Who Wants Yesterday's Papers?

Remember the New World Information Order? Back in the late 1970s and early '80s, you'd find torrid denunciations of the NWIO from right-wing columnists like William Safire. The proposed Order was put together by the nonaligned nations at the UN under the supervision of Seán MacBride, a very great Irishman.

The plan was to try to rectify the vast distortions in global information consequent on the First World's dominance of global circuits. The NWIO itself was an offshoot of a much larger enterprise fostered by the nonaligned nations, the New International Economic Order. All these brave visions were swept away by neoliberalism. A generation later we can look across the world and see that despite the neoliberal counterattack, something vaguely resembling--at least in preliminary outline--a new world information order has arrived all the same.

Here in the United States the old world order is dying. I was reading a New York Times article not so long ago about the Washington Post's future under its new publisher, Katharine Weymouth (granddaughter of the late KG). The NYT piece referred to the "heavy" audience for the Post's website, saying it "draws more than nine million unique visitors monthly, according to Nielsen Online, making it the third-highest for a newspaper Web site." In a strong month counterpunch.org, the site I co-edit with Jeffrey St. Clair, draws more than 2 million unique visitors--showing that the twelve- to seventeen-inch screen is a great leveler.

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