If you’ve been following this blog for the past few weeks, you know that I attended the National Conference for Media Reform in Memphis Tennessee (Jan 12-14). The conference, sponsored by Free Press, drew more than 3,500 participants. Free Press offered a reduced admission fee to those who agreed to…
For the past week, I have been posting information I’ve learned from the National Conference for Media Reform in Memphis (January 12-14). This post is yet another in that series. One of my favorite parts of the conference was the exhibit hall. There, I met dozens of exhibitors, representatives of…
A few days ago, I was at the Memphis Convention Center waiting for Dennis Kucinich to enter a large room to begin his press conference. The reporter sitting in front of me noticed that I was wearing credentials bearing the word “press,” credentials granted by the National Conference for Media Reform.
She asked me about “Dangerous Intersection.” I told her that it is a blog created in March 2006. I mentioned that we have a dozen participating authors and that we get about 1100 unique visitors each day.
She asked, “Would you have ever believed back in March that you would be sitting here covering a press conference of a person running for President of the United States?” It didn’t cross my mind back then. This blogging experience has taken lots of unexpected twists and turns. I jokingly told her that she was making me nervous by making the press conference seem more important–and reminding me that I am merely a citizen journalist.
(Here I am in Memphis, Citizen Journalist. The bottom of my badge reads “Press.”)
One of the main points stressed throughout the Media Reform Conference, however, was that journalism is changing rapidly. Corporate media is struggling (often because its corporate owners are muzzling its reporters) and citizen journalists are stepping into the void. Though the citizen journalists range in quality, they do include many highly qualified reporters who are having lots of fun contributing to the public discourse. Prior to this movement, most of these people …
Imagine that you’ve been given a huge box, hundreds of yards on each side, filled with hundreds of millions of parts. Imagine that you been told that it is your job to assemble all of those parts into a single functioning machine.
To your dismay, though, you can’t find any assembly manual. Imagine your frustration! It’s hard enough to assemble much simpler household products without their manuals. Without instructions, then, how can you possibly assemble hundreds of millions of parts into a functional whole?
Just as there are hundreds of millions of parts in this hypothetical machine, there are hundreds of millions of flesh and blood Americans. Together, we constitute a complex adaptive system of an unimaginably huge number of permutations of interactive possibility.
A vigorous media is the instruction manual for our democracy. It tells us how we fit together by telling us important things about each other. A healthy media doesn’t merely tell us information. To accomplish this, it must also listen to the stories that matter to each of us. A healthy media is necessarily interactive.
The decision to have vigorous media is therefore an affirmation that each person has a significant story to tell. A free and vigorous media allows the people to become self-assembling parts of a Democratic whole. When we are well-informed, we know the real-life possibilities for interacting with each other.
To function smoothly and efficiently as a democracy, we often need to work closely together, in a coordinated …
This post is one of a continuing series of summaries I am creating regarding the sessions I attended of the National Conference for Media Reform in Memphis, Tennessee. Much more information about the conference, including audio of all of the sessions (and video of many) can be found at Free Press.
The academics that spoke at this particular session (“Media Scholars’ Policy Research Review”) were proof that academics (the people and their topics) can be exciting.
Mary Kaplan is the associate dean of the USC Annenberg School for Communication, as well as the founder and director of the Norman Lear Center. Kaplan has focused his research on the content and regulation of local television news.
The Lear Center studies “entertainment.” Broadly defined, this is the “attention economy” which is no longer a separate economy from anything else. Entertainment has expanded like an empire to consume all other activities. Media and journalism are mere branches of entertainment.
Kaplan reports on research establishing that local TV news is, by far, the most important source of news and information for Americans. Almost unbelievably, 65% of Americans say that local television news is their number one source of information.
I write “unbelievably,” based on the widespread lack of serious news content. The fluff of local newscasts drives me to distraction. See an earlier post on local TV news at this site. Kaplan is troubled that most of the content of local news is “soft.” News directors of TV stations have repeatedly told …