In a posting last week I blogged about a Boston Globe editorial titled “Don’t Stamp Out Brainy Mags.” The Globe criticized media giant Time Warner for trying to get the Postal Service to adopt a rate hike disadvantageous to “smaller magazines across the country, such as The Nation, the American Spectator, Ms., and The New Republic.”

Though I ranted and raved I offered no useful advice on how to stop this. Fortunately Steve Converse of Free Press left a comment in which he supplied the action component.

I’ll excerpt from his note below, but first let me link the rate hike to yesterday’s posting Power to the Pamphlets. In it I talk about Adam Bellow and his PamphletGuys. They plan to produce $4 niche publications — and here I’m guessing — which they’ll sell through viral marketing on the blogosphere and deliver mail order to avoid retail distribution costs.

So independent magazines and pamphlets may be in the same boat. Fortunately momentum is building to reverse Time Warner’s self-serving plan and reinstate a fairer rate hike proposed previously by postal service staff. Click here to learn more or read the steady progression of newspaper editorials calling attention to the isse or here to sign a petition demanding action.

Yesterday was World Press Freedom Day and truth be told I’d never heard of it before a reminder from the International Center for Journalists landed in my e-mail basket at work.

This morning I learned that the event was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in 1993 “to remind us all . . . of the crucial role a free press plays in strengthening democracies and fostering development around the world.”

That reminded me to read a message that had been sitting unopened in my in-box. It was from Reporters Without Borders and it noted the arrest of two Chinese dissidents, “Zhu Yufu, a member of the banned China Democracy Party and his 26-year old son, Zhu Ang.”

The message, which said Zhu Yufu had been jailed previously for seven years, reprinted a statement he had made upon his release in September 2006:

“No matter how much pressure I am under, I will continue down this path. Now I am more determined! After coming out of prison, I want to recount my experiences inside prison to the whole world. I may go to prison again after that. If so, I will continue telling the world from prison about the evil nature of Communist Party politics. “

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“Secrecy has become a central axis of executive branch policy,” says University of El Paso-Texas political science professor William Weaver in a Mother Jones article titled, “Don’t whistle while you work.” Mojo’s investigative reporter Daniel Schulman writes: “the number of (document) classifications has nearly quadrupled from 1995 to 2005, from 3.6 million to 14.2 mllion.” He cites the 2005 U.S. Supreme Court decision that made it riskier for 2.2 million federal employees to reveal hidden frauds by ruling that:

“when public employees make statements pursuant to their official duties, they are not speaking as citizens for First Amendment purposes, and the Constitution does not insulate their communications from employer discipline.”

No wonder that “a senior Pentagon official” tells Schulman that nowadays the conscientious public employee doesn’t step forward to blow the whistle but rather whispers from the shadows because those who go public get “15 minutes of fame and 40 years of misery.”

But there is hope.

On March 14 the House of Representatives took the first step toward making it safer for public servants to follow their conscience instead of orders when members voted 331-94 to pass the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act (background).

From May 14 through 18 a coalition of public interest groups will hold a lobby the Senate to follow the House’s lead. See this Government Accountability Project press release to get learn more.

This is not a partisan issue. Protecting whistleblowers is a prerequisite for good government. We want public employees to holler — not cringe — when they see others stealing tax money or breaking the law. Lets get the Senate on board and get the job done.

For the last 14 weeks I’ve dedicated every Friday to arguing for the release of Josh Wolf, an activist and freelance videographer who spent 226 days in jail for refusing to turn over outtakes of the video he took of a demonstration in San Francisco.

Last week he was released but before I give up on my habit of wondering about his whereabouts on Friday, I visited his web site and learned he is having a fundraiser in San Francisco on Monday night (April 16) to celebrate his release.

His freedom leaves a gap in my blog schedule and I rather like the idea of using Friday to howl at the moon. But not today. Because, for now, I’ve pretty much had the blog knocked out of me.

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The sleepy lion shown above provides was penned by author and web publisher Doug Millison, whose current interests incline toward graphic novels and animal consciousness. Doug has been teaching himself to draw, with visible success, and now with the zeal of the newly-converted he urges “citizen journalists, or wanna-be professionals” to add drawing to their repertoire of skills development. Why? Because it allows us to interpret the visual world in ways that personalize the perception. All the digital cameras in the world can’t do that.

It’s an interesting thought and I’d like to add my own twist.

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