welcome to the grassroots fight of your life, if you're a media democracy activist. we've been working on this for a year, trying to build a coalition of peace and justice groups against the issue. during the war in iraq, many national peace activists would turn on the nightly news and say, 'what the hell? where are the bodies? why are retired generals and embedded reporters giving me my news?'
so they embraced the issue. it's a lot harder to ignore the group of people on the steps of the fcc whining 'FREE AND INDEPENDENT MEDIA' if those people are anti-war citizens from all across the country with money, clout, and celebrity spokesmen (michael moore).
the smallish team media democracy activists has ballooned into a huge group of peace and justice activists, hackers, consumer rights activists, kids, parents, people of all stripes. now groups like moveon.org are planning national call-in days. now code pink is pink-slipping fcc chairman michael powell alongside his much-more-famous father, colin powell.
so we have the people. what do we do? what's our power?
1) call your senator. like, now. right now. the senate, after the second commerce committee hearing on this issue, is rattling some sabers and could definitely use some encouragement that this issue isn't just one for the lobbyists.
2) comment to the fcc. you can do so here and the comments you make will also go to the senate commerce committee, and to the president.
3) tell someone who isn't tech savvy about this. you're reading slashdot. you have a choice about where you get your media. most people don't. newspaper, radio, and television matter more than we can say in most parts of this country. just ask the good people of minot.
and visit us at prometheus. we're here all the time. and we will be until june 2nd and after.
They say that ClearChannel has no real competition but it's not true -- check out CheapChannel Radio, a satiric competitor with a voice tracking program to rival even the big boys. Voice tracking is the system ClearChannel stations use to have a DJ in Houston pretend he's from cities all around the country to give canned stations a little "local" flavor. CheapChannel is a project of the Prometheus Radio Project, which was recently featured on the PBS's McNeil News Hour for their work promoting Low Power FM stations. The first site is fun, and the second is interesting, if you're concerned about media consolidation.
I am very interested to see how McCain's return to the chairmanship affects the movement for community radio and low power FM. McCain was the key ally in Congress that led to the passage of a low power FM bill (which allowed for some additional community radio, although it was gutted before final passage). Of course, McCain had recently been exposed as receiving money from the big broadcaster lobby -- so it remains to be seen how deep his commitment really stands.
Can I pose a question? If we're going to use Open Media distribution, questions about quality come immediately to the forefront-- if anything can be posted, how can we insure quality or usefulness? The answer we have now is user or editor moderation. How well do people think moderation works? What kind of moderation schemes seem effective? Are there other kinds of alternatives to moderation to ensure the quality of information from the news source? --j
I was extremely excited to read this article, especially on slashdot; let's take a moment to reflect on the fact that what you're doing right now -- engaging yourself in a public discussion about a public essay -- is an exciting, important, and actually very old phenomenon that has been almost entirely negated by the rise of the mass media (Katz's Closed Media).
I can see why people are suspicious of Katz's assertions: we still live in a world where most people come to understand the world through a few standard troughs, peppered with sensationalism and corporate values.
But let me tell you: there is an Open Media movement. Slashdot is part of that movement. Hundreds of other sites are part of that movement.
But I hear you still: reporters reporting, for free? photographers photographing, for free? video reporting, for free? It's not happening.
Let me tell you, then, it is. Let me give you one example that I am involved with and excited about. During the Seattle protests, the Indepedent Media Center of Seattle (www.indymedia.org) drew a tremendous amount of web traffic because it provided a simple clearinghouse for news, editorials, photographs, audio, and video regarding the protests that were going on. Much of the corporate news at the time was confused and slanted; generally people wanted to know what was actually going on, and there were others that wanted very much to tell them what was actually going on. To be clear, the Independent Media Center was not a political organization, nor was it affiliated with an explicitly political organization. On the other hand, the IMC was an Open Media source; those who felt that they did not have an outlet in the mainstream media did use that opportunity to tell their story.
That precedent has been very exciting. There is now momentum behind the idea, and there are now quite a few (non-affiliated as such) Independent Media Centers throughout the US and, in fact, the world. The DC IMC, which largely covered the WTO/World Bank protests, was a vast success; many journalists convened and produced quite a few pieces of real quality and thoughtfulness.
We're hard at work, right now, extablishing a Philadelphia Independent Media Center; our jumping off point will be coverage of the Republican Convention in early August. There are a lot of tricky issues related to Open Media that we're struggling with -- the issue of moderation, for example, is important and hard to face with an effective but appropriately "open" solution. I'm on the web team, and -- let me say -- thank goodness for open source technologies. We're beginning an intensive coding process now, and we're actually thinking of trying to adapt the slashcode for our purposes. (Anyone interested in helping out with this effort would be greatly appreciated -- e-mail me at the address above.)
Keep your eyes out for the Open Media movement -- you're already a part of it, and it's not going away. --j
Slashdot Mirror
they're on the way. media access project is making one.
this is the holy grail of media democracy activists.
broken link above -- click here to comment to the fcc.
welcome to the grassroots fight of your life, if you're a media democracy activist. we've been working on this for a year, trying to build a coalition of peace and justice groups against the issue. during the war in iraq, many national peace activists would turn on the nightly news and say, 'what the hell? where are the bodies? why are retired generals and embedded reporters giving me my news?'
so they embraced the issue. it's a lot harder to ignore the group of people on the steps of the fcc whining 'FREE AND INDEPENDENT MEDIA' if those people are anti-war citizens from all across the country with money, clout, and celebrity spokesmen (michael moore).
the smallish team media democracy activists has ballooned into a huge group of peace and justice activists, hackers, consumer rights activists, kids, parents, people of all stripes. now groups like moveon.org are planning national call-in days. now code pink is pink-slipping fcc chairman michael powell alongside his much-more-famous father, colin powell.
so we have the people. what do we do? what's our power?
1) call your senator. like, now. right now. the senate, after the second commerce committee hearing on this issue, is rattling some sabers and could definitely use some encouragement that this issue isn't just one for the lobbyists.
2) comment to the fcc. you can do so here and the comments you make will also go to the senate commerce committee, and to the president.
3) tell someone who isn't tech savvy about this. you're reading slashdot. you have a choice about where you get your media. most people don't. newspaper, radio, and television matter more than we can say in most parts of this country. just ask the good people of minot.
and visit us at prometheus. we're here all the time. and we will be until june 2nd and after.
hannah sassaman
prometheusradioproject
They say that ClearChannel has no real competition but it's not true -- check out CheapChannel Radio, a satiric competitor with a voice tracking program to rival even the big boys. Voice tracking is the system ClearChannel stations use to have a DJ in Houston pretend he's from cities all around the country to give canned stations a little "local" flavor. CheapChannel is a project of the Prometheus Radio Project, which was recently featured on the PBS's McNeil News Hour for their work promoting Low Power FM stations. The first site is fun, and the second is interesting, if you're concerned about media consolidation.
Some relevent links:
Can I pose a question? If we're going to use Open Media distribution, questions about quality come immediately to the forefront-- if anything can be posted, how can we insure quality or usefulness? The answer we have now is user or editor moderation. How well do people think moderation works? What kind of moderation schemes seem effective? Are there other kinds of alternatives to moderation to ensure the quality of information from the news source? --j
I was extremely excited to read this article, especially on slashdot; let's take a moment to reflect on the fact that what you're doing right now -- engaging yourself in a public discussion about a public essay -- is an exciting, important, and actually very old phenomenon that has been almost entirely negated by the rise of the mass media (Katz's Closed Media).
I can see why people are suspicious of Katz's assertions: we still live in a world where most people come to understand the world through a few standard troughs, peppered with sensationalism and corporate values.
But let me tell you: there is an Open Media movement. Slashdot is part of that movement. Hundreds of other sites are part of that movement.
But I hear you still: reporters reporting, for free? photographers photographing, for free? video reporting, for free? It's not happening.
Let me tell you, then, it is. Let me give you one example that I am involved with and excited about. During the Seattle protests, the Indepedent Media Center of Seattle (www.indymedia.org) drew a tremendous amount of web traffic because it provided a simple clearinghouse for news, editorials, photographs, audio, and video regarding the protests that were going on. Much of the corporate news at the time was confused and slanted; generally people wanted to know what was actually going on, and there were others that wanted very much to tell them what was actually going on. To be clear, the Independent Media Center was not a political organization, nor was it affiliated with an explicitly political organization. On the other hand, the IMC was an Open Media source; those who felt that they did not have an outlet in the mainstream media did use that opportunity to tell their story.
That precedent has been very exciting. There is now momentum behind the idea, and there are now quite a few (non-affiliated as such) Independent Media Centers throughout the US and, in fact, the world. The DC IMC, which largely covered the WTO/World Bank protests, was a vast success; many journalists convened and produced quite a few pieces of real quality and thoughtfulness.
We're hard at work, right now, extablishing a Philadelphia Independent Media Center; our jumping off point will be coverage of the Republican Convention in early August. There are a lot of tricky issues related to Open Media that we're struggling with -- the issue of moderation, for example, is important and hard to face with an effective but appropriately "open" solution. I'm on the web team, and -- let me say -- thank goodness for open source technologies. We're beginning an intensive coding process now, and we're actually thinking of trying to adapt the slashcode for our purposes. (Anyone interested in helping out with this effort would be greatly appreciated -- e-mail me at the address above.)
Keep your eyes out for the Open Media movement -- you're already a part of it, and it's not going away. --j