Lessons from a Blogger

Famed blogger Andrew Sullivan has changed the media landscape as we know it more than once in his career. He appears to be on the brink of doing it again.

Famed blogger Andrew Sullivan has decided to leave The Daily Beast and go it alone, starting his own blog and charging subscriptions.

What does this have to do with the future of Cooperative Extension?  Everything.

Think for a moment about the implications of this in terms of traditional media.  As Mathew Ingram observed recently, if one of the nation’s preeminent bloggers can leave an online publication such as the Daily Beast and strike out on his own, who’s to say that other premiere bloggers and columnists —the New York Times’ Nate Silver and Thomas Friedman, for example — won’t soon follow?

As Ingram asks rather ominously, “at what point does it become more of a hindrance than a benefit to be associated with a traditional media brand?”

Within only days after announcing his split, Sullivan raised more $300,000 dollars for his new site.  More recently, he’s drawn closer to the $500,000 million mark.  There is every reason to believe that Sullivan, distinguished by his long history of media trailblazing, is once again primed to change the media landscape.

What we’re talking about here is creative destructionism on crack.  The arrival of new media a generation ago thoroughly democratized media usage partly by drastically lowering entry costs.

New media have empowered gifted writers such as Sullivan — good writers who also aren’t afraid to think out of the box and to challenge conventional thinking — to strike out on their own.

Small wonder why I and others get so frustrated with the people in our ranks who view new media adoption as just another skill set that must be added to one’s professional repertoire simply to pass muster at the next performance appraisal review.

They don’t understand how these new media are reordering everything in their wake, not only communications and business but every facet of our lives.

Within higher education, we’re already getting a taste what’s in store for us with the steady growth of Massive Online Open Courses.

That raises a rather fascinating but troubling question.  To paraphrase, Ingram, how much longer will it be before the majority of aspiring students view conventional higher education as a hindrance more than a benefit?

The skeptical colleagues in our ranks must understand that Cooperative Extension is no more immune to the effects of new media than any other facet of education.

I’ll leave my readers with another question: At what point will traditional Cooperative Extension programming and delivery methods be viewed more as hindrances than benefits?

To put it another way, how much longer before a handful of aspiring Extension educators strike out on their own and develop an outreach version of MOOCs?

The next time some of our Extension colleagues bang on about how all this talk of new media is wasting their time, they need to be gently — or, perhaps, not so gently — reminded of this new reality.

It’s All about Extending the Virtuous Circle

In the end, social media adoption in Cooperative Extension is about empowering people, helping them understand that all of this adoption points to a movement rather than a fleeting technological trend.

There is all this frantic talk of social media adoption —and rightfully so.  A lot of this talk will generate more Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest accounts within Cooperative Extension, and that’s not a bad thing at all.

The problem, at least, as I see it, is that amid all of this frantic adoption we’re missing the most critical point: Social media adoption is more about mastering a handful of applications; it’s about cultivating an entirely new mindset.

Actually, it’s about something more.  As rhetorically overblown as this may sound to some, it’s about our returning to the core principles that have always defined Extension work, at least, implicitly — inclusiveness and empowerment.

More about that later.

A Movement, Not a Tech Trend

I have to admit that in driving home this argument I’ve felt a bit like a member of a paltry handful of John the Baptists crying out in the wilderness — or, to use another analogy, a starry-eyed idealist stuck in the clouds.   This is precisely why I was gratified a few weeks ago to read a Google-Plus comment by the ever-resourceful and farseeing Bob Bertsch, who harbors a strikingly similar view.

Bob mentioned that his experience with the NetLit Community of Practice, of which we are both members, has driven home a similar conviction.  He argues that “instead of serving an audience or trying to change an organization, we should be inviting people to be part of a world of 7 billion interconnected teachers.”

Why? Because this is about a movement, not some fleeting technological trend, Bob says.

He gets all of this in a fundamental way.  He understands that our challenge is providing our people as well as our diverse audiences with a cosmic view of what’s taking place, because in a very real sense, what is occurring is cosmic — cosmic in the sense that it is reordering every facet of life on this planet, whether this is occurring in a relatively remote Sub-Saharan African city or in downtown Manhattan.

Our challenge is to show our professionals as well as our audiences how all of these changes reflect a movement that is unfolding globally.  Most important of all, though, we must demonstrate how they are empowering people by rendering all facets of life more inclusive.

“Why Nations Fail”

This brings me back to a visionary book I’ve read and re-read over the last few months: “Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty,” by Daron Acemoglu, James Killian Professor of Economics at MIT, and James A. Robinson, David Florence Professor of Government at Harvard University.

As these two professors contend, nations fail and ultimately collapse because of their elites’ unwillingness to provide fertile conditions in which inclusive economic and political institutions can develop.   One of the really tragic facts of human history is that only a paltry handful of nations have succeeded in building durable, inclusive societies.

Virtuous Circles

Inclusive societies emerge when elites are shorn of their incentives to deprive less advantaged groups with the means of improving their economic and political plight.  Over time, a kind of positive feedback system emerges — a virtuous circle, as Acemoglu and Robinson describe it — one that preserves inclusive institution in the face of attempts to undermine them.

Over time, this feedback system sets in motion forces that lead to even more disadvantaged groups becoming economically and politically enfranchised.

In the 19^th century American elites did something truly remarkable: Instead of undertaking a futile rearguard action against the relentless march of inclusiveness, as previous generations of elites had done, they created a series of institutions with inclusiveness as the end goal.

What were the Homestead Acts and the Morrill Land-Grant Acts of 1862 and 1890 other than attempts to expand this virtuous circle.  Within the next few decades, these legislative acts were reinforced with passage of the Smith-Lever Act of 1914, which established a national network of outreach programs known as Cooperative Extension.

Cooperative Extension represents something remarkable in human history: a cadre of educators charged with empowering people and, in the course of which, ensuring higher levels of inclusiveness.

This reality lies at the heart of our history, and it should comprise the defining principle of social media adoption within Cooperative Extension.

Yes, all this frantic social media adoption is a good thing. But we must understand these online technologies for what they really are: As powerful new ways to empower our diverse audiences—to extend the virtuous circle.