Fighting the Dark Side

Here’s an excellent post from Barry Orton at UW-Madison, rebutting the internet vs. public access television nonsense coming out of the Wisconsin debate on cable franchising.

Local filmmakers Aaron Yonda and Matt Sloan – creators of Chad Vader, Darth’s little brother – efficiently demolish the idea that YouTube and other social technologies replace the need for community television. They send much love to the Eau Claire and Madison operations where they began to learn their craft.

On Wisconsin!

Perhaps Barry should have been in Massachussetts this last weekend: There’s a parallel discussion on the Center for Citizen Media blog, which features a summary of a panel on The Future of Public Access from the Beyond Broadcast conference in Cambridge.

Why does an “expert” in citizen participation come up with an idea like this one, getting rid of public access over a five-year period? Has this person ever talked with any citizens who produce media at community media centers throughout the entire United States? Can we find a way to introduce him to some citizen producers and some viewers, like buy him a Greyhound bus pass to tour centers throughout the U-S?  Or maybe we need to find ways to get community television producers to attend Harvard and UC-Berkeley to learn about developing grassroots media…

Props go out to participants at the event who focused on building on a long tradition of citizen participation in media, and for focusing on innovation to make things better.

Conversation with George Stoney

Here’s something fun from 2006. George Stoney, NYU professor, filmmaker and community television innovator, came to the Twin Cities as a guest of ACM Midwest and Macalester College. During the week, he met with students at Macalester, and presented a screening of Getting Out, his recent film on incarceration and men’s lives.

In part one, we talk about Challenge for Change, the Alternative Media Center and the development of U-S access centers:

In part two, we talk about creative, structural and political issues affecting community television:

Things to do in Denver

There’s a nice plug of deproduction and Denver Open Media,the Denver community media group, on newsassignment.net this week.

Working with “niche” audiences who intensely value community media, I don’t know if I quite buy the wisdom of crowds philosophy entirely. The number theory geek in me appreciates it. But I also think James Madison would never have written the Bill of Rights with this kind of model. What’s the other term that comes to mind?

More importantly, beyond the buzzwords, Denver Open Media along with our friends at MNN are trying to come up with an innovative approach to reach people, and reach people in relavent ways.

Nothing wrong with that, right?

PEG Television in Minnesota

Here’s my testimony at the Minnesota State House of Representatives on February 2 about the state of community television in MN. The questions are from Rep. Mike Beard of Shakopee and Rep. Al Juhnke of Willmar.

The no-tie thing is a shameless rip-off of Barack Obama.

Welcome to the Notebook

The idea here is to try to gather different strands of community media practice, examine some, recommend others, and hopefully be of some use to people who are building the fabric of our sector.

I don’t claim to be an expert. I’m just lucky to have worked in an area I love, community radio and television, for the last 15+ years. I’ve learned that I don’t know things, and I’ve learned a lot about listening. And I’ve learned to be skeptical of pronouncements.

One of the first lessons I learned was about authenticy of voice. I’d been trained in broadcasting and journalism, but my friend Michele Flannery taught me to value the real creativity that resides with every person who dares to make media. She didn’t talk about it in quite those terms, and I think we could have been talking about SubPop releases or the radio program put together by a local architect who simply loved the Kinks. Encouraging the universal creativity of everyone seems like a utopian dream, but it lies at the heart of most of the best community media practices I’ve run into.

Another way to slice it is as a desire to humanize the culture we receive, and turn it into the culture we make. And I think that may translate to commercial, non-commercial, print, video, audio, hyperlocal or transnational practices. Let’s see.