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TechNews | Tuesday, April 12th, 2016

The media: the organizations we love to hate

Akinade Aderele
TECHNEWS WRITER

The Media. The organizations we
love to hate. The almost intangible set of
people and entities that we just love to point
at regardless of our social preferences and
orientations. Let us start with the discussion
often at the top of debates or accusations
involving the media: coverage. The media does
not cover enough. The media covers with a
bias. The media has been corrupted by politics
and special interests. Woe to the mainstream
media for the things they will not show you.

There are fairly clear distinctions in
the political entities some of our major media
centers seem to represent so of course we
blame the ones that do not share our opinions
for being biased and corrupt. There are also
fairly clear distinctions in what different media
outlets believe to be of import so we blame the
ones that don’t share our opinions on what
should be prioritized as breaking news.

That brings me to the events that
garner the most attention in the modern world
and thus in the media: terrorism. The latest
major terrorist attack in Belgium brought in a
significant spotlight on the events of the day.
Every major news network covered the tragic
events of the day and every detail from the
nature of the attack itself to the acquaintances
of the suspects was presented. Expert and
opinion pieces on terrorism as a global threat
flooded news sites.

However, coverage of attacks in
Turkey, Nigeria and in Burkina Faso receive
significantly less coverage even though the
numbers of lives lost are equivalent and
in most cases more. Even the coverage of
particular terrorists groups varies depending
on who they attack. ISIS and their afiiliates

have received an increased amount of attention
due to their attacks in western nations but that
might shield the fact that by sheer number of
murders they are only the second most deadly
terrorist group in the world after Boko Haram
who largely operate in the northeastern part of
the world’s most populous black nation.

Why would the media have tunnel
vision almost exclusively to attacks in Europe
or America? There are a number of arguments
for why this is the case and I would like to
present them. One argument is that those
events are much rarer in those continents and
countries so they are perceived with much
more surprise than they are in countries where
terrorist attacks have occurred with more
frequency for a longer period of time. The lion
taking a nap in Siegel Hall on campus is much
more of a surprise than one taking a nap in the
zoo.

Another argument is that whereas
terrorist groups like Boko Haram and Ale
Shabab pose significant threats within
localities, the scale of their ambitions has not
been expressed through globalization of their
activities or successful conquest as in the case
of ISIS. ISIS is the school bully who is working
through a plan to stuff the principal in a locker.

A lot of the areas where horrifying
acts of terrorism occur are in areas without
any high quality local news organizations that
would serve as first responders to the news
about any such events. Unfortunately, this
means that there are no clear details about
terrorist attacks and as such there is not much
information to understand beyond the regular
template that many would recognize as “This
organization kills this number of people in
this place." If the local news stations are not
covering information that is closer to them and
if the details of events are not clearly portrayed,

international media bodies would have a hard
or near impossible time finding out about and
reporting about such events.

Yet another train of thought says that
our media companies are interested singularly
in the profit motive and as such have become
focused solely on going to the stories that
garner the most attention despite the inherent
importance or gravity of the situation. As such,
the aforementioned two arguments would lead
to more interest from readers, viewers and
listeners and in turn lead the media spotlight
to those events.

My humble opinion comes with
an acceptance that all of the aforementioned
arguments are true to some degree. I, however,
believe that those arguments unfortunately
downplay how social media has affected
our lives. A decade ago media control and
information distribution was handled only by
those with the significant capital or capacity to
do so but today anyone with a Twitter handle
or Facebook page can perform the activities
that were limited to so few. Without a doubt
major media organizations still hold the ability
to sway the fickle winds of attention but as a
collective we who share, post, tweet, pin and
tag are the new media. Facebook has surpassed
a billion active monthly users and if every user
shared or forwarded a the same story about
falls in oil prices or the cutest cat in the world
to another seven people, you will have a story
that has been circulated the number of times
there are people on the earth. We should
remember both our individual and collective
powers as distribution centers of information
and share the stories, events and details that we
really care about. If we can do so, our world
would be a more aware, conscious and better
place.

Life beyond 35th: escape campus and discover Bronzeville

Soren Spicknall
TECH NEWS WRITER

At some point during my 2014
freshman orientation, I sat in a classroom in
Wishnick Hall along with the rest of my peer
mentor group for a brief conversation about
Illinois Tech’s campus and the community
around it. Up at the whiteboard, my peer
mentor drew a rough sketch of the modern
iteration of Mies’s master plan, with boundaries
at 31st Street, 35th Street, Michigan Avenue,
and the Metra tracks. Slowly and deliberately,
she began marking the letter “X" in one spot
along each edge, starting with the southern
boundary of campus. “Don’t go here. Also,
don’t go here... Really, it’s just best to stay on
campus.’ '

From the very first week I spent at
this university, voices of authority suggested
that perhaps Illinois Tech was best left to itself,
a bubble of calm in an implied sea of chaos.
Throughout my time here, that overtone has
been reinforced both implicitly and explicitly,
most recently by a fulleheight stylized map
of Chicago outside the admissions office in
Perlstein Hall which displays Illinois Tech as
the southern terminus of green line, with no
noteworthy attractions beyond it. While the
university’s website acknowledges Bronzeville’s
history as a center of black culture in Chicago,
its section on our own role in the community
focuses largely on the negative impact of
housing projects like Stateway Gardens on the
university’s image during the middle of the last
century, and speaks little of the current state
of this institution’s surroundings. If I hadn’t
heeded a recommendation to check out a cafe’
in Washington Park (at Prairie Avenue and
Garfield Boulevard, if you’re interested), it’s

 

possible that I never would have discovered the
rich cultural life that lies below 35th street, in
Bronzeville and beyond.

The storied, beautiful neighborhood
surrounding the Illinois Institute of
Technology on three sides is undergoing a
massive transformation, one very different
than others in the city. Rather than witnessing
an influx of largely White renters intent on
reinventing the neighborhood in the image of
Wicker Park (something that’s well underway
in Logan Square and Pilsen), Bronzeville’s
change has come from within, built on a shared
history in what was once one of America’s
most artistically active Black neighborhoods.
Black entrepreneurs have led efforts to spur
new development with a focus on local
business owners, facilitating projects through
groups like the Bronzeville Retail Initiative
and Bronzeville Neighborhood Collaborative.
Some of the community’s traditional retail
corridors, such as 47th street, are being
renewed with efforts like the Bronzeville Artist
Lofts (which includes the acclaimed Gallery
Guichard, focused on the art of the African
diaspora) and the Shops & Lofts at 47th (a $46
million development similar in style to the
Stateway Gardens redevelopment along State
south of 35th).

With some exceptions, the Illinois
Institute of Technology has typically had
a handseoff relationship with Bronzeville,
especially before the establishment of its
Community Affairs Office in 1989 (whose
tagline proclaims the school to be “not
only in the community, but also part of the
community”). When Mies Campus was
created with help from federal subsidies which
also financed the construction of the Prairie
Shores apartments, the blocks between the

two developments became known as “The
Gap", filled with crumbling homes which had
unintentionally been disconnected from their
place in the neighborhood by wellemeaning
development efforts. Today, many of the grand
homes which fell into disrepair in previous
decades are being restored and reverted back
into singleefamily residences as Bronzeville
begins to thrive once again and adjust to the
rising incomes of its residents.

So where does that leave us? This
piece of Chicago that we occupy, once home
to legendary jazz performers and civil rights
activists, is busy repositioning itself as a center
of the Black American metropolis, and at
the institutional level, the Illinois Institute of
Technology is becoming a positive force in
the community as well. Recent IPROs have
partnered with community organizations and
individuals to foster collaboration, but we
have to move to the everyday human level if
we truly want to see this school become a
part of the community. Instead of heading
to Intelligentsia or Dollop for coffee, try a
roast at Sip & Savor on 43rd (it’s very good).
Rather than studying on campus, head just
two blocks south to the Chicago Bee Library,
housed in an Art Deco landmark building
which once contained the offices of one of
the city’s oldest Black newspapers. Instead of
heading to Lincoln Park for your residential
architecture fix, simply wander your way down
Prairie or Michigan Avenues. Become a patron
of the dozens of local businesses which dot the
urban landscape, and branch out over time.
Bronzeville as a whole isn’t the scary place it
once was, and it’s a shame that our student
body’s rhetoric hasn’t developed along with the
community its elf.

Phntn murtesy nfSnren Spicknall