 |
| back cover |
Editor's Notes
In my half century in academia, my lecture schedule was often dotted with interludes devoted to critical topics of great magnitude that affect, or I thought will affect, humankind. Tops among them were conglomerate ownership, the dwindling of freedom of expression, an undue reverence of technology, increasingly invading the domain of the human brain, and the sleight-of-hand maneuvering of corporatism and mass media that distract customers and audiences from meaningful information in favor of booming, pseudo-ethical commercials and "happy talk" news.
These subjects were appropriate for courses that I taught, particularly, the huge "Introduction to Mass Communication" that was mandatory for beginning students in the school.
Much thinking is along the lines of, "There is nothing I can do about it. I'm just a small fry." The important action we can take is to inform others, remembering that knowledge and awareness are the first stages of social change. And, if we think we are too small to make a difference, maul over in your mind this Dalai Lama quote: "If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito in the room."
My first major attempt to alert about the dangers of conglomerate ownership was in 1964, when I finished writing a book manuscript on media mogul, Samuel I. Newhouse. It was published in 1966 with much fallout: threats of legal suits against me; my abandonment of doctoral studies at Syracuse University, which had just received new facilities donated by Newhouse; the banning of my book in libraries of cities where Newhouse media had a presence, and nasty, misinformed reviews by at least two other deans who were friends with Syracuse's dean of mass communication.
John A. Lent
International Journal of Comic Art Vol. 26, No. 2 Fall/Winter 2024 pp. 1-5
Conglomerate Ownership
Sorry for the distraction.
Freedom of Expression
This vaulted right has been removed, reshaped, or renamed in much of the world, by governments, religions, schools, other public entities, such as libraries, and individuals. In many countries of the Global South, media (including comics art) function in a "guided" manner, bending to the wishes of authorities and publishers/editors. Increasingly, journalists, cartoonists, and broadcasters are "disappeared," murdered, maimed, sued, and otherwise, harassed because of what they report or comment on. As a long-time board member of the Cartoonists Rights Network International, I have been made aware of many such cases.
Once thought of as the citadel of freedom of expression, the United States has suffered considerable damage to that accolade, with the large number of book bannings in schools and libraries; the passing of comments as news, particularly on television; the lowering of the esteem that the media and the concept of freedom of expression have faced under the Trump regime, the threats of Elon Musk, with Trump encouragement, to buy MSNBC and CBS, and the possible government defunding of PBS, and, of course, the suppression of views. In 2024, we saw The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times abandon presidential endorsements because of conglomerate ownership. [FYI: The Post is owned by Jeff Bezos, Amazon proprietor.] I don't recall a time when freedom of expression was in such peril, not even the early 1950s, when McCarthyism prevailed in some quarters.
Artificial Intelligence
This is a topic of rising concern.
To give a feel about what cartoonists in Jamaica, Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico think about artificial intelligence, an article in this issue, co-authored with Geisa Fernandes, gives their views elicited during our interviews with them in June 2024.
The subject has raised questions and concerns as it should. New York Times staff members Alan Burdick and Katrina Miller began their October 13, 2024 article with:
Technology observers have grown increasingly vocal in recent years about the threat that artificial intelligence poses to the human variety. A.I. models can write and talk like us, draw and paint like us. Crush us at chess and Go. They express an unnerving simulacrum of creativity, not least where the truth is concerned.
Their concern related to the Nobel Prizes awarded in 2024 in chemistry and physics, the one in chemistry going to three researchers for using A.I. to invent new proteins and reveal the structure of existing ones–a problem that stumped biologists for decades, yet could be solved by A.I. in minutes," and that in physics to two scientists who helped "computers 'learn' closer to the human brain does." Burdick and Miller's comment: "This was computer science, not physics or chemistry!" They went on to say,
But the Nobel recognition underscored a chilling prospect: Henceforth, perhaps scientists will merely craft the tools that make the breakthroughs, rather than do the revolutionary work themselves or even understand how it came about. Artificial intelligence designs hundreds of molecular Notre Dames and Hagia Sophias, and a researcher gets a pat for inventing the shovel.
They questioned whether the prizes as set up in the nineteenth century can include the world's current problems, such as climate change and threat of extinction; pointed out that, "Rare is the pure biologist or chemist; increasingly common is the geochemist, paleogenomicist, the computational evolutionary theorist, the astrobiologist," and lamented that the strict rules set down by the Nobels allowed no more than three people to share an award, when thousands sometimes make up a team.
IJOCA editor for Malaysia, Muliyadi Mahamood, reported that artificial intelligence was the butt of a controversy among some Malaysian cartoonists when the July 2024 Gila-Gila humor magazine used an A.I.-generated illustration as its front cover. Also, in 2024, scholarly publishers were approached by some tech companies to "license books for training large language models (LLM), a technology in the so-called 'A.I.' field." McFarland Vice President Karl-Heinz Roseman posted a form letter to a number of book authors, on October 17, 2024, stating that McFarland will explore strategies to obtain "fair compensation and credit" for their work.
More on Peer Review
On at least four occasions, I have used this space to take to task the peer review system for its breach of ethics through its conflicts of interests, rushed and poorly-organized evaluations, and oppressive control over what libraries deem worthy to purchase.
Peer review made the news again in September 2024, when a neuroscientist filed an antitrust suit on behalf of a group of academic authors, calling the peer review process a "'scheme' agreed to by publishers to bolster their profits." The suit contends that the publishers have formed a "cartel" through which they fixed the price of peer review labor at zero, while the publishers have kept profit margins far exceeding most successful corporations. Topping the list of publishers is Elsevier, the main target in my IJOCA analyses. In 2023, Elsevier made $3.8 billion in revenue from its peer-reviewed journals, with an operating profit margin of 38 percent. Others named in the suit were Wolters Kluwer, Wiley, Sage, Taylor & Francis, and Springer Nature.
A Cry for Financial Help
Rarely, if ever, have I cried "poor mouth" on behalf of IJOCA. However, at this moment, the journal is facing hard times with the ever-increasing cost of postage and printing, the dwindling number of subscribers as we face competition from a number of periodicals started in this century, and the plight of financially-strapped libraries.
Perhaps, help can be found by ensuring that your university's library be convinced to subscribe, soliciting advertisements from book publishers and other groups tied to comics art, making sure that subscriptions are paid on time, asking subscribers to chip in a few extra bucks when renewing (which three or four already do), and convincing more of the comics studies community to subscribe. Over the years, there were requests that IJOCA also be put online. Mike Rhode took the time to format and digitize all issues, and we offered online subscriptions at $40.00 for individuals and $100.00 for institutions per year. That was two or three years ago, and only three new subscriptions have been received. A possibility that I would use only as a last resort is to raise subscription rates.
For a number of years, I have used my personal funds to pay an assistant's wages, purchase office supplies, and pay for other incidentals associated with IJOCA. I am willing to continue doing this, but the coffers of the journal need to be replenished. Thank you for any help that you are able to give.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment