I took this photo on a trip to New York City in 2010 inside St. Paul’s Chapel. It sits across the street from the World Trade Center site.

I learned that the chapel was used as a relief center for firefighters, medics, construction workers, police and so many more for months after 9/11. It didn’t take long for the chapel walls to become adorned with messages of love from around the world. It can be difficult to grasp, but 9/11 took place only six years after the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. At the time, the Oklahoma City bombing was the deadliest terrorist attack in American history…until 9/11/01. I still feel overwhelmed reading “Keep your spirits up…Oklahoma loves you.”

In April 1995, members of the NYPD, FDNY and other emergency response agencies across New York and the country came to Oklahoma City to help our people with search, rescue and recovery. Oklahomans did not waste a single second returning that gesture after 9/11.

All this reliance on ChatGPT and generative AI is really starting to affect my state of mind. I feel like people just don’t care about much of anything anymore.

I’m tired of having this ugly, soulless technology shoved in my face everywhere I turn. And I don’t care that I’m posting this on platforms utilizing AI, routed through some data center. At least these are my thoughts. My writing.

It really hurts to see it used so heavily in schools. I’m worried about students. I’m just worried about all of it.

Growing up, they insisted I wouldn’t have a calculator in my pocket at all times. Now the calculator will also steal your work. Never could have prepared myself for that.

On August 25, Oklahomans will be asked to vote on two state questions that could make make a significant impact on the balance of power in our state. Here, I weigh-in:

State Question 844

This measure amends article 10, section 6B of the Oklahoma Constitution. Section 6B incentivizes manufacturers to locate, expand, or acquire manufacturing facilities in Oklahoma through an ad valorem taxation exemption for five (5) years. Currently, the State must reimburse common schools, county governments, cities and towns, emergency medical services districts, vocational technical schools, junior colleges, county health departments and libraries for revenues lost as a result of each exemption provided. This measure authorizes the Legislature to enact laws establishing the levels and methodologies of reimbursement for the previously mentioned local governmental entities resulting from the manufacturing exemption. The laws are meant to ensure that no individual county receives reimbursement in an amount detrimental to other Oklahoma counties. The levels and methodologies will replace the current statutory framework for reimbursement. For the purpose of calculating the limit on indebtedness for political subdivisions, the measure requires such amount be equal to the amount of reimbursement applicable to such property under laws enacted by the Legislature. This measure will have a fiscal impact on the state that will depend on the application of the levels and methodologies adopted by the Legislature.

TLDR

Plain and simple: This will take money away from your city and give it to the state. Local schools, police, emergency, and infrastructure could all be impacted. Vote no.

State Question 846

This measure adds a new section 6 to article 3 of the Oklahoma Constitution to require proof of identity to vote in any election authorized by law and conducted by a county election board or the State Election Board. The measure requires proof of identity for all authorized methods of voting. The measure requires the Legislature to enact laws to specify requirements for proof of identity for voting. The measure will not have a fiscal impact.

TLDR

State lawmakers think Oklahomans are really dumb and want to change voter ID requirements after we already enshrined it into the state constitution in 2011. Ironically, this would weaken voter ID laws by a lot. Vote no.

sighs in Oklahoman

The Lost Civic Life of Movie Rental Stores

Joshua M. Greenberg:

“In its early years, the video store became a third place where customers, retailers, and clerks met, talked, and shared a common experience of movies on videocassette.”

In his piece for MIT Press, Greenberg writes about the video rental store as a third space in our communities. Earlier in the week, I briefly reflected on this very subject in my own piece about the broader loss of community from changes within local news to local entertainment. The industries built to help facilitate third spaces in our communities keep getting bought out and shut down. When I think about my stint at Blockbuster during college, I like to joke that I was one of the last employees. It’s not not true. Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy in 2010 and I was working at one of Tulsa’s last remaining stores until it closed sometime in 2011.

Before Blockbuster disappeared, it was the place to be throughout much of the 1990s. Seriously, read Greenberg’s story. It’s adapted from his book “From Betamax to Blockbuster: Video Stores and the Invention of Movies on Video." My experience at the store in 2013 was a little different from the heyday of video rentals, but I still remember how serious corporate was about making sure we walked the aisles to talk to customers about movies, what they’re in the mood for and providing all the recommendations we could. Employees were allotted 10 free movie rentals a week! While it was certainly a huge benefit to a broke college student, they framed it as homework to make sure we were up to speed on the latest movies and could talk to customers about them. I watched the first 3 seasons of Breaking Bad this way—years after they aired on AMC. I recommended that show to so many people that way.

I miss talking to people about the art that moves them.

I am very concerned about the state of local news in Tulsa. I’d guess that if I’d stayed the course in journalism, I’d have been laid off at least once or twice by now. That’s a guess, not a fact, but it’s an educated one. I’ve watched the market change enough in the six years since I left to feel fairly confident in that.

Three out of Tulsa’s four legacy news stations have been radically reduced to a shadow of their former selves over the past few years, and it’s accelerated fast this year. In May, Sinclair Broadcast Group consolidated KTUL’s newsroom with KOKI’s, moved KTUL to a “reporter-driven” format, and retired the “Tulsa’s News Channel 8” identity the station had carried for decades. A few months earlier, FOX23’s affiliation, which had lived on KOKI since the 1980s, got sold off to Sinclair and folded into KTUL as a digital subchannel, 8.2. Then just this week, word spread across social media that major layoffs hit the E.W. Scripps Company, which made a significant impact on Tulsa’s NBC affiliate, KJRH “2 Works for You.”

I left FOX23 in early 2020 for a better opportunity and watched, from the outside, as new owner after new owner made painful changes to the team I left behind. There were very long hours. We were reassigned from the digital team to the assignment desk, but still expected to do both. Then finally, the management position was eliminated completely. At the time leaving felt like dodging a bullet. Now I think I was just early to what is happening now.

Television is far from the only corner of the news industry impacted. The Tulsa World was owned by a local family for over 100 years. It was one of the largest independent newspapers in the country at the turn of the century with more than 160,000+ subscribers in 2000. As of 2023, that number has dwindled down to around 32,000. And it’s not only the readers who have disappeared, so has a lot of the journalism. Over this past July 4 holiday, the holiday edition of the Tulsa World was a mere 6 pages long. Ten years ago, it was 32 pages long. Twenty years ago, in 2006, the July 4 edition was 48 pages. You get the picture. This is not an indictment of the Tulsa World or Tulsa’s local journalists but an indictment of the corporate consolidation that has squeezed the last bit of juice out of them.

But here’s what sticks out to me: it isn’t just local news. It’s happening at every job I’ve ever worked.

The movie theater I worked at in college closed over a decade ago after Cinemark eliminated film projectors and focused their investment on digital theater. The Blockbuster Video store I worked at is long gone. The local radio station where I pulled part-time night shifts covering local sports has changed owners so many times it’s not recognizable to me. And now the industry I trained for, spent my earliest career years in, and still care about, is disappearing in the same way, for what looks like the same two reasons every time: digital disruption made the old format optional, and corporate consolidation made sure whatever survived stopped being local.

It’s not a coincidence and it’s not bad luck. It’s a major sign that behaviors in our community have shifted dramatically. Movie theaters, video rental, local radio, local TV news and newspapers all come from the same local information and entertainment economy. I’ve spent so much of my working life inside it, and I’ve watched every single piece of it get hollowed out by the same forces, in roughly the same order, for roughly the same reasons.

I don’t know what to do with that, exactly, except notice it. My whole life sometimes feels like it’s been chasing the last remaining wisps of something that was already leaving the room by the time I got there. What is done is done. What is now is where we have power. Right now, what’s in my power is naming the pattern clearly, so I stop mistaking it for bad luck.

People crave community. The industries built to help facilitate that community keep getting bought out from under them. I don’t have a clean answer for what replaces that. I just know I’ve watched it happen too many times now, and I’m done pretending the next one will be different.