AK's Column: Let US eat cake, and celebrate the local news movement!
On Monday, April 5, Davidson Local celebrated an operational milestone with friends, family and community members. Thanks to all who came out to Sophie's Cork and Ale and the handful of you who donated to support Davidson Local.
This fast, free, local news movement culminated into a one-year, cake-filled birthday celebration on Friday at Sophie's Cork and Ale. I jokingly called it "Let them eat cake," so let me explain.
First, I am obsessed with the story of Marie Antoinette. Despite the negativity surrounding her reign, it's clear she was a vivacious, outgoing, bold, social butterfly. Over the top and extravagant, yes! Yet I have wanted to learn more since the moment I learned I shared a similar name. Unlike Marie Antoinette, I didn’t grow up with a lot of material wealth but I do feel extravagant and richly blessed when it comes to the support of my community.
Later, I became more intrigued by the woman who is infamously known for a phrase she more than likely never said. Marie Antoinette Josèphe Jeanne was the last queen of France before the French Revolution. “Let them eat cake” is the most famous quote attributed to Marie Antoinette. As the story goes, it was the queen's response upon being told that her starving subjects had no bread. My less obvious fascination with her scholarly stories examined the "media" coverage and misinformation surrounding the queen.
According to Encyclopædia Britannica, there’s no evidence Marie Antoinette ever uttered “let them eat cake.” Scholars write, "But we do know people have been attributing the phrase ‘Qu’ils mangent de la brioche’ to her for nearly two hundred years — and debunking it for just as long." Britannica reads, "The first time the quote was connected to Antoinette in print was in 1843. A French writer named Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr reported finding the quote in a book from 1760—when Marie Antoinette was just five years old."
How does this relate to Davidson Local?
It all comes down to the importance of sharing accurate information.
In late 2016, Oxford Dictionaries selected “post-truth” as the word of the year, defining it as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.”
From the Brexit vote in the UK to the tumultuous U.S. presidential election highlighted how the digital age has affected news narratives. New information platforms feed the instinct people have to find information that syncs with their perspectives: A 2016 study that analyzed 376 million Facebook users’ interactions with over 900 news outlets found that people tend to seek information that aligns with their views. Throughout this past year, despite insisting that local is our only bias, our team has been accused of bias by people often on the other side of the political spectrum. I imagine the foreign born French Queen struggling with this type of bias.
We have proverbial “thick skin” as reporters. Our team knows that people will not always like what we write about them, even if the truth. But the pursuit to share fast, free and hyperlocal news hits close to home when you look around and see most people were getting their local news from Facebook. From school board budgets, mask mandates and statue removal and replacement, people have questions the "big news trucks" often leave behind.
This makes many vulnerable to accepting and acting on misinformation. For instance, Co-founder Kassaundra Lockhart set out to learn the truth about what happened with the sale of Dunbar School to the Catholic Diocese. For years, rumors circled around the building. Some insisted the city never gave community members the opportunity to purchase the building, while others insisted community members didn't have the resources. Neither of those whispers are true.
And as we prepare for a contentious election season, we can expect the rumors to fly. I go back to a Pew Research Center study conducted just after the 2016 election that found 64 percent of adults believe fake news stories cause a great deal of confusion and 23 percent said they had shared fabricated political stories themselves – sometimes by mistake and sometimes intentionally.
The question arises, then: What will happen to the online information environment in the coming decade? In summer 2017, Pew Research Center and Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center conducted a large canvassing of technologists, scholars, practitioners, strategic thinkers and others, asking them to react to this framing of the issue:
The rise of “fake news” and the proliferation of doctored narratives that are spread by humans and bots online are challenging publishers and platforms. Those trying to stop the spread of false information are working to design technical and human systems that can weed it out and minimize the ways in which bots and other schemes spread lies and misinformation.
A further query: In the next 10 years, will trusted methods emerge to block false narratives and allow the most accurate information to prevail in the overall information ecosystem? Or will the quality and veracity of information online deteriorate due to the spread of unreliable, sometimes even dangerous, socially destabilizing ideas? The category of online only media has grown to the point where it has its very own awards competition for the North Carolina Press Association.
So let US eat cake! We need writers, press releases, advertisers, FREE subscribers to keep this movement going forward. We're "the little guys" when it comes to local news, but thanks to each of you for allowing us to have a big impact in Davidson County. It turns out that after all of the congratulations extended to the Davidson Local team, it's really up to you! Thanks for letting DL serve up a daily slice of history in the making.
