Bridgework by Jesse Ricke

This morning Leobardo Estrada, PhD listed some of the most prominent social problems facing the US, including a school system segregated by white flight, the perceived difficulties of integrating immigrants into US culture, the stigma of prison attached to African American males, and a growing schism between greying Americans and tech savvy echo-boomers. He then challenged the media community to find cross cultural solutions. But when the panelists described their relationships to their audiences, I heard a perception of audiences as necessarily fractured and segmented into marketable niches. This channel for the old, this one for blacks, here's one for the ladies, etc.

I would like to bring up Ethan Zuckerman, founder of Global Voices (http://globalvoicesonline.org/). He identifies a certain kind of cultural player which he calls the "bridge figure" or the "third culture kid," a person brought up in two cultures who posses distinct ways of perceiving themselves and their place in society. Sometimes these figures remix the art of their two homes, sometimes they help explain the events in one culture to another. However they arise and however they act in the world, these kind of people are going to become a lot more common as the country diversifies, defying the segmented categories targeted by the marketers that the media industry relies on.

Scott Mills was right on when he said we aren't past race and never will be, but race, gender, and generation might start to look really weird. And if Estrada is right in believing our social ills require a solution that brings cultures together, then media companies might need to understand their audiences in different ways. We may need to see channels that don't aim to serve a specific niche, but that appeal across racial, generational, and gender divides. It might be more difficult to identify how the content should look - as a white male suburbanite I'm probably not qualified - but the cross-cultural population is coming up. Maybe we'll see it's manifestation in ten years on the next census. Maybe the industry should try thinking more about bridges right now.