent value of paid ads, that's really only
a "ghost reflection" of MAP's core significance and achievement. MAP is in
the business of Persuasion, and this can't be so directly
measured. Persuasion is a subtle phenomenon that takes place AFTER mere
publication.

Persuasion can be measured, but not as directly and precisely as column
inches. I measure it whenever some bailiwick in Massachusetts has a reform
or decrim ballot measure -- and, in the privacy and anonymity of the voting
booth, it passes bigtime. Our LTEs have reshaped the Meme Pool and the
Public Dialogue which, ten or fifteen years ago, belonged exclusively to
the Drug Warriors, simply because there was no MAP acting as a clipping
service and clearing house to systematically pump Reform Memes into the
Ideosphere.

MAP has empowered, linked and amplified a lot of Big Mouths, and spewed out
an enormous volume of Persuasion and Doubt about The Official Program.

I can see mechanical obstacles ahead, but nothing that our passion,
determination and cleverness can't overcome. If the weather really gets
nasty, we can do what won the USA its freedom, and liberated the
Soviet-bloc nations: We can paste up flyers and hand out pamphlets. I was
just in newly-free Prague. In the old regime, there were no independent
newspapers, private citizens were forbidden from owning presses, photocopy
or mimeograph machines; spreading government-hostile ideas by any means was
a serious crime.

The old regime is long gone.

People are always hungry for ideas which might have possibilities for a
better future than this obvious policy catastrophe. People -- the kind of
people who effect positive change -- are always curious.

We don't invent local news and reader interest in drug policy. The scandals
and failures inherent in the War on Drugs will keep putting drug policy
questions on every front page. In what USA or Canadian city or county does
the War on Drugs run smoothly, efficiently, cost-effectively, accountably,
safely, fairly, justly and honestly? (You'd think there'd be at least one
or two ...) This is a machine with lots of squeaky wheels, and the media
supplies not grease, but a flashlight to see what all the squeaking is about.

Editors and publishers in the for-profit print media are constantly driven
to consider one question above all others: How can we increase readership
and reader interest? On the Editorial Page, controversial and challenging
LTEs turn an LTE section from a moribund ink cemetery to a hotbed of
community debate. Regardless of all other changes in the for-profit media,
this will always work to our advantage, and will always keep the doors open
to our better and more eye-catching letters. A warrior-sympathetic editor
who lets his LTE and op-ed page become boring and monotonous will not be
rewarded for his patriotism and civic responsibility. After a merciless
page-by-page private evaluation of the newspaper, he or she will be
transferred or fired, and replaced with someone who promises to stimulate
and increase readership. Our better letters are nutrition that increases
reader interest.

Except for its wheezy, asthmatic funding, this is the first hint I've had
that MAP is ailing in any way. And I don't see it. To me, MAP seems to be
at this moment tingling, intense, powerful, clever, lean, radiant and
effective.