Neil Postman
Late this evening comes news of the death of Neil Postman, University Professor of Culture and Communication at NYU, and author of Amusing Ourselves to Death. I never studied with Postman while I was at NYU, and, frankly, much of my recently-completed manuscript on the relationship between contemporary literary culture and television argues explicitly against the Postman line. Nonetheless, he has been for years a leading figure in media ecology circles, and will be much missed.
[UPDATE, 10.08.03: At last, confirmation. Interesting that this comes from Toronto; there’s still nothing in the NY Times...]
[UPDATE2, 10.09.03: The NY Times obituary has at last appeared.]
7 October 2003, 5.50 pm
I used to teach a Postman essay in my freshman composition classes, even though I recall disagreeing with him on many accounts. Still, he’s one of the few academic media theorists/critics to gain a relatively wide audience. He was also an incredibly lucid writer for the most part. I’ll have to go back and revisit his work at some later point.
8 October 2003, 8.49 pm
Last night, I was unable to locate anything via a web search on Postman’s death. Tonight there is still no mention of his passing on any NYU page. The Toronto Star’s piece seemed to be the first site that was indexed on Google, and now the NYTimes’ obit is available. I made mention of this on my site yesterday.
9 October 2003, 4.52 am
I was struck by a sense of irony as I heard of Neil Postman’s passing on NPR’s “Morning Edition” this morning. For a man who has done perhaps more than anyone to raise public awareness our media environment, the two-minute report on his death—and life—seemed rather inconsequential as compared to the “other news of the day.” While I do not always agree with his ideas, there is still no other source I reference more often as I teach “Media Literacy” to my high school students. Postman’s lifework will continue to serve a most important service for many years to come.
9 October 2003, 7.00 am
It is a bit ironic—though, like most ironies, it seemed in some sense fitting, to me—that Postman’s death was the one piece of “news” not immediately leapt upon by the media. Postman’s work has been enormously influential, and he will be terribly missed—but perhaps that silence (admittedly temporary, now that the New York Times has finally weighed in) can be seen as a gesture of respect, a decision not to transform “something happened” into soundbite quite so reflexively.