Music

Medium

Singular

Media

Plural?

"Media" is one of those words where we bump against the remains of the historical day. Derived from Latin, "media," strictly speaking, is plural. "Medium" is singular, and, still following Latin rules, we take off the "um" and add "a." For those of you about to graduate from college, it might interest you to know that you will soon be an alumnus, if you are male, or an alumna if you are female. All of the college or high school educated are alumni of somewhere, whatever our gender identity, unless you want to insist that women deserve their own plurality: alumnae.

Now, those of you who AREN'T word nerds might already be screaming, "Who cares?!?" For you, I'll cut to the chase. Read these statements and see if they sound familiar:

"The media is owned by seven corporations."

"The liberal media is biased against Republicans."

"The media is powerful. A dead person can become a living person. A black cat can become a white cat." (From Decayonnet, a contemporary blog)

Each of these statements is, technically, grammatically incorrect. The media are many things, including owned by an ever-smaller group of conglomerates, biased in many different ways, and possessing the power to make consumers believe a number of incredible things, including: John McCain is a straight-talking maverick; VitaminWater is health food; Tupac and Elvis Live!

Still, thinking of the media as singular makes a certain amount of sense. As someone who starts listening to the radio before dawn, and ends most of my waking hours in front of The Daily Show, I experience the media as powerful, ever-present, and yet nowhere in particular. If I were religious, that might sound, well, kind of godlike.

Still, I want to insist that the media ARE. And are NOT all-powerful. Letters to the editor, blogs, podcasts, Youtube...all allow us to talk back and mash up the traditional media. There are singular, particular, insistent voices in the new media, many of them raised in critique of corporate news spinning.

Even if the dictionary tells me, as it does, "that it is now acceptable in Standard English" for media to take the singular verb, I'm holding out for pluralism. Resist media singularity! You have nothing to lose and living voices to gain.

-- Ray D. O'Voz