Challenging a paradigm is not part-time work. It is not sufficient to make your point once and then blame the world for not getting it. The world has a vested interest in, a commitment to, not getting it. The point has to be made patiently and repeatedly, day after day after day. Fortunately, there are media like newspapers and television that have space to be filled day after day after day.
THE FILTERS
I have come to know at least fifty newspaper editors. They are well-informed people. They read four or five newspapers a day; editorial page editors read at least twenty opinion columns a day. They are disciplined, productive, and nimble with words. They make their deadlines every single day. Most of them follow a set of strong professional ethics about evidence, balance, truthfulness, and the public’s right to know. Above all, they care about society and democracy and the information streams that hold a community or a nation together.
Like everyone else, however, they are embedded in a system whose structure, rewards, and punishments inevitably shape their behavior, not always for the good. The enterprises they work for put out a daily product on a rigid schedule that is not conducive to careful reflection. They are commercial enterprises that have to attract advertisers, appeal to the public taste, and make a profit. There is only so much space available every day, and competition for that space is intense.
Everything I’ve said about newspapers is even more true of the broadcast media. The result is a set of characteristics we are all familiar with–the standard and generally accurate set of criticisms about the media.
• They are event-oriented; they report only the surface of things, not the underlying structures.
• Their attention span is short, they create fads and drop them, they don’t see slow, long-term phenomena (they ignored the greenhouse effect for decades until there was drought in the Midwest).
• They follow a herd instinct; they will send 1,500 reporters to one political convention, but no reporters will be on hand when crucial environmental policy is being made.
• They are attracted to personalities and authorities; they are uninterested in people they’ve never heard of.
• To meet time and space constraints, they simplify issues; they have little tolerance for uncertainty, ambiguity, tradeoffs, or complexity.
• They operate from skepticism; they have been lied to and manipulated so often that they don’t believe anyone; they carry such a load of cynicism that they often unnerve sincere people who are telling the truth.
• They have a tendency to force the world to conform to their story rather than see the world as it is. (I have several times had the frustrating experience of being interviewed by a reporter who didn’t want to hear facts that contradicted "the story.")
• They love controversy and think harmony is boring; they see the world as a set of win/lose, right/wrong situations; they are attracted to conflict and to things that aren’t working; they do not pay attention to things that are working.
• They are strongly conservative; though they like to think of themselves as tough and uncompromising, in fact they challenge society only at its margins; most of the time, usually unconsciously, they reinforce the status quo and resist really new ideas.
• Also unconsciously they report through filters of helplessness, hopelessness, cynicism, passivity, and acceptance. They report problems, not solutions, obstacles, not opportunities. They systematically unempower themselves and their audience.
Why should anyone try to communicate messages of complexity, of structure, of long-term thinking, of inclusiveness, of empowerment through a system like this one? Because if we want a better world, we have no choice. And because it can be done, in spite of that negative list I’ve just made. I’ve learned that communicating through the media is harder than I thought, but also more possible and rewarding than I thought.
IT CAN BE DONE
My greatest help has been a handful of editors and television producers who have taken me in hand, coached me, and criticized me. Slowly they have taught me to stop resisting the strictures of the media and to work within them, without, I hope, losing my purpose or message.
My greatest problem at the beginning was keeping my columns under 800 words (the earliest columns in this collection are the longest ones). One of my editors thundered at me, "George Will can write less than 800 words. Mary McGrory can write less than 800 words. Why can’t you write less than 800 words?" Another reminded me that I didn’t have to say everything all at once. With a weekly column, I’d always have another chance.
Be clear, not fancy, they told me. Use everyday language. Be specific, not abstract. Offer easily imaginable examples. Be sure your words make pictures in people’s heads. Be sure the pictures are the ones you intend.
Use most of your column for the evidence, they said. Tell stories, give statistics, show the impact of the problem or the solution on the real world. People can form their own conclusions if you give them the evidence. Don’t take much space for grand, abstract conclusions; let the reader form the conclusions.
Use a hook to the news–that point was hard for an academic like me to get. If you’re writing about energy conservation, tie it to the shooting down of a commercial airliner over the Persian Gulf. If you’re writing about the ozone hole, point out that the Senate just ratified a treaty to combat it. People have to know that what they’re about to read is important. They think the daily news is important. So use that hook, even if you’re not going to talk about the daily news.
Write an interesting lead. Another editor once blasted me with, "That was the most terrific column you ever wrote, but it had a boring, killer lead." A killer lead is an opening sentence that makes the reader yawn and turn to the sports page.
Never write in an apologetic tone, they told me, or a defensive one. Never, ever, ever, condescend to the reader. Never present a problem without providing at least a hint of what to do about it. Don’t get people all riled up and then drop them into helplessness.
A television producer taught me an important lesson–whatever your story, tell it through people. Human beings are much more interested in other human beings than in ideas. Don’t shy away from personalities, don’t try to hide your own personality (difficult for a scientist who has been trained otherwise). If you care about something, let your care show as well as your evidence. If you’re writing about someone else who cares, or who doesn’t, make that person as real and whole on paper as you possibly can.
Be humble. You don’t know everything. Even system dynamicists don’t know everything. In fact no human being knows much of anything, compared with the immense wonders and uncertainties of the universe. So keep a sense of perspective. Say what you can say and no more; say it with the appropriate degree of certainty and no more. That is a hard lesson to follow. It’s a torture every day and a duty, a discipline and a Zen koan, the bane of my existence and the best challenge of my life.
Though I often despair about the state of the world, I also tell good-news stories. That’s uncharacteristic for a columnist, but necessary for a reformer who wants to show that a better world is both imaginable and feasible. I often show up personally in my columns, a practice much frowned upon in the profession, but one that makes me feel more honest. I don’t think columns should sound like they come from God. I like to be reminded that authors are always limited, biased, quirky human beings.
The above is excerpted from her book THE GLOBAL CITIZEN (Island Press; 1991; 300pps; $14.95). Donella Meadows was on the team at MIT that produced the Club of Rome report. She is the principal author of Limits to Growth. She is a systems analyst, journalist, college professor and farmer. Donella lives on a small, communal, organic farm in New Hampshire, where she works directly at sustainable resource management. Her "The Global Citizen" is a syndicated column and can be accessed through: http://iisd.ca/pcdf.
