Media, food, cooking

There's always something to complain about in the media.

Indeed, the media industry is a mess right now. It finds itself in an existential crisis at present: a decade behind the music industry in evolving business models while struggling to let go of an illusion that it owned our attention and engagement as if it were its birthright.

What to do?

We can treat the media we consume just as we select the food we eat: avoid the excessively refined and sugary stuff designed primarily to get you to eat more and look for that which has been carefully prepared for reasons other than hacking your attention and engagement loop on behalf of advertisers. Discovering raw sources of information is easier than ever once you know how to navigate Twitter and apply a little critical thinking.

We feel empowered by taking responsibility for our consumption of media (and food) and that's far more effective at improving the quality of our life than bemoaning the sad fact that fast food and low-value media is so plentiful. The availability of crap will only dry up as our demand for it disappears--and it's safe to assume it will never fully disappear. We're producing too many new humans who love their media in the form of McNuggets.

None of this prevents our learning to cook for ourselves with a little practice in the preparation of the raw ingredients that make up a good story: the interplay of thought and emotion, journeys and states of being, values and principles, rules and conventions, metrics and objectives, and purposes and their orchestrations. The gameplay of life is full of incredible stories just waiting for us to uncover. And a good cook is better able to recognize the signs of quality storytelling by others and build more authentic news and media networks as a direct consequence.

Anton Ego expressed a sentiment in Ratatouille that applies perfectly here to the discovery of new media sources within our networks: "In the past, I have made no secret of my disdain for Chef Gusteau's famous motto: Anyone can cook. But I realize, only now do I truly understand what he meant. Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere." We need only start looking within ourselves and our networks to discover the sources of healthy media.