Gary Wilson
Commentary
We worry about Asian carp sucking the life out of the Great Lakes sport fishing industry, and that’s a legitimate concern.
But what other impacts are due to the advance of the voracious feeder?
On the positive side it has put a spotlight on the Chicago Area Waterways in a way that never would have happened were carp not knocking at the door of Lake Michigan. People in positions of responsibility are looking at serious plans to physically separate the Great Lakes from the Mississippi River.
It also drained tens of millions of dollars from other Great Lakes needs. The money for the unplanned temporary measures to stop the carp had to come from somewhere. Unfortunately, it came from an already tight restoration budget. That’s a negative.
But there’s another impact that worries me.The fixation on carp has drowned out other issues that should be on the public’s mind.
Media — print, radio, television, social and blogs – have been all over the Asian carp story with sustained coverage.
Why?
Because it sells. Big, menacing fish that jump out of the water into boats are a great hook, pardon the pun.
And let’s be realistic, most Great Lakes environmental issues can be boring.
Are you clamoring for more coverage of the negotiation of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement?
I doubt it and that’s too bad because it’s important. It will guide how the U.S. and Canada manage 20 percent of the Earth’s fresh surface water over the next decade. That’s a weighty topic deserving our attention.
How about coverage of the pros and cons of privatizing municipal water systems? There’s a snooze of a read. Don’t expect the media to jump on that issue, important as it is.
Here’s an anecdote to support my premise.
Shortly after the Asian carp advance hit the spotlight in 2010, I wrote a Great Lakes commentary on another issue that had nothing — zero, nada — to do with carp. But I had innocently included an Asian carp reference that wasn’t relevant and should have been edited out.
What followed is interesting.
The comments section of my post lit up with rants and raves…. all about Asian carp and nothing to do with the topic. Readers saw Asian carp, ignored everything else and raised a ruckus.
So what’s an editor to do?
Go with your journalistic instincts and training and cover those less sexy but more important issues at the risk of low readership, 
which translates to declining advertising revenue? Or follow the money and beat the glitzy story to death?
All media struggle with the issue.
The venerable Washington Post is reinventing itself according to a New York Times business report on its competitor. The Post now uses tracking metrics that allow management to see what readers click on. One use of the tool is to determine how to allocate resources, as in reporters.
The problem is that the practice pits popularity against substance, which I don’t like. But who am I to quarrel with the Post’s editors? They’re trying to find a way to stay in business. If readers want puff, give ’em more puff, though hard news will remain at the core of the Post’s mission.
Chicago Public Radio has access to similar metrics and used them last week to evaulate if and how to cover a story that other media blanketed. The station saw the story as essentially a non-event that merited nothing more than a minor mention. But the public grabbed it because there was a human interest element — young student done wrong by the city – and the metrics said play it up, keep it alive for a few days. And so it was.
Chicago Public Radio management elected to ignore the numbers and relegated the piece to an inside page below the fold in newspaper parlance.
Maybe public radio has that luxury.
I’ve written here about water privatization and the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement. Neither commentary received much attention based on reader responses.
Two weeks ago my commentary about separating the Chicago Area Waterways System from the Mississippi generated the most responses I’ve ever received on a column. And at its core it wasn’t about Asian carp, though the fish were the catalyst for the story.
The Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement negotiations are in their final stages. When a deal is announced, some media will cover it but you may have to search to find a story.
Experts who track privatization of municipal systems tell me not much is happening in the region. Both Milwaukee and Chicago are out of the water privatization game for the near term. But the underlying motivation to privatize — each city’s need for budget balancing revenue — remains. It may not be game over yet.
I’ll continue to write about those and other Great Lakes issues that fly under the radar because they’re important.
By the way, I included Asian carp in the title of this commentary.
I wanted to make sure people read it.
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The fourth estate, a free press, is the peoples last line of defence. But you don’t see much real investigative reporting anymore. Mostly repeating sound bites.
I certainly can sympathize with your frustration, Kirsten. But the concept of a free press never meant that the press could somehow magically produce public service news and information for free. Freedom of the press is reserved for those wealthy enough to own the means of publication.
At one time – think printing presses and delivery trucks – that cost was extremely high. Now those means of distribution and production – think websites and blogs – are ridiculously inexpensive. More people have access to producing a press that is free than ever before.
And virtually all media is decidedly not capitalistic. If it were, Gary wouldn’t be writing this column.
And Echo most certainly would not be publishing it. Or anything.
That doesn’t mean all that freedom of press doesn’t come without a price. For one thing, a cacophony of voices undermines credibility. All those choices mean a smorgasboard of information – true or not – to reinforce anyone’s beliefs.
And of course the democratization of news reporting undermines models for underwriting the professional pursuit of such activity. How do we support people skilled and dedicated enough to pursue important truths? Is sorting out and assessing the credibility all of the new information sources something we’re willing to pay someone to do?
Right now, not so much. Finding a news model where the pursuit of eyeballs and clicks is unimportant is a challenging democratic frontier.
David Poulson
Editor
Great Lakes Echo
We are supposed to have a free press in this country. But it is the publishers who decide what stories get written and heard, and that is based on readership and eyeball statistics. Since virtually all media is capitalistic, the selection of stories is purely for the sake of potential revenue for the media and its advertisers. Instead of allowing knowledgeable people such as Gary Wilson share their wisdom, we hear only the stories that sell papers or advertising. Don’t make the mistake of believing that existing mass media is self-reporting, because the polls and statistics used to predict readership of a story line do not reflect any depth or knowledge of the subject. We need Gary and others to make us aware that these important issues exist in the first place, to motivate us to care about them, and to inspire us to act on this new knowledge.
My national non profit organization is doing a study on privatization and I report to them on the GLWQA. I’ll read what you have to say. Maybe you need to join our group.
I think Gary is doing a great job, but when the flyin carp start smacking people around or landing in traffic going over bridge railings, (I’ve seen them go 20 feet) that’s all people will scream about. I support ballast controls, I sign the petitions. They’re several groups and lawsuits all over this, I’m not going toe to toe with some shipping corperate attorney. But I can organize a whole bunch of people from Holland to the SOO to rebuild our native fish, to control invasive species. The infrastructure to do it has been in place for 10,000 years. But I have to argue with the very people that I pay to do that. We have a common enemy we should all pull together against, unfortunately, the worst common enemy we have appears to be us!
Perhaps the real story to cover is how the monied interests are able to delay and defeat attempts to take action–whether it be with Asian Carp, Global Climate Change or what have you. The old notion that a free society depends upon a free press doesn’t seem very relevant today. Mega-corporations have gobbled up various media, chasing dollars more than information…while some attempt to alter the very makeup of our government through slanted “news” coverage. President Eisenhower warned of the dangers of the military-industrial complex. Today, it seems that the media-corporate complex is our biggest threat.
I agree that there are a multitude of Great Lakes stories that could, and should, be covered to a greater extent that they are now. The two examples that Gary provides are good ones. Here are a few others:
Increase in harmful algae blooms(Western Lake Erie, but see also Saginaw Bay, Green Bay, etc): What’s driving and contributing to it. And, most interestling, why things are likely to get worse before they get better (if they ever do).
Dynamics surrounding off shore wind development–or lack thereof.
What the GLRI is accomplishing…and what it isn’t.
How the nature of the Great Lakes environmental/conservation movement is changing.
The administration of the Great Lakes Compact, especially in light of an impending diversion request from Waukesha, Wisconsin.
Unfortunately, like the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement and water supply management, these are big picture issues, with significant long term implications but nearly invisible short term effects. There are no big ugly fish jumping out of the water. It is difficult for many policy practitioners to perceive these issues, much less editors and readers.
So what is a caring person to do? Exactly what Gary has done in his piece: Continuously and shamelessly try to make the tie between what people currently see and respond to and what they need to perceive, learn about, and, ultimately, act upon. In addition to being real, short term issues are a potential sprinboard for long term understanding.
And, of course, one also has to hope.
A funny thing happened yesterday Gary, I asked an Asian Carp expert how many 3 inch Asian Carp would be in a pound? The response from D.Glover Illinois Aquaculture center was 118. So 10 pounds of 3 inchers is 1,180 Asian carp. 10 pounds of adult would be one. So attacking or focusing on harvest removal on 3 inch, is a thousand times more effective at reducing asian carp numbers than removing adults. Native predators eating eggs fry and 3 inch a million times more effective? Controlling the bio-pollution is part of the deal, your right the carp are getting the ink. If the carp continue to double every year in 5 years we could have 10 times as many to deal with. But hey, I want my whole lake back, pollution free and no fish from out of town!