When viewed as an ecology, news is not a product to be consumed but a conscious act to engage with and produce shared information that has value in a community: This is how cultures and societies create their histories. In this systemic cultural context, news is no longer viewed as merely a hierarchically derived economic transaction but as a progressive and egalitarian oppor tunity, responsibility and challenge for citizens to create and build community through genuine dialogue. A simultaneous focus on both consumption and production— a genuine ecological approach to news—allows us to open up public discourse to the collective…
Our Noosphere
By Christine Tracy
I am a media ecologist, student of life, and observer of the current news environment.
We Are All Media Ecologists: We May Simply Not Know It Yet
Media ecology is an emerging and progressive field of study that elegantly yet practically weds a desire to optimize the power of ever-evolving communicative tools with a deep and profound humanism. A favorite definition of media ecology comes from a group of young filmmakers visiting Ann Arbor, Michigan during the City’s annual film festival. They…
Consumption Of News As A Conscious Choice
Much like the Northeast grid that supports and reinforces our energy dependence and interconnectedness, most of us are likewise dependent on the newsphere—the 24/7 global news and information delivery network. From Twitter and Facebook mini-feeds to the Associated Press and CNN, the media landscape is constantly evolving. Previously, news moved from producers to consumers in…
Here’s Proof That We Are All Interconnected
At approximately 4:11 EDT on August 14, 2003, 50 million people in the Midwest, northeastern United States and Canada were stranded in subways and elevators, sat in their cars because traffic lights went out, or watched as their computer monitors and cell phones went black as life as most Americans and many Canadians know it came to an abrupt…
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: A Pioneering Evolutionist
I was first introduced to the Jesuit paleontologist and philosopher Teilhard deChardin in 1985 while working as a press aide for the Culinary Institute of America(CIA) in Hyde Park, New York. This famous culinary school was founded on the site of a former Jesuit seminary, St. Andrews-on-the-Hudson, where Teilhard and other Jesuits had been interned.…
Teilhard’s Rules For Navigating The Newsphere
“By virtue of the world’s fundamental unity, once a phenomenon has been clearly observed, even only at a single point, its value and roots are simultaneously present everywhere.” —Teilhard de Chardin, The Human Phenomenon “I am a pilgrim from the future,” Teilhard told his young friend Jean Houston, as they talked and walked around New York City’s Central…
We are all connected (even if we don’t know it yet.)
On August 12, 2004, the Northeast power grid collapsed. After the lights came back on, the first question everyone asked was “why did this happen?” Hindsight now provides a reasonable answer: the decision, or more accurately, the indecision of an Ohio power plant operator to stay connected to the grid after his plant failed instead…
The News Road Less Traveled
It is an oft-elusive yet elegant and paradoxical quality of human existence: We crave connection with others while simultaneously reveling in our fierce independence. Journalism historian Mitchell Stephens brilliantly describes this basic human need,the desire to ask and also to answer, “What’s new?” as a “hunger for awareness. ”More than specific information on specific events, the…
introducing the newsphere
I first started writing news when I was a junior at Mother Seton Regional High School for girls in Clark, New Jersey. I was the editorial page editor of the Setonnaire and more than the mild celebrity, I enjoyed seeing my words in print and having a public place to think out loud and create news—that singularly powerful blend of events, ideas, thoughts, information, and yes, hopes and dreams, too. I was constantly in awe—and still am—of my friends, the visual thinkers: the cartoonists who cleverly and quickly sketched their ideas and powerfully captured the essence of an idea.…
The Writings of Christine M. Tracy 