Global Crisis

I'm off today to be a panelist at a workshop intended to put advocates in the same room with journalists and PR execs to talk about better reporting on disability.

A McCormick Specialized Reporting Institute
The Poynter Institute, Access Living and ADA 25 Chicago invite reporters from all media to apply for a two-day in-depth workshop “Disability Reports: Fresh Angles — Covering Disability within Education, Employment, Healthcare and Housing”

Later I get to be on a panel with some outstanding Chicago reporters and NPR's Joe Shapiro. And yes, I am bringing my copy of No Pity for him to sign. I'm not proud. 

Rose Eveleth has become one of my favorite writers on technology. Lately, she's been  focusing specifically on prosthetics. It's an area that technology is rapidly transforming. It's great to have deeply thoughtful journalists reporting on both the science and the social implications.

Arizona State University hosts the National Center for Disability Journalism, an excellent group doing important work. The NCDJ offers the only annual journalism award for Disability issues - the   Katherine Schneider Journalism Award for Excellence in Reporting on Disability - and have announced the 2015 winners.

A ProPublica story that uncovered the shocking ways children with intellectual disabilities are physically disciplined in schools across the country has won top honors in the 2015 Katherine Schneider Journalism Award for Excellence in Reporting on Disability...

ProPublica reporter Heather Vogell’s first-place story, “Violent and Legal: The Shocking Ways School Kids are Being Pinned Down, Isolated Against Their Will,” profiled Carson Luke, a young boy with autism, who sustained broken bones after educators grabbed him and tried to force him into a “scream room.” The story underscored the common practice of educators secluding and physically restraining uncooperative school children, sometimes with straps, handcuffs, bungee cords or even duct tape, documenting hundreds of thousands of cases a year.

The ProPublica story is, in my opinion, the most important piece of disability journalism of the year. It's the kind of detailed, data-driven, investigative work that we so need, and it's important that it be recognized by awards like this. I read it when it came out and will obviously be referring to its findings in my book, as it's a terrible invocation of the cult of compliance.

I'm also very pleased with the Honorable Mention - on the legacy of Eugenics in North Carolina. This history isn't known well enough and isn't really in the past. Stories of forced sterilizations in prisons and other contexts keep emerging.

I am less thrilled with the second place winner on "Saving Evan." It's typical mom-vs-autism stuff. Moreover, the format - as you scroll pictures scroll up into your view and then away again - is extremely hard on my not-entirely-neurotypical visual processing centers of my brain. Maybe someone with better eye-brain connections can read it more closely and let me know what you think.

(Note: Of course I apply for this award. I don't expect to get it. Properly, they have always given it to full-time journalists rather than people doing commentary like me. I'd vote for full-time journalists too!).

I am still not handling my emotional reaction to the Oregon shooting very well. I'm also troubled by the efforts to focus on everything but the guns. Of course, with every such instance, there's a rush to stigmatize mental illness and, in this case, developmental disability.

It turns out that his mother was - as reported by the New York Times - active in online forums talking about 1) guns 2) raising a child with Asperger's.

Ms. Harper, who divorced her husband a decade ago, appears to have been by far the most significant figure in her son’s troubled life; neighbors say he rarely left their apartment. Unlike his father, who said on television that he had no idea Mr. Harper-Mercer cared so deeply about guns, his mother was well aware of his fascination. In fact, she shared it: In a series of online postings over a decade, Ms. Harper, a nurse, said she kept numerous firearms in her home and expressed pride in her knowledge about them, as well as in her son’s expertise on the subject.Photo
She also opened up about her difficulties raising a son who used to bang his head against the wall, and said that both she and her son struggled with Asperger’s syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder. She tried to counsel others whose children faced similar problems. All the while, she expressed hope that her son could lead a successful life in finance or as a filmmaker.

The Gun lobby has blamed this killing, so far, on mental illness, autism, loneliness, absent fathers, lack of heroism from the victims, and surely many other things. I'm going to continue to focus on the guns.

A just society doesn't revel in an act of kindness from an underpaid employee of a mega corporation, but develops structures to make that act of kindness unnecessary. Inspiration porn works directly against that fight for a more accessible society, simultaneously convincing us that disability is necessarily tragic and that a little compassion is all we need to make everything better.

I met Arthur Chu this summer at a workshop on the problem of misogyny on the internet and we've been corresponding via email and social media a lot since then. Our writing interests overlap when it comes to representation issues in media and games. He interviewed me on the problem of claiming "authenticity" as a way to avoid diversity.

I like TV shows, books, and movies that are imperfect matches for my values. They are produced in societies that are, likewise, imperfect, and few cultural creations can withstand any kind of purity test.

That doesn't mean that you just get to ignore the problem. It also doesn't necessarily mean you have to stop enjoying something that is problematic. What you have to do, as is so often the case, is to start with listening.

I just ran across this great post from the blog Social Justice League - How to be a fan of problematic things. I found it by reading Shakesville (Melissa McEwan) on Mad Max and feminism (tl;dr it's an imperfect feminist film that is a fantastic feminist film. Also Tom Hardy gets it), and that took me to McEwan's piece on watching The Heat and what it meant to see a body with which she could identify be presented matter-of-factly on the screen (as opposed to the usual fat-shaming), and from there to Social Justice League. It's from 2012, but I'm writing tomorrow about good representations of disability on problematic shows, so it's very timely for me.

Some quotes:

Firstly, acknowledge that the thing you like is problematic and do not attempt to make excuses for it. It is a unique irritation to encounter a person who point blank refuses to admit that something they like is problematic

Don't deny. Listen.

Secondly, do not gloss over the issues or derail conversations about the problematic elements. Okay, so you can admit that Dune is problematic. But wait, you’re not done! You need to be willing to engage with people about it!

Also listen.

Thirdly you must acknowledge other, even less favourable, interpretations of the media you like. Sometimes you still enjoy a movie or book because you read a certain, potentially problematic scene in a certain way – but others read it entirely differently, and found it more problematic

Did I mention, listen?

As fans, sometimes we need to remember that the things we like don’t define our worth as people. So there’s no need to defend them from every single criticism or pretend they are perfect. Really loving something means seeing it as it really is, not as you wish it were. You can still be a good fan while acknowledging the problematic elements of the things you love. In fact, that’s the only way to be a good fan of problematic things.

I'm a fan of this blog post. Go read it.

Last year, a reporter at the Chicago Tribune called me to ask, "Was medieval life really the way it's Game of Thrones?" I said yes, of course, nearly everyone had a dragon, was a zombie, or carried around ancient swords made of semi-magical iron.

Screenshot: A dragon looms over a cowering shepherd.

depicted during

Ok, I didn't say that. I very calmly and reasonably talked about the way that life for most people was reasonably dull, without major events, and that Martin knew this. His initial idea for GoT was taken from readings on the War of the Roses in late medieval England, and he was interested in the ways that civil war devastated a civilian population. So there are some loose analogies. And there are better analogies to medieval literature, as noted by Brantley Bryant. The Chicago Tribune piece was never published. I wasn't interesting enough for her, but I find the whole way that Martin uses history and legend, and the effect it has in terms of building a massive fanbase, to be fascinating. There's plenty of history and literature infusing Game of Thrones, but to me it's not what makes the world so compelling to so many people.


My friend, and literary scholar Rob Barrett, offered me a clue, and I detailed his and my subsequent ideas over at Vice. Please read the original piece and share it if you like it, as freelancers like me depend on people sharing my work in order to get future gigs. I wrote:

Rob Barrett, who teaches medieval literature at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, referred me back to the Hyborian Age of Conan the Barbarian and writer G. K. Chesterton's loose mixture of history and fiction in The Ballad of the White Horse.

In the introduction to the The Ballad of the White Horse, the poet, theologian, and philosopher wrote, "It is the chief value of a legend to mix up the centuries while preserving the sentiment. That is the use of tradition: It telescopes history." Robert E. Howard, the creator of Conan, read Chesterton's White Horse and set his own stories in a world pulling from legends and history. Note that Chesterson speaks of value. This kind of storytelling has the power to spark the imagination in ways that faithful historical recreation or adopting a specific historical setting for fantasy might not. When history is telescoped, an author takes interesting things from wherever and whenever they want and puts them in service of a new story that still feels familiar. We recognize the archetypes, then follow the plot forward.

The power of telescoping history fuels Game of Thrones. In past seasons, the civil war of Westeros drew from the War of the Roses (from the 14th century) in late medieval England as Martin's vehicle to show the disaster of civil war for civilian populations. The Ironborn invoke the Viking raiders of the ninth and tenth centuries, hundreds of years before the War of the Roses. Like the Vikings, the Ironborn aren't really just raiders but would-be conquerors of the mainland. The Dothraki, now largely out of the story (but perhaps returning later), present a potential existential menace on the scale of the Mongols (13th century). Vaes Dothrak, their city, is not unlike Karakorum, a city that combined the values of nomadic life—tents, open spaces, herds—with the mercantile role of a capital city of a major political power. Vikings, Mongols, and War of the Roses: These elements come from thousands of miles and hundreds of years apart, here telescoped in mythic form to Westeros and Essos. And it works.

I really like this notion of Telescoping History. I'm especially excited, as a Venetianist, for Braavos, which draws on Venetian myth and anti-myth (more the latter, but tweaked to a positive in this fantasy world).

Do you watch? What do you think of the season so far?

I wrote it because of the media discourse I saw surrounding the death of London McCabe. I wrote it because that framing was not unusual when this kind of murder happens. I wrote it to provide a tool, a pre-made critique, ready to go when another horror broke.

Here's that next horror.

A mother in England smothered her three disabled children, killing them. The reporting has been heavily focused on the pressures she was under. Here are a few links representative of the larger reporting.

The Telegraph - "The unimaginable sorrow of Tania and Gary Clarence."

The Daily Mail -  "Court papers reveal 'unbearable pressure' put on Tania Clarence" and "Heartbroken banker stands by wife who suffocated their three severely disabled children after being 'tipped over the edge by social workers and doctors'"

On BBC.com, Mik Scarlet (in a piece critical of the media discourse), notes the frequency of the words, "mercy killing." Scarlet also quotes two people with Spinal Muscluar Distrophy 2, the condition that the three children had:

Katherine Araniello, who has type 2 spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), the same condition as the Clarence children that died, stated on her Facebook page: "This mother acknowledged and understood what she had done and appears to have planned to kill her children... so my overall feelings on this story are the terrifying moments those poor children had. I can relate to zero physical movement, not being able to wave my arms in protest, let out a scream, defend myself."

Mark Womersley, who also has SMA type 2, posted a video on Youtube in which he expresses how deeply the case has affected him. He raises his worries about the media portraying the condition as an "infant killer", even though he has reached the age of 47. He believes the charge of manslaughter did not fit the facts of the case as they came out during the trial. He also raises his fears over the use of the term "mercy killing" during the trial and what it might say for disabled people in the future.

It is not my intention to demonize Tania Clarence or demand that her husband reject her. But the vast majority of the coverage is about Tania. I ask myself, I would like you to ask yourself, "where did the victims go in this narrative?" Who will speak about and for them?

The three children transform in these stories into abstract subjects, the subjects of state intervention (which seems to have been poor indeed in this case), the subjects of parental stress, inert objects to be smothered beneath a pillow, silenced forever, and then written out of the story. It's Tania's story, it's about her, her pressures, her (genuine) mental health issues, her marriage, her husband's reaction, the court's mercy in charging only with manslaughter, it's all about her.

And it's not that her story doesn't matter.

It's that her children deserve their story too, and they deserve it first, and loudest.

This is going to happen again. Probably soon. Be ready to demand that we tell the victims' story.

My first ever op-ed was published in the Minneapolis/ St. Paul Star Tribune. It was in 2006 and on the use of medieval rhetoric to talk about modern problems in the Middle East, a situation that continues today.

Over the weekend, the Star Tribune published this full-page ad raising the worst kind of fear-mongering about transgendered children. It says:

Yesterday, I published a piece on CNN focusing on an episode from This American Life that, I felt, mocked people with Down syndrome. What was interesting to me, though, is that the comedian in question (Wyatt Cenac) wasn't just telling jokes using the r-word, but had something more complex going on. As a listener, it felt like he was trying to both tell the joke while avoiding controversy for using the joke, and I thought that was worth exploring. After the piece was published, Cenac called me and we talked for a long time, which I summarized here.

I was deeply impressed with his willingness to engage, to discuss, to explain, to listen, and I left the conversation feeling pretty good about things. I still stand by my experience of listening to the piece as genuine, but intention does matter.

Tom Delaney, a parent of a child with Down syndrome, emailed me, though, about another complex case of upsetting speech on This American Life. I'm just going to quote from his letter. It was written after a 1996 show (episode 47) re-aired in 2013:

I am writing this letter with a heavy heart. I am a huge fan of NPR and PRI. Every Saturday I look forward to hearing the variety of programs offered. I have always found comfort in the political views, satire, and social-conscious commentary offered on WBEZ.

This Saturday I was running errands and listening to “This American Life” with Ira Glass. David Sedaris (whom I LOVE) was telling a wonderful story entitled “Christmas Freud.” I was engrossed in the story and vividly immersed into his experience as a Christmas Elf at Macy’s. I will never forget hearing this story…or… the street I was on, the car I was driving, the time of day, the weather, the stores to the left and right of me, the coat I was wearing; I will remember everything about the moment I heard…

“At noon, a large group of retarded people came to visit Santa and passed me on my little island. These people were profoundly retarded. They were rolling their eyes and wagging their tongues and staggering towards Santa. It was a large group of retarded people and, after seeing them for 15 minutes, I could not begin to guess where the retarded people ended and the regular New Yorkers began. Everyone looks retarded once you've set your mind to it.”

I cannot explain my reaction to hearing this in any other way than to say that I felt like I was punched in the gut. I suddenly could not breathe, I had to pull over the side of the road, I turned off the radio, and then I cried. I cried so hard because I have been waiting for this moment for 6 years. I have been waiting for someone to overtly make a discriminatory comment that shook me to my core.

I have a son with Down syndrome. He is beautiful, loved, loving, and a valuable person to everyone who meets him. When he was born I knew that someday I would hear people make hurtful comments about him.

I know this story was written in 1996 and re-aired this weekend. When I came home and shared this experience with my husband we looked up the transcripts. I am baffled at how my beloved NPR would not recognize the insensitivity of the comments in this section of this story.

 I know that gut-punch feeling. You've got your head on swivel, waiting for the harassment, waiting for the problems, and they just don't come. We've made so many strides in society in terms of overt harassment. As I wrote for CNN:

The good news is that in recent years, sustained awareness campaigns against dehumanizing speech, coupled with some 20 years of inclusive education since the passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act in 1990, have made things a lot better in America. No one is likely to call my son the r-word to his face.

And yet, when the blow comes, it hits sharp and hard.

I think David Sedaris is often both profound and hilarious. I love This American Life. As a historian, I work on the way humans craft stories about their experience and release them into cultures, tracking ripples and aftershocks of acts of narrative innovation. As Ira Glass point out, they have also done really good episodes on Down syndrome.:  Episode #311  and Episode #358. NPR, in general, has a commitment to inclusivity that I value so deeply and that is rare in the media world.

Moreover, 1996 really was a long time ago in terms of the discourse of disability. It's not that the r-word didn't hurt people against whom it was wielded, but general awareness of that fact had not yet permeated the culture.

My question is this - what obligations do the producers of This American Life have when re-broadcasting something like this. A warning up front? Bleeping the r-word? To simply not broadcast this Sedaris bit ever again? I mean, the "rolling their eyes and wagging their tongues and staggering" is pretty terrible caricature and some bleeping isn't going to fix that. This is not about policing the r-word, but something much deeper in the humor.

Like Cenac, Sedaris might claim this was his authentic experience using authentic language from the era, but I just don't think that holds up in this case. In many ways, comparing Cenac's careful piece drawing the distinction between his imagined Down syndrome and the real thing shows how far we've come, when compared to Sedaris' lines.

I don't know the answer here. My gut says, this piece is dead. You can't play it to an informed audience and expect it to have a positive result, to make people laugh. The joke - New Yorkers look like retards - simply doesn't play anymore.

Jokes fade. Stories fade. Sometimes, the bias implicit in a story is so powerful, so central, that it will no longer have its intended effect. I think that's the case here.

I have reached out to This American Life for comment and will, of course, post any followups.

NOTE: Comments welcome. As always, people being rude to my readers get deleted without further warning.

A fellow parent and internet friend alerted me to a show on This American Life in which Wyatt Cenac, former Daily Show correspondent and comedian, made some jokes about Down syndrome. With the permission of my friend, I am posting excerpts of her email, the response from Ira Glass (producer and host of the show), and the transcript of the relevant piece.

Here's the transcript of show 524: I was so High. You can also listen to it on their site.

And my phone rang. I answered the phone. But no words would come out. I couldn't say anything. And I could hear my friend Laura on the other end. And she's saying hello.
Then, I'm trying so hard. I'm just like, say something. Just talk. Talk damn it! And finally, I am like, (UNUSUAL ACCENT) I am so [BLEEP] high. This is terrible.
[LAUGHTER]
And I did it in that voice. And I have never done that voice before in my life. I don't know where that voice came from. But I heard myself use that voice. And in my mind, I went, oh [BLEEP]. I just gave myself Down Syndrome.
[LAUGHTER]
(NORMAL VOICE) Now let me just say, I know what Down Syndrome is. I know that Down Syndrome is something that you're born with when you are born with an extra chromosome. I know all that information. I knew that information then. But something about eating this brownie made me think that somehow I had grown an extra chromosome and I now had adult-onset Down Syndrome.
[LAUGHTER]
And for people who have Down Syndrome, it's something they grow up with. And they grow up and they have healthy and happy lives. I just got it.
[LAUGHTER]
And I start freaking out. I'm just like, I'm going to have to explain this to people. And I start panicking. And I just start freaking out, freaking out to the point where I start weeping in the middle of Dodger Stadium.
And then, I start laughing. And then, I start weeping again. And then, a bunch of cops start walking towards me. And something in my brain just clicks on. It's like, Wyatt, you have to keep it together right now. I was like, (UNUSUAL ACCENT) yes. Keep it together.
(NORMAL VOICE) Yeah, Wyatt, there are cops right there. They cannot know you are high. (UNUSUAL ACCENT) No, they cannot know I am high. (NORMAL VOICE) And now, my internal monologue has become my external monologue. And I start pointing at the cops.
[LAUGHTER]
And I'm like, (UNUSUAL ACCENT) you cannot know I am high. I have to fool you. I am fooling you.
[LAUGHTER]
(NORMAL VOICE) We thought maybe it's time we should leave Dodger Stadium. I'm not sure exactly how far into the game we were. I know it was past the first inning. We might not have made it to the third inning.

My friend, J., wrote to complain and to ask that the segment was removed. That obviously hasn't happened. She wrote:

I am writing you in reference to the “I Was So High” episode broadcast a few weeks ago. We are members of our local NPR station KERA and we enjoy listening to This American Life. On this particular Sunday, my husband & I were listening to the radio on our front porch while our children were playing nearby. We tuned in about ten minutes into the episode before Cenac’s piece aired. This episode was like most: entertaining, thought provoking, and amusing. We were laughing up until the moment we heard Cenac say the words “Down syndrome” – at that moment we feared what might come next. Both of my daughters, including my younger daughter, who happens to have Down syndrome, were watching us and listening to the story, which now had our complete attention.
 When Wyatt Cenac said “Down syndrome” we feared how it would be discussed in the context of a comic’s routine about drug abuse. We anticipated hearing the R-word, Retard (a term of derision). But Cenac was choosing his words carefully and he stopped short of using the R-word in his monologue. Yet his implicit denigration for those with Down syndrome was impossible to overlook. In essence, Cenac describes an incident of abusing marijuana: he is unable to speak coherently, compulsively uses the bathroom and his thinking becomes disorganized and paranoid. He describes being so inebriated that he fears he has “grown an extra chromosome” and is convinced he has acquired “adult-onset Down syndrome”. The punch line of his monologue is having a cognitive disability: “Oh Shit!” Cenac says, “I just gave myself Down syndrome” and the crowd erupts in laughter. “This is terrible!” he repeatedly states. 

The letter, which is excellent, continues to analyze Cenac's reaction and says:

Even though Cenac avoids using the R-word, he tries to hide behind the medical term – believing it’s a safe, politically correct way to deliver an insult. As historian and author James W. Trent, Jr. writes (from Inventing the Feeble Mind: A History of Mental Retardation in the U.S.):

These words – idiot and imbecile, feebleminded, moron, defective and the like – are today offensive to us, and yet they reveal in their honesty the sensibilities of the people who used them and the meanings they attached to mental retardation…More recently, the mentally retarded have become mentally retarded persons and…persons with developmental disabilities or personas specially challenged…Behind these awkward new phrases, however, the gaze we turn on those we label mentally retarded continues to be informed by the long history of condescension, suspicion, and exclusion. While our contemporary phrases appear more benign, too often we use them to hide from the offense in ways that the old terms did not permit [emphasis mine]. 

To air a program that equates cognitive disability with the effects of drug abuse is far from humorous and entertaining – it’s reprehensible. I would no more laugh at this story than I would a racist joke. Try replacing the words “Down syndrome” for “Cripple” or “Transsexual”: disability-rights and LGBT activists would be alarmed and outraged! Hate speech against persons with cognitive disabilities is no less deplorable. 

In response to complains, Ira Glass wrote:

Hi J. -
Apologies for taking so long to get back to you.  Thanks for your thoughtful emails.  Sorry you've had to be so persistent in reaching out to get a response.

We've done many stories about people with various disabilities, including two about kids and parents of kids with Down Syndrome (Episode #311 <http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/311/a-better-mousetrap?act=1#play>  and Episode #358<http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/358/social-engineering?act=3#play> ).  I agree with you completely that nobody should have to listen to stories that mock and denigrate them.  This was a concern for me and my producers when we were working with Wyatt Cenac on his story for episode #524.  We talked about it as we shaped the story.  

But I don't agree with you that his story mocks and denigrates people with Down Syndrome.  Perhaps we will never agree on this point, but just to share my side of it: In my view, the only people being made fun of in his story are people who get high.  Wyatt goes out of his way to point out that Down Syndrome means that you have an extra chromosome (not offensive).  He points out that people with Down Syndrome grow up with it and have healthy and happy lives (also not offensive).  And he talks about his own freakout.  The only thing that possibly could be offensive is his imitation of what a person with Down Syndrome sounds like, and again - we may disagree about that - I think that's fair game for a comedian.  Black comedians imitate white people.  White comedians imitate black people.  Male comedians imitate females and females imitate men.  Wyatt isn't doing a disability version of some racist comic making fun of Mexicans or something.  In my view, it's clear he's the butt of the joke.  

If I felt differently, I wouldn't have put this on the air.  

If there's something you think I'm missing here, I welcome your thoughts.  Let's discuss it here in email.  Again, I say respectfully that it's possible we are not going to agree on this one, but if it's possible to come to some understanding with each other, I'd like that.

I've pasted below the transcript from our website, of this part of Wyatt's story.
Best regards,

Ira Glass

There we have it. I think J's letter makes the argument every strongly, but Glass wasn't persuaded. Expect to see more on this in the near future.

In the last two weeks, I have received a half dozen requests for advice from newish writers looking to expand their readership or break into more formal publication. They all ask me roughly the same questions - how did you do it? Does blogging help?

Unfortunately to those seeking my advice, the true answer is that I have nothing useful to tell you.

I have no advice on how to break in, how to get your word out there, whether blogging helps, whether you need a twitter account, whether instagram is better than pinterest, whether Facebook is dead, how to pitch, how to get paid, how to get noticed, how to get on TV, how to get published, how to make a living, or how to not die as a writer.

I stumbled into writing, driven by irrational overconfidence typical to my set that my opinions would matter, first placing a few op-eds, exploiting the randomness of a global event relevant to my medieval expertise, then starting this blog.

Did blogging help? Has it worked to make me a more successful writer? More importantly, will it help you?

I have no idea.

My only advice for aspiring writers is this - if you blog, make sure the blogging itself sustains you even if no one is listening. Make sure that when you blog, you are writing things that you want to write, that you want to get better at writing, so that the iterative process of homing in on your core arguments makes you better at them. The blogging must satisfy you because surely, you will write brilliant essays that you love, and but 25 people will read it, or 10, or 5, or no one.

If the writing feeds you, sharpens you, gets you ready to say the things you want to say more effectively, then blog. If you find yourself writing only to get readers or make money of advertisements, well, I have no objection to commercializing your prose, I wish I were better at it, but you're doing something very different than I (I have a great day job; I have privilege) and I can't tell you whether blogging is a good idea.

So for writers, I have no real advice.

But for you, dear reader, I do have some advice. Share Good Work.

Every RT, every Facebook share, every email - these things make all the difference to writers, especially small timers like me, and even more to people just starting out. If you read something you like, share it.

I get around 100 views per post. That's nothing in the world of social media. But when about 10 people RT or share on Facebook, I get around 200 readers. Double! You have a huge impact for a writer like me.

Now think about the blog that has only a few dozen readers and the kind of impact you can have? The blogs of these fascinating people seeking me out for advice sound wonderful, but to grow they'll need readers who share.

There's a problem in charitable giving in which people are too ready to give to the big ticket players. Big donors like to give to Harvard, but a fraction of the money at a smaller school would transform lives. Big donors like to give to the mega museums or even, dare I say, symphonies (my sister is the concertmaster of the Omaha symphony. Everyone should give it money!) - rather than to smaller arts institutions. Whereas a few thousand dollars might save a small institution or endow a scholarship, such money just vanishes into the vast pool at the huge place. There's no impact for the small or medium donor, but still they give.

I see some of the same forces at work with media. Think of whatever giants in the blogging world that you like, people with tens of thousands of readers a day. They probably write good stuff and it's good to RT good work, but spreading the word of a blog so that a piece gets 10,020 readers instead of 10,000 isn't such a big deal. But raise a post from 200 to 220, well, that's significant.

Sharing, of course, is not like giving money. You could share 20 posts just as easily as you could 1. But my sense is that most people don't. Most people don't want to spam their friends with lots of links in a given day, but maybe just post one or two to Facebook, maybe tweet something every hour. People treat sharing as something they have to budget - and they probably do. Think about spending some of that budget by sharing someone just starting, someone just finding their voice.

Comment, too, if you can. Most new writers (me for sure) love comments, even just a "great piece!" Let us know you at least scrolled to the end.

What I'm saying is this - if you read a post you like, seriously consider sharing it. Share from the least visible up. I think about the voices of women, people of color, the disabled, or writers who are LGBTQ. Share the people who amplify such voices (that's what I try to do). Share people with fewer readers instead of those with more.

But mostly, just share.

And then maybe I can tell writers that yes, blogging is a good use of their time.