Reaching Broader Audiences

I've followed Howard Zinn's writing for years. His book "A People's History of the United States," is a comic book illustration of American history meant to reach an audience that is outside of the establishment. I love the idea.

When I taught composition, I always wanted to have students create video essays. I believed that this generation is more impacted by images than words, and that the combination of images and words is an incredibly powerful medium. The challenge would have been to maintain the same standard for sources and arguments required in an academic essay (i.e citations, credible sources, well-balanced arguments, etc.). My bosses never liked the idea. I wish I could have shown them this video, "Empire or Humanity? What the Classroom Didn't Teach Me about the American Empire," based on an essay Zinn wrote for TomDispatch and narrated by Viggo Mortenson.



Will it reach a broader audience? It's been viewed almost 80,000 times and I bet a large number of those 80,000 people don't have a copy of the book. Plus, there are roughly 340 comments on YouTube. Some of them are worthless, but others resemble the types of discussions I tried to get my students to engage in. For example:

"How does one spread humanity? The problems that he identifies are real, but his solutions are too vague?"

Maybe it's all wishful thinking, but the video does prove that a message that combines words with images can be as powerful as a book (if not more powerful). What do you guys think?