Jeremy's Journal on Media and Democracy

The Independent Press Association is dead

2007-01-02T17:30:00.000-08:00

And so is this blog. I am no longer a freelancer, having become co-editor of Greater Good Magazine. It's a great job. I love it. But I thought I'd post one last time about the Independent Press Association, which was once the great hope of indie publishing. Now something else has to replace it.

Here's my post (from the Other Magazine blog) on the death of IPA, which repeats some material I've posted here in the past:

The IPA was founded in 1996 to support free speech and social justice. Under John Anner's leadership, it grew rapidly from a scrappy little nonprofit into a multimillion-dollar social venture that provided business services to a membership of periodicals that included Mother Jones, Sierra, Utne Reader, The Nation, and, at one point, over 500 indie magazines, including Other Magazine, many of which were threatened by the consolidation of the distribution and retail ends of the magazine industry.

At its height, the IPA handled the distribution of almost 100 members, made them loans, financed investigative features by journalists of color, ran a paper buying co-op, and provided technical assistance and a sense of community for magazines that were until that point pretty fragmented. Sure, there were ego clashes and ideological battles and some pretty serious mistakes, all signs of a creative period of an organization’s history. Lots of amazing people worked at or with the IPA and contributed to the growth of the programs, some of which were new under the sun. I was there. I was, and still am, proud to have been there.

Four years ago, Anner left and the IPA hired Richard Landry as Executive Director. As interim Executive Director, I chaired the search and I voted to give him the job after our first choice turned us down. Richard had no obvious political values and no background in indie publishing, but we hoped that he would bring management expertise to an organization that had grown too rapidly and developed problems typical to undercapitalized start-ups. We hoped that he would grow to love the magazines and embrace the values of the organization, which we spent a great deal of time discussing with him in the interview process. We hoped a lot of things.

Instead he, with the help of an IPA board of directors he stacked with sycophants, systematically betrayed the membership and the principles on which the organization was founded. Dissenting staff and board members were driven out of the organization; members who raised questions on the IPA listserve were kicked off; practices and activities that cultivated communication and cooperation were gradually eliminated. A cone of silence descended over the organization. Dissidents were slandered like disgraced Soviet generals after a show trial, and airbrushed out of the photographs.

In June of last year, the IPA was the subject of a major investigative piece in the SF Weekly that covered the meltdown of IPA's newsstand service and the destruction of the community that once defined the organization. The silence was broken. Members left in droves; foundations and major donors stopped sending checks; the surviving businesses collapsed; the leadership of the IPA grew increasingly isolated and solipsistic.

As of today, the IPA is dead. As I write, staff are packing boxes and, from what I hear, Richard is busy avoiding responsibility for the outcome. (Richard and the IPA Board, if y’all are reading this: The results speak for themselves. You disappointed me, the staff, supporters, the members, and, indirectly, everyone who reads and values indie magazines. It was a lack of integrity and the absence of vision, not a lack of foundation support, that killed the IPA.)

What the hell happened? For years non-profits have been pushed (and have pushed themselves) to start businesses and adopt a more business-like culture that includes financial incentives and high executive salaries - with very fucked-up results that have included big scandals at non-profits like the United Way and the Red Cross.

Social ventures—as businesses run like non-profits are called—have tended to recruit from the corporate sector for management and leadership, when in trouble looking for a savior, only to find that such people often don't get the mission or culture of the organization, or the difference between non-profit and for-profit goals. They solve some problems but create others, in the process betraying and disillusioning the very people they're supposed to serve.

That's exactly what Richard Landry and his allies did to the IPA.

What's the solution? I've heard it suggested that non-profits should stick to advocacy and soup kitchens, and leave the buying and selling to private businesses. Maybe. But I'm inclined to believe that it's too easy to reject the notion that non-profits might use the tools of the marketplace to accomplish their missions. Indie magazines, no matter how left-wing, are fundamentally entrepreneurial entities, and organizations that serve them need to get magazines like Other into the marketplace in order to spread their ideas. As privately owned distributors and indie outlets collapse, charitable organizations have to step in and keep the ideas flowing. (In Canada, incidentally, the government helps keep indie publishing and bookstores alive, with help from NGOs. It will be a long, long time before we see anything like that here in the USA.)

For the whole social venture thing to work, non-profits need patient capital from foundations as well as grassroots support—readers should expect to pay more for indie content, in the form of donations as well as cover and subscription prices. I also think non-profits (and their funders) need to focus on hiring true believers and then making damn sure that they get the training they need to do their jobs and bring their projects to scale.

But the most important elements—the pieces that Richard eliminated at the IPA—are commitment to the mission and values of the organization, transparency in finances and decision-making, and accountability to the people who depend on non-profits for services and a voice in the culture and in public affairs. Without that, a non-profit may as well be Enron. In the end, that’s exactly what the IPA became.

School for Censors

2006-10-05T11:12:00.000-07:00

Courtesy of Borneo Bulletin:

Workshop On Censorship At Language And Literature Bureau
By Jon Tampoi

Bandar Seri Begawan - In conjunction with the Reading Month, the Language and Literature Bureau has organised several workshops to benefit the public.

One of them is a workshop on censorship, which commenced yesterday at the Lecture Hall of the Language and Literature Bureau. It is being organised by the Activities Committee.

The workshop, which will run until June 14, will discuss the proper methods of censoring an article, material or any related matter without altering the content of the subject.

Speakers from the Language and Literature Bureau, Islamic Dakwah Centre and Internal Security Department have been invited to present methods and guidelines at the workshop.

There will also be visits to the Package Receiving Section of the Postal Department at Old Airport in Berakas, as well as the Censors and Publication Control Department of the Islamic Dakwah Centre.

Upon completion of the course, the participants comprising personnel from government departments will each receive a certificate.

Melinda Duckett vs. All of Us

2006-09-20T10:26:00.000-07:00

In yesterday's SF Chronicle, columnist Jon Carroll pleads with liberals and progressives and decent people everywhere to conserve our outrage and not waste it on the likes of Nancy Grace.

"In these troubled times, outrage is a limited commodity," Carroll writes. "There are only so many hours in the day... So we need triage. We need risk assessment. We need to remember that just because the herd is running some place doesn't mean that we have to run that way too."

But Jon, I think I can spare a moment of spittle-spewing indignation in memory of Melinda Duckett, who was suspected of murdering her 2-year-old Trenton and foolishly agreed to go on national TV to talk about it. Duckett killed herself the day her interview with rabid talk-show host Nancy Grace aired on CNN, which ran an announcement of the suicide at the bottom of the screen. Classy. I've read the transcript and it's pretty clear that Grace grilled Duckett into incoherence, intent on solving the case right then and there in front of the whole audience.

Here's the context: Duckett had been laid off from her job and was going through a divorce with Trenton's father, who'd been hit with a temporary restraining order. Parents, try to walk a mile in her shoes and imagine the stress of a situation like that. Here's a 21-year-old woman, barely an adult, who was probably living every moment of every day with fear and anxiety. She's isolated and taking care of a toddler. She probably doesn't have much help or support. The money was running out. There's evidence that the dad was abusive, though I'm not going to say if he was or wasn't because I wasn't there.

Being a parent provokes a curiously bipolar response to a case like this. On one hand, it seems impossibly monstrous that any parent could commit an act of violence against a helpless baby; some of us want vengeance on behalf of our own children. On the other, I think that if we are willing to dig deep, most parents will find moments when we've all been pushed right to the edge of violence. (Think four in the morning and the baby's been crying for an hour and you've got a big meeting at work in five hours and your spouse is irritable and not much help and your arms are getting tired from carrying the baby and if you have to shush one more time you're going to scream...)

I've had sleep-deprived, stressed out moms tell me that they feel like they are going to die; one said that she didn't feel like she could control any aspect of her life and that she was angry at everything, including her little boy. I've read that moms who kill their kids often convince themselves that their children are better off dead, given the reality the family is facing. Certainly, there's no shortage of parents, moms and dads, who beat their kids to within an inch of their lives. This isn't to excuse the parents - they should be tried in court and either treated or punished, as the case warrants - but if we can try to understand the conditions that would drive a woman (or man) to that extremity, we might be able to help prevent a disaster or heal a family that's been through one.

That said, I don't know if Duckett was innocent or guilty. I have no idea if Nancy Grace drove Duckett to suicide. Neither do you. I'm less concerned about the facts of the case than about what the Nancy Grace interview reveals about our culture and parenting. In the transcript, Grace is conducting multiple interviews simultaneously, including with Melinda Duckett, her estranged husband Josh, and a circus tent of guests who critique Duckett's "performance" as the interview proceeds.

At one point, Duckett, who was probably exhausted and is visibly confused, says she doesn't want to answer a question "because I'm not dealing with media very well." (Turned out later her divorce lawyer had advised her not to answer certain questions.) Grace turns to Marc Klaas, president of an organization called Beyondmissing and crusading celebrity father of the murdered Polly, for an opinion. "Nancy, in these kinds of cases the media is never the problem," says Klaas, whose job is to appear in the media. "The media is always a friend, it's about sharing information. It's about transparency, it's about working with the authorities. It's about working with the media and it's about getting over that hump that people are looking at you. And quite frankly, Melinda is not doing that very well at all."

"The media is always a friend"? "Melinda is not doing that very well at all"? Who the hell is this guy? He acts like the "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" for parents of missing children. Perhaps he should have coached Melinda beforehand, maybe gone through her wardrobe and shared his favorite hair gel, developed some talking points and blocked some tragic poses. Then perhaps Duckett might have performed to his satisfaction for our friend, the media. Even assuming that Klaas sincerely wants to help parents find abducted kids, I'd respectfully suggest that his appearance on Nancy Grace's show didn't help anyone except Marc Klaas. It's fun to be on TV, isn't it, Marc? Remember back when it was just a means to an end? How naive you were, back then. How much more sophisticated you are now.

And how sophisticated we all pretend to be. I scanned editorials, blogs like the one you're reading, and talk-show discussions. Newspapers and many blogs dutifully roasted Grace for being crass, but a substantial number of TV talking heads fell over themselves with support for Grace and her tactics. Duckett was an adult, say the talking heads. She should have known the score, and if she didn't, it's her fault. She should have watched more CNN and maybe taken some notes, for future reference, back when she had the chance, presumably. She didn't even have the common decency to have attended j-school.

Melinda Duckett may or may not have committed a crime. That hasn't been proved one way or the other. But in my eyes, and of course in the eyes of lots of people, CNN and Nancy Grace stand convicted of turning a family tragedy into entertainment. Grace and homelander celebrities like her say they're trying to "reunite families" (direct quote from a press release!), but they do nothing of the kind. Instead they directly hurt the families who stumble, blinking and nervous, in front of cameras hoping for help or vindication or sometimes fifteen minutes of fame.

That alone is wrong, but it's much bigger than the families who land in the spotlight. In a mindless drive for eyeballs and profits, mainstream media cheapen the culture that's supposed to bind us together and they drag their audiences into moral and political fantasylands. Many editorials I read faulted Grace for her journalistic ethics and technique, but to me the media's systemwide failure is moral (in failing to distinguish right and wrong) and political (in abandoning their historic mandate to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted - today in the media and in every major institution, it is the comfortable who have their backsides kissed and the afflicted who gets their asses kicked).

When we can't find justice in the real world, we look for it on TV. We seek the appearance of justice and indulge ourselves in fantasies of moral rectification. Maybe that's necessary in fictions like 24 or Over There, but it's terrible and destructive when enacted as ritual slaughter on TV that purports to be reality, starring real people who don't have the benefits of a script, teleprompter, or competent legal representation.

Sometimes when I look out at the world I've helped to make - through inaction or self-indulgence - for Liko, I want to cry. We can do better than this.

Another Great Organization: Alternatives for Community and Environment

2006-07-06T12:20:00.000-07:00

Today I'm in Boston working for Alternatives for Community and Environment. I first encountered ACE about ten years ago, when my good friend Jodi Sugerman-Brozan joined the staff to organize Roxbury youth around public transportation issues.

"ACE builds the power of communities of color and lower income communities in New England to eradicate environmental racism and classism and achieve environmental justice," reads their mission. "We believe that everyone has the right to a healthy environment and to be decision-makers in issues affecting our communities."

The most interesting thing about ACE is how it has transformed itself from a legal and technical assistance agency started by a couple of nice white guys into a grassroots community organization mostly staffed and led by the constituents it's supposed to serve: the neighborhoods in Boston most affected by urban environmental hazards like lead-contaminated lots, diesel exhaust, solid waste facilities, etc.

It remains a hybrid organization where gray-bearded Euro-American attorneys work side-by-side with 17-year-old neighborhood kids to change the rules of the game. I'm sitting in the office now, and though it's just a regular ordinary work day, the energy is palpable.

Speaking of energy, have you done anything lately to stop the corporate takeover of the Internet? If not, start here.

Three Great Organizations: ISS, Grassroots Fundraising Journal and Media Alliance

2006-06-28T11:56:00.000-07:00

I'm in North Carolina right now helping the Institute for Southern Studies to develop a comprehensive media strategy to support its work and revive its award-winning magazine Southern Exposure, which was important resource to me when I was an activist and organizer in North Central Florida, a million years ago.

More personal/political news: Last week I was elected to two Boards of Directors - Media Alliance and the Grassroots Fundraising Journal. Both are tremendous progressive organizations that I'm proud to be a part of. I'd like to use this as an opportunity to tell you about them.

I've been involved with Media Alliance, whose mission is to build a more just and open media system, almost since the day I moved to San Francisco in August 2000, helping to organize a protest of the National Association of Broadcasters convention.

Recently Media Alliance - which this year celebrates its 30th anniversary - took a big financial hit when its health insurance provider canceled coverage of freelancers enrolled in a unique program offered through Media Alliance.

How people or organizations react to bad times reveals a lot about their characters. Media Alliance could have done what some organizations have done in similar circumstances, which is to hide from criticism and pass the bad times on to their constituency. Instead throughout the crisis the staff of Media Alliance thought first and foremost about assisting freelancers affected by the loss of health coverage and staff devoted tremendous energy to assisting them in the transition.

I was hired as a consultant to help Media Alliance create a strategy and locate new funding in a time of financial crisis. The Media Alliance Board developed an aggressive 2-year strategy of expanding its work as a statewide intermediary, traning community based organizations to participate in media policy debates, while continuing to directly mobilize Bay Area activists around such issues as municipal Wi-Fi.

We took that strategy to three funders, two of whom were entirely new to Media Alliance. Not only were we successful, but the two new funders together tossed in an extra $25K just because they liked the proposals so much. It's a tribute to the effectiveness of Media Alliance and Executive Director Jeff Perlstein that the organization can be so frank about its position and still win new support.

The membership meeting at which I was elected was perhaps smaller than in previous years, yet there was no sign of bitterness. Indeed, the mood was hopeful, fueled by the knowledge that the media justice movement is at last maturing into a force that could transform the media landscape. Media Alliance has been a big part of that.

If I have less to say about Grassroots Fundraising Journal, it's because they have a simpler recent history and mission - to create and distribute accessible materials that teach people how to raise money. When I was learning my trade as a fundraiser and organizational development strategist, the Grassroots Fundraising Journal taught me many of the nuts and bolts, speaking in a language and with values that I shared.

Shortly after we moved to San Francisco, my wife Shelly worked briefly at the Journal and I got to know founders Kim Klein and Stephanie Roth quite well. Kim, in case you've never heard of her, is the authority on raising money to support social-justice organizing and author of the definitive guide Fundraising for Social Change. As Kim steps down from her position as publisher of the Journal, I'm proud to be on Board and helping with the transition.

And it's great to be helping three organizations that have each provided help and inspiration to me in the past.

The Independent Press Association: A "Hard-Hearted Corporation"?

2006-06-14T09:11:00.000-07:00

Where have I been?

Working!

What am I working on?

I'm helping the Institute for Southern Studies create a strategic plan for its publications program; raising money for Alternatives for Community and Environment; writing a business plan for Media Alliance's earned income programs; helping the Utne Institute design its programs; writing articles for AlterNet, Public Eye, Utne, and Mothering Magazine; and editing technical assistance manuals for the Independent Press Association.

Speaking of which, the IPA is the subject of a major investigative piece in this week's SF Weekly: "Pulp Friction: The Independent Press Association was founded to champion alternative magazines, but now its members say it has become the kind of hard-hearted corporation it once opposed."

The article - which covers the meltdown of IPA's newsstand service and a growing conflict over the identity of the organization - is very, very fair. I don't have any comment on how the Indy Press Newsstand Service disaster was handled; IPA members are the authority on how they have been treated as members - and to get a sense of that, you should read the article.

It's not just the IPA: for years non-profits have been pushed (and have pushed themselves) to start businesses and adopt a more business-like culture that includes financial incentives and high executive salaries - with very mixed results that have included massive scandals at once-trusted non-profits like the United Way and the Red Cross.

One aspect of the big picture here is that while there is a growing rhetorical commitment to helping non-profits develop social venture strategies to fund their work and accomplish their missions, the reality is that foundations and other sources of non-profit capital don't yet know how fund most creative social ventures: they lack patience and long-term commitment, and don't pay enough attention to developing management and infrastructure.

At the same time, social ventures tend to recruit from the corporate sector for management and leadership, when in trouble looking for a savior - only to find that such people often don't get the real mission or culture of the organization, or the difference between non-profit and for-profit goals. They solve some problems but create others, sometimes in the process betraying and disillusioning the very people they're supposed to serve.

What's the solution? It's too easy to reject the notion that non-profits might use the tools of the marketplace to accomplish their missions; indy magazines, no matter how left-wing, are fundamentally entrepreneurial entities, and organizations like the IPA need to get members into the marketplace in order to spread their ideas. What we really need is a "third culture" that combines patient capital and entrepreneurial sophistication with real commitment to social change as well as accountability to the people who depend on non-profits for services and a voice in public affairs. It's larger than any one organization; we need training, networks, and more. It's a system and an idea that will have to emerge over time and through trial and error.

P.S.: I still plan to report more on the purchase of Utne Magazine. Stay tuned.

OGDEN PUBLICATIONS ACQUIRES UTNE MAGAZINE

2006-06-03T07:57:00.000-07:00

This just in:

TOPEKA, Kansas, (June 2, 2006) – Ogden Publications, Inc. announced today that it has acquired Utne magazine, the nation’s leading digest of alternative ideas, from LENS Publishing Co., Inc. and Nina Rothschild Utne. Launched in 1984 by Eric Utne, Utne magazine is a bi-monthly magazine with a paid circulation of 225,000. Utne reprints the best articles from more than 2,000 alternative media sources bringing together the latest ideas and trends emerging in our culture.

Ogden Publications publishes Mother Earth News, Natural Home, Herbs for Health, The Herb Companion and seven special interest magazines. “Utne is one of the most respected publications in America and we feel deeply honored to make it part of Ogden,” said Bryan Welch, publisher of Ogden Publications, Inc. “This makes us the largest and most influential media company in the conscientious lifestyles and environmental awareness fields. Public interest in living more sustainably is growing faster than ever and we expect to grow with it, creating an important resource for today’s consumer.”

Judy Rudrud, Utne’s prior president and publisher, will continue to operate the magazine as general manager from its offices in Minneapolis. She will be responsible for marketing, public relations and merchandising for Ogden’s magazines. “We are thrilled by the possibilities that this acquisition creates for the future of Utne magazine,” said Rudrud. “Our loyal readers will benefit from the magazine being part of a company that is aligned with our values.”

Chair and Chief Executive Officer Nina Rothschild Utne will assume the title of Editor-at-Large for the magazine and continue writing her column, as well as provide editorial and strategic consulting. “We are energized by this purchase and confident that our mission will continue with integrity,” said Utne.

Ogden Publications will begin publication with the July/August issue.

Utne is a client and I've been watching this deal unfold (from a distance) for months. What will this mean for Utne's brand and future editorial direction? Stay tuned....I plan to get a comment from Nina and Judy at some point in the next week.

Davey D on Saving Urban Radio

2006-05-29T14:51:00.000-07:00

See this tremendous article by Bay Area journalist, deejay and community activist Davey D on the prospects for community-oriented radio, with a focus on African-American communities. Chock-full of tips on organizing a movement for media justice.

Pow! Bam! Super-heroes battle over civil liberties

2006-05-23T09:59:00.000-07:00

Contrary to popular belief, comic books - even the most muscle-bound super-hero comics - have a long history of addressing political and moral issues, from Superman's earliest adventures (which often included battling oppressive landlords and corrupt politicians) to recent and more explicitly political graphic novels like Transmetropolitan and The Invisibles.

The new Civil War mini-series from Marvel Comics tackles head-on issues of overreaching government power and individual conscience, public safety and personal liberty.

In the series, a group of Marvel super-heroes led by Iron Man and Mr. Fantastic embrace the government's demand that they reveal their secret identities and go to work for the government as legitimate officers of the law, complete with "pension plans and annual vacation time."

Meanwhile, Captain America and his allies refuse to register with the government. "Don't play politics with me," Captain America tells a cop. "Super-heroes need to stay above that stuff or Washington starts telling us who the super-villains are."

"The Marvel superheroes are reflective of the environment they were created in," says Marvel editor Tom Brevoort. "Civil War has characters grounded in the contemporary world with a fantasy element. If you live in the world, you will find some point of relevance on top of having a big exciting superhero adventure with guys in costumes flying at each other and fighting."

Saving the World, One Cute Puppy at a Time

2006-05-17T08:38:00.000-07:00

From the Digital Divide Network:

Early in 2006, Texas-based animal-rescue organization Puppy Passions Rescue and Transport found itself caring for Lola, a dog who was nursing both her own puppies and a litter of orphaned pups. Tragically, Lola was also infected with heartworms, and the organization was having a tough time coming up with the money it needed to pay for her treatment.

To help raise funds to cover Lola's medical care, Puppy Passions requested donations at Care2, an online social network that allows individuals and philanthropic groups to connect with one another using tools such as blogs, messages, and petitions.

"We were extremely overwhelmed at the sudden response from people donating and wanting to help all they could," said Mike Sexton, Puppy Passions' Vice President.

Within just a few days of posting Lola's picture and story on a Care2 message board, Puppy Passions had received the $600 they needed to cover her veterinary bills from online community members touched by Lola's plight.

Care2 is just one of many social networking sites that help nonprofits network, get donations, and share information on the Web. Although popularly known as places where people make friends and find romance, social networking sites can also play a key role in helping your organization achieve its goals.

Some of us are trying to save puppies; others are trying to save democracy. The article that follows provides as solid an overview I've seen of the possibilities of social change through social networking sites:

While many people regard social networking tools as a fun diversion, some nonprofits are leveraging them to accomplish serious goals, such as increasing their visibility, helping constituents find jobs, and raising awareness about time-sensitive issues.

For instance, Interplast, a nonprofit that provides free reconstructive surgeries to persons in developing countries, uses Flickr to help publicize its work. Interplast Communications and Technology Coordinator Seth Mazow initially began using Flickr in March 2005 when he was looking for an easy way to add images to Interplast's blog. Through Flickr, he quickly realized the benefits of sharing photos online. "Flickr is a very powerful tool," said Mazow, "one that Interplast uses to spread the message about our life-changing surgeries."

Eventually, Mazow began to experiment with Flickr's tagging feature, which has increased the visibility of Interplast's photos in Google search results. He points out that one of the top results for the search term "cleft baby" is a photo from Interplast's Flickr page. Mazow also started a Flickr group called International NGOs so that persons or organizations interested in international aid could share pictures, stories, and ideas.

Professional-networking site LinkedIn proved beneficial to San Pablo, California-based Street Tech, an organization that trains people in computer repair and helps them find jobs. Paul Lamb, Street Tech's founder, cites the lack of a readily available professional network as one of the problems the organization's students face when looking for jobs. Because Street Tech lacks the resources it would need to develop its own online job-search network, students, staffers, supporters, and partner companies created LinkedIn accounts.

I also just read (slightly behind the curve, here) that Internet phone-calling service Skype has created a way for blogs to host audio conversations, known as Skypecasts, with up to 100 people at a time. Interesting.

Jeremy Reading at Valencia St. Books

2006-05-09T09:13:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday, May 10, I'll be taking part in a "rapid fire" (three minutes, tops!) reading at Valencia Street Books, along with people like Charlie Anders, Tim Pratt, and Pat Murphy. The event, which starts at 7pm, is a fundraiser for Strange Horizons and the Speculative Literature Foundation, two of my favorite science-fiction related organizations.

Blogging and Political Action (plus secrets of successful Web sites!)

2006-04-30T09:04:00.000-07:00

Every month I meet magazine publishers who are resisting adding blogs to their Web sites, primarily on the grounds that blogs are just a time-consuming fad. My counter-argument (for the political magazines) is simple: if they're not part of the blogosphere, they're losing politically engaged readers.

A new survey from Blogads backs me up. ClickZ News reports:

"There are multiple blogospheres," suggested Blogads CEO Henry Copeland. "These people actually run in packs and the packs have very distinct characteristics."

Political blog browsers may be the most engaged in the blogosphere. The largest portion of the bunch read five blogs each day, and over 18 percent spend 10 hours each week reading blogs. In the last six months, 70 percent contributed to a cause or campaign online, 41 percent spending $100 or more. In that time, 60 percent bought software and clothes on the Web. Eighty-seven percent of these big blog consumers purchased books online, and 52 percent spent $100 or more. Fifty-five percent spent on publication subscriptions in that time.

Over 72 percent of these readers are male and the largest age group, nearly 27 percent, is between 41 and 50 years old. In addition, more than 77 percent have a college degree, while over 20 percent have a family income between $60K and $90K. Fifty percent are Democrats, 20 percent Republicans and nearly 20 percent independents.

Is readership of blogs coming at the expense of print magazines? There's no hard survey data that I know of offhand, but the answer is almost certainly yes. If liberal and progressive (and largely affluent) readers are turning their hard-won attention to blogs for news and interpretation, while at the same time donating more and more money online, then that's bad news for magazines that still see Web sites as simple online brochures for the print product - such a list includes progressive flagships like Harpers (which has one of the worst Web sites I've ever seen for a magazine of its category), as well as many smaller titles.

The Blogads survey does provide numbers on total media consumption which reveal that blogs dominate the field- not suprising, since this is a Blogads survey and blog-readers responded. It'll be interesting to see what the survey says next year and how the trends develop over time.

The survey also provides numbers on the magazines (print and online) read regularly by respondents. The most popular progressive print-based magazines include the American Prospect (28% read the print edition, 77% online - a suprising result, given that the Web site isn't anything great); Harpers (79% print, 25% online - not suprising), Unte Reader (75% print, 27% online - also predictable), The Nation (50% print, 58% online), and Mother Jones (whose readership is split fifty-fifty between print and a fabulous online product). Of those five, The Nation is the most popular title. My client Utne is, alas, the least popular of the progressive magazines. The Web-only Salon is by far the most popular title among those who responded to the survey.

The Blogads survey also found that 53% of bloggers blog to keep track of their own ideas, 50% to let off steam, 36% to influence public opinion. An amazing 75.5% of respondents wrote or called a politician at the state, local, or national level during the previous twelve months. Thirty eight percent had attended a political rally, speech, or organized protest of any kind. Thirty-six percent attended a public meeting on town or school affairs. Twenty percent have worked for a political party. Twelve percent had made a speech at some point during the previous year. And so on. Bottom line: those who read and write blogs are tremendously active in the real world. Blogging translates into political action.

----------------

It didn't suprise me to see that The Nation and Mother Jones are popular among blog-readers, with fifty-fifty splits between online and print readership. Both magazines successfully answered a question that many publishers never ask: what is the primary purpose of my magazine's Web site? The answer to this question shapes everything on a Web site from navigation to content, and accounts from differences among successful sites.

On one hand, the primary purpose of The Nation site is to sell subscriptions to the magazine (or so the publisher once told me). Its secondary purpose is to raise money. You can see these twin priorities – which are in some ways at odds with each other, in that one is for new readers and the other for existing – manifest throughout the site. See that “Subscribe” and “Donate” are the first two items on the top navigation bar, and that there is little Web-exclusive content besides blogs. Opportunities to donate (and forward articles to friends, a critical form of viral marketing and content distribution) appear at the top and bottom of every article.

In contrast, the Mother Jones Web site is intended to stand on its own as a publication; it is an autonomous editorial project of the parent nonprofit, with its own revenue streams. Note that the simple, clear, above-the-fold navigation menu starts with editorial items (unlike The Nation, which starts with Subscribe and Donate), with subscription and advertiser services at bottom. Opt-in email capture gets pride-of-place beside the nameplate.

I also want to highlight how the “MoJoBLOG” is positioned under the nameplate. This is the most current content the Web site can provide, and so it is prioritized. Under that, the homepage presents a feature well with the print issue sourced, as well as Web-only content. The Web site sells subscriptions to the magazine, of course, but the revenue emphasis is on fundraising, ancillary product sales, and other sources that are not tied to the print product. Note also that at the bottom of all Mother Jones Web features, there’s a note with links: “This article has been made possible by the Foundation for National Progress, the Investigative Fund of Mother Jones, and gifts from generous readers like you.” Never miss an opportunity to ask for money!

More Local e-Democracy

2006-04-22T15:32:00.000-07:00

From the New York Times:

When a state agency released plans for studying the environmental impact of the proposed Atlantic Yards project, a vast residential, commercial and arena development near Downtown Brooklyn, the response from critics was swift, brutal — and largely online.

"Major flaws in the final scope," pronounced Norman Oder, the proprietor of the blog Atlantic Yards Report, pointing out that the agency, the Empire State Development Corporation, had not examined the possible security risks facing the 18,000-seat arena....

Atlantic Yards may well be the first large-scale urban real estate venture in New York City where opposition has coalesced most visibly in the blogosphere.

"If Jane Jacobs had the tools and technology back when she was fighting Robert Moses' plans to bulldoze Lower Manhattan, I bet 'The Death and Life of Great American Cities' would have been a blog," said Mr. Naparstek, 35, referring to Ms. Jacobs's seminal 1963 book criticizing the urban renewal policies in vogue among city planners of that era.

About a dozen blogs follow Atlantic Yards closely. The authors are usually Brooklynites, some of them experts in fields like urban development. But even the amateurs among them have boned up on arcane zoning provisions and planning-law quirks that can induce headaches among the less devoted.

The result is an unusual ferment of community advocacy and opinion journalism, featuring everything from manipulated caricatures of Forest City Ratner executives to technical discussions of traffic flow....

Daniel Goldstein, the spokesman for Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, a group opposed to the Atlantic Yards, said that the blogs "have been a key part of the public education about the project."

Social Networking for Nonprofits

2006-04-20T12:50:00.000-07:00

TechSoup is wrapping up a two-day event about social networking applications in the nonprofit community -- you can check out the online component of the meeting.

Also: check out this list of social networking tools for activists, via Netcentric Campaigns.

At some point in the next 30 days I plan to review the most popular social networking sites and resources. Many of them, I've found, are simply timewasters that embody some very problemmatic assumptions about politics and how social change happens; others can be quite powerful tools for promoting critical action and ideas.

Stay tuned.

Conservative Calls for Jailing Journalists

2006-04-18T14:24:00.000-07:00

Want to know how scary our country is getting?

Listen to Bill Bennett call for the imprisonment of journalists who dare publish stories "against the wishes of the president, against the request of the president."

You can read solid reaction and discussion on Glenn Greenwald's blog.

Local e-Democracy, from the UK to Florida

2006-04-18T08:50:00.000-07:00

Today's reflexive assumption: that online organizing and political publishing are both best done on a national scale, while local politics still occurs largely offline.

That may be true. Recently, however, I've discovered some interesting examples of local online organizing: The UK Local e-Democracy National Project has published "Civic Leadership Blogging: How to use blogs as an effective local leadership tool." "Britain has been a major leader in the civic blogging efforts," reports NetPulse, "with the government pilot Read My Day even offering blogspace to civic leaders." In addition, UK policy wonk Tom Steinberg has launched mySociety, a nonprofit "which builds websites that give people simple, tangible benefits in the civic and community aspects of their lives." Meanwhile, over in Florida, the St. Petersburg Times reports on grassroots efforts to make "a big political splash on local issues" through e-activism.

Malicious Censorship or Mere Incompetence?

2006-04-15T10:58:00.000-07:00

AOL recently blocked e-mails from critics of AOL's plan to begin charging extra to route e-mail around its spam filters. AOL claims that the censorship was the result of their own incompetence; critics contend that AOL is "arbitrary and capricious in the way they deliver e-mail."

In a related story, last week the Independent Press Association (a former employer and one of my current clients) banned a publisher from its member listserve, apparently for criticizing the organization's Board of Directors in a manner the Directors deemed "unprofessional." In response, 70 IPA members have joined a new listserve called "Independent Members of IPA." Magazines can request to join the list - which is discussing ways to reform the IPA as well as to set up alternative indy support structures - by sending an email to "Indie-IPA-subscribe@topica.com."

The IPA was founded in 1996 to support free speech and social justice. The new listserve is only the latest chapter in a deepening and increasingly visible conflict between the current IPA leadership and a substantial portion of the membership of the organization.

More on the Dark Side of Muni-WiFi: The Case of San Francisco

2006-04-12T11:26:00.000-07:00

From the FierceWiFi e-newsletter:

As details of Google's plans for San Francisco emerge, privacy worries become more concrete. Privacy advocates say that Google's commercial voraciousness reveals a more sinister aspect of its project. Google said it would use its search engine to track users' locations. Google may do it so it can tailor advertisements to individual users based on their location: As users walk down the street while on the phone or are sitting in a coffee shop, Google will send to their PDAs or laptops marketing messages from businesses in the neighborhood in which the users happen to be. If a user happens to be in Union Square, he may see an advertisement for Macy's; if the user uses her laptop near Fisherman's Wharf, she may see an ad for a seafood restaurant (and if users happen to be walking anywhere near AT&T Park, they may see advertising for steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs).

Google said its technology would allow it to track users' whereabouts to within a few hundred feet. The company also said it would retain the data for up to 180 days before deleting it, as part of an effort to "maintain the Google WiFi network and deliver the best possible service." Privacy advocates fear the information could be used by government officials to place users under surveillance. Kurt Opsahl, staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy watchdog group, said, "The greatest concern is that once you have that treasure trove of information, will people start to come looking for it?"

What privacy advocates find especially irksome is Google's requirement that users log on with a Google account before accessing the free WiFi. Signing in would make it possible for the company to track Internet use and location to specific individuals. Fears about information collected and retained by Google are not without foundation. The Justice Department recently tried to make Google divulge the search records of thousands of its users. The government wanted the information so it could give teeth to a law intended to protect children from Internet pornography. Google prevailed in the subsequent court battle, but legal experts say the company could have avoided the problem by not keeping user search records.

More Social Networking; Video on Demand; Growth of Indy Media; Your Momma

2006-04-10T13:26:00.000-07:00

1. Following up on my entry on social networking for social change: the Los Angeles Times reports that LA teenagers made extensive use of "their communal pages on the enormously popular MySpace website" in organizing the March 24 student walkouts to protest proposed Bush Administration immigration policies. Meanwhile, it seems that South Carolina Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer is drawing some petty, puritanical criticism for his MySpace page.

2. Via the Center for Creative Voices in Media blog:

Another giant leak in the dam that keeps broadcast TV from being "broadcast" over the Net. Per Brooks Barnes in WSJ: "Walt Disney Co. plans to make much of its newest and most popular programming on ABC and other channels available free anytime on the Web...On April 30, ABC will unveil a revamped Web site that will include a "theater" where people with broadband connections can watch free episodes of "Desperate Housewives," "Lost" and other hit shows on their computers."

The implications of this development for broadcasters, cablers, talent, etc. are significant. For this is Video on Demand, which cable keeps touting as its trump card -- and now who needs cable TV if you've got broadband? Because if you've got broadband, you've already got cable TV -- it's called Internet. Broadcast and cable networks are all becoming one -- content made up of individual pieces (shows) that the consumer can demand or avoid as he/she pleases.

Meanwhile, the city of Atlanta has launched its own Video on Demand service.

3. Over at the San Francisco Chronicle, the mainstream media continue to wake up and smell the day-old coffee:

The invasion of Iraq and the three years of war that followed it seem unlikely to go down in history as a proud era for American journalism.

Critics on the political left and right, journalism professors and even many reporters agree that the media -- print and electronic alike -- failed to provide accurate, unbiased or complete coverage of the past three years and particularly the run-up to the war...

"What the war has done is hurled kerosene onto the fire," [said Thomas Kunkel, dean of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland.] "It provided the passion, and when people are passionate about things, they get active about things."

So instead of creating a ripple of letters to the editor, canceled subscriptions and advertiser boycotts, those unhappy with the mainstream media were able to create vocal displeasure through their own media -- media that grew larger each day, feeding on itself and on traditional media for content.

Soon, the blogs demonstrated an ability to make, or remake, news overlooked or handled differently by the mainstream, from analyzing a Wall Street Journal reporter's downbeat letter home from Baghdad to sharing a list of accomplishments purportedly made by the U.S. military since the end of major combat, and from the questionable Bush National Guard memos to Trent Lott's poorly received birthday comments.The result: lots of energetic criticism of the mainstream media, and the budding of a new alternative media, arriving just when traditional media is under enormous financial pressures from corporate mergers and downsizing.

4. Also in the Chroncile, from an interview with UC Berkeley journalism professor and author Michael Pollan:

Culture used to be a very reliable guide. Culture's just a fancy way of saying your mom. And your mom learned from her mom. There were a whole set of cultural rules and taboos and practices and that shaped people's eating -- and those have fallen apart.

Gray is the new black-and-white; the Web is the new Mom!

San Francisco Wi-Fi; Fake TV News; Alternate Business Models

2006-04-06T09:46:00.000-07:00

Odds and Ends:

1. The city of San Francisco announced yesterday that Google/Earthlink won the bidding process to build a citywide wi-fi network. From many perspectives, the Google/Earthlink proposal is terrible. Media Alliance jumped into the fray:

Media Alliance joined with numerous other organizations to urge City officials to press for stronger public interest provisions in light of yesterday's announcement that Google/ Earthlink won the bidding process to build a citywide Wi-fi network. The bid by media darling Google, owned by close friends of Mayor Newsom, was rated poorly on “right to privacy" considerations and connection speed, and lacked funding for bridging the digital divide.

2. The Center for Media and Democracy is releasing a new report, "Fake TV News: Widespread and Undisclosed," which, says the release, "will offer the most detailed picture available to date of TV newsrooms' use of sponsored broadcast material." CMD will be launching a multimedia Web site showing both video news releases and their broadcast as "news" by TV stations and networks. Check it out.

3. In the current issue of The New Atlantis, Glenn Reynolds provides an overview of the blogging revolution. I found this observation and business model proposal intriguing:

Big institutions aren't the only way to have a reputation anymore. As Web-based outfits like Amazon.com and Slashdot are demonstrating, it's possible to have reputation without bureaucracy. Want to know whether you can rely on what someone says? Click on his profile and you can see what other people have said about him, and what he's said before, giving you a pretty good idea of his reliability and his biases. That's more than you can do for the person whose name sits atop a story in the New York Times (where, as with many Big Media outfits, archives are pay-only and feedback is limited).

An organization that put together a network of freelance journalists under a framework that allowed for that sort of reputation rating, and that paid based on the number of pageviews and the ratings that each story received, would be more like a traditional newspaper than a blog, but it would still be a major change from the newspapers of today. Interestingly, it might well be possible to knit together a network of bloggers into the beginnings of such an organization. With greater reach and lower costs than a traditional newspaper, it might bring something new and competitive to the news business.

Media reform in Mexico

2006-04-03T09:21:00.000-07:00

Here's an interesting article about "approval of a sweeping overhaul of the nation´s media laws, which have been widely criticized as favoring existing commercial broadcasters over potential competitors."

Social networking for social change?

2006-03-31T15:38:00.000-08:00

From Information Week:

Since 2002, social networking companies have been generating buzz, but not much income. Or if they do, they don't want to talk about it.

Despite 24 million members and 9 million unique visitors a month, Friendster's answer to the question “Are you profitable?” is “We're privately held and don't share any financial info…”

After three years, LinkedIn, a social networking site that caters to business people with both free and fee-based options, has 5 million subscribers. Konstantin Guericke, VP of marketing for the company, believes that number will reach 8 to 10 million by the end of the year.

“We're expecting to reach profitability this month,” says Guericke. “We already have had some days where we've taken in more money than we spent.”

That may not sound like much, but Guericke says it's a welcome validation for Web companies that advertising support isn't the only viable business model. “The question is, do people pay for subscription-based services on the Internet?" he says. “Especially in the business arena, if you provide enough value, the answer is yes…”

Adrian Scott, CEO and founder of business social networking site Ryze.com, claims his site, with its six employees and 400,000 users, has been profitable for several years. He says Ryze helps people build business relationships that “can lead to significant business.”

It's harder to say that about social networking sites that peddle personal rather than commercial connections. Scott remains skeptical about the prospects of MySpace despite its supposed 50 million users. “I don’t think it's really clear that MySpace has shown a business model that works,” he says.

So here’s my question: can any of these social or business networking sites and applications contribute on a not-for-profit basis to building movements for more just and democratic societies -- for example, in coalition building efforts, campaign organizing, or just flat-out NGO job and vendor networking? Is anybody out there doing anything interesting in this area?

There is one promising effort I know of called Civic Space, but their "offering is in active development and will not be complete until at least Q2 2006." There are also, of course, ASPs like Kintera, GetActive, and DemocracyInAction, but they are more about email-based fundraising campaigns than self-perpetuating social networking.

So as of this moment, there's no progressive political version of Friendster or LinkedIn. I asked media and Internet strategist Michael Stein if he knew of efforts to organize social change through social networking sites:

As far as social networking services goes, I know of only a few efforts to use them for community organizing or activist campaigns. At the Nonprofit Technology Conference in Seattle last week, Nick Allen from Donordigital covered this topic as part of his talk on "The Future of e-Philanthropy" and he profiled some examples. He mentioned People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and Greenpeace, which have both used social networking services to harvest for like-minded people. On many of these services, members list their interests, so it's easy to search for keywords like "Amnesty," "vegetarian," etc. Young activists are using these networks (MySpace, etc) to conduct campaigns either on their own, or as part of organized efforts.

Thoughts? Resources?

Indy Press and Disticor Set to Join Forces; Publishers Cautious

2006-03-31T11:56:00.000-08:00

When the Independent Press Association purchased BigTop Newsstand Services - now called Indy Press Newsstand Services - in 2000, it got more than it bargained for. (Disclosure: I worked for IPA for five years; IPA is still one of my clients.) Indy Press was suppposed to be a different kind of national distributor, one who was on the side of the indy publishers and ready to provide extra help to amplify their voices.

Over the past six years, however, that utopian ideal has clashed continuously with a dystopian reality of recurrent cash-flow problems, which resulted in late payments to clients who have included Mother Jones, Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture, The Sun, and Tikkun (several of these magazines have left Indy Press during the past few months). Early in fall 2005, Indy Press stopped communicating altogether with clients, which fueled ugly publicity and panicky speculation on the IPA listserv about the demise of the IPA / Indy Press.

Veteran indy publishers raised the ghost of the Fine Print bankruptcy, a crisis that helped build the core membership of the IPA. “The irony is, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if there was an organization that was designed to help this problem,’ and, gee, there is,” said Dan Sinker of Punk Planet. “It’s the Independent Press Association. It’s the very people who sent out an e-mail saying, ‘Hey, we can’t pay you because of media consolidation.’ If it wasn’t so fucking sad it would be ironic.”

"The reasons for [Indy Press's cash-flow problems] are numerous," wrote Executive Director Richard Landry in an October 2005 message to the IPA membership, "but they really boil down to the fact that independent newsstand distributors like Indy Press require a lot of working cash themselves in order to be able to deal with the very long return and payment cycles that are standard for our business. This is one major, and very nasty, consequence of media consolidation: The long payment cycles work to the advantage of the very biggest distributors and retailers, and to the disadvantage of the rest of us."

That month Thea Selby, the principal of Next Steps Marketing, was appointed interim managing director of Indy Press, while IPA sought out working capital and partners that could help address cash-flow and Indy Press's position in the distro market. Two weeks ago Landry announced to the membership that IPA...

...has signed a letter of intent with Disticor Magazine Distribution Services to create a partnership in magazine distribution for the independent press...Going forward under the proposed agreement, Disticor will assume the financial and business responsibility to distribute Indy Press titles, bill and collect on their behalf, and pay publishers on sales; while Indy Press will continue to manage the newsstand marketing of the titles to help publishers reach their newsstand sales goals.

As part of the proposed agreement, Disticor will provide the funding that the IPA has been seeking to help it pay Indy Press publishers for the past-due amounts they are owed. Publishers will also benefit from significantly improved payment terms for their titles, including better advances and quicker final settlements.

Indy Press publishers will have access to more and timely sales information under the proposed agreement. Indy Press marketing staff will be better able to provide publishers with the sales analysis and marketing programs they need to more effectively build their newsstand presence.

Reaction among present and former Indy Press clients I've spoken with has been mixed. Feeling burned by late payments and poor communication, many have given up on Indy Press and the IPA. This is a shame. A national distributer run by an indy press membership organization did not turn out to be the Shangri-La many of us - yours truly included - hoped it would be. In becoming a part of the industry, we absorbed its contradictions. Let's hope that the IPA and Indy Press Newsstand Services can pull through its crisis and expand its reach on the newsstand, contradictions and all.

"The Dark Side of Muni-Wi-Fi"

2006-03-29T11:02:00.000-08:00

The FierceWiFi e-newsletter - an excellent, free resource - carried this article on the "The dark side of muni-WiFi":

At times we should look a gift horse in the mouth. There is a rush of municipalities across the U.S. and Europe looking to develop free or low-cost WiFi zones. The goal is to provide the residents of these cities with always-on, high-speed Internet access. Leaders of cities say that creating these city-wide WiFi zones is not only vital for economic development and public safety, but they help insure that the digital divide between rich and poor is eliminated, or at least narrowed...

These benefits notwithstanding, critics charge that there is no such thing as a free digital lunch. They say that the proliferation of muni-WiFi helps spur the growth of a mobile marketing ecosystem, an emerging field of electronic commerce which is expected to generate huge revenues for Google, Microsoft, AT&T, and other large companies. City residents will find themselves surrounded by a ubiquitous online environment which will follow them with ads and information dovetailed to their interests and their geographic location. Unless municipal leaders object, these critics say, citizens and visitors will be subjected to intensive data-mining of their Web searches, email messages and other online activities as they are tracked, profiled and targeted. The inevitable consequences are an erosion of online privacy, potential new threats of surveillance by law enforcement agencies and private parties, and the growing commercialization of culture.

Jeff Chester of the Center for Digital Democracy says that instead of creating yet another e-commerce stomping ground, San Francisco, Philadelphia and other cities should understand that real alternatives do exist to the corporate model of municipal-WiFi being promoted by Google and its cohorts. It is possible to develop community networks that reflect the right to personal privacy, and the cost of building such networks can be very low. There are already successful publicly supported models. St. Cloud, FL, a city of 30,000, has built a free WiFi service for its residents as an important public service. The city has been able to build and operate the network, reduce its telecommunications costs and generate new economic opportunities.

See Jeff Chester's Media Alliance analysis of wi-fi marketing ecosystems.

Is corporate journalism dying? Oh, I suppose...

2006-03-28T09:04:00.000-08:00

In today's USA Today, author and former journalist Dan Neuhart comments on the sale of newspaper company Knight Ridder:

[Knight Ridder founder John] Knight's company became, if not a prisoner of Wall Street, a casualty. Its big-city papers had greater downturns in profits during recessions than did newspapers in smaller cities. Analysts downgraded Knight Ridder's stock ratings and groused about its profits. The company responded with periodic belt-tightening. Some journalists said it went overboard, notably Jay Harris, publisher of the company's flagship San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News; he resigned in 2001 rather than institute what he called "deep and ill-advised staff reductions.

Last year a large, institutional shareholder — unhappy despite Knight Ridder's 16% operating profit margin, which lagged margins in the mid-twenties for some newspaper companies — pushed Knight Ridder to sell itself. No matter that a 16% margin is exceptional among American businesses. By comparison, hotel companies average an 11% operating profit margin, makers of office supplies average 7% and grocers less than 4%.

It matters that newspaper leaders hold strong journalistic sensibilities when facing shareholder pressure to maximize profits. The nation's 13 major publicly traded newspaper companies publish half the 54.6 million copies of newspapers we read every day...

Investor pressure will also touch our future if newspaper websites — logging 54 million visits a month by the end of 2005, up 30% from a year earlier — replace newspapers as our primary source for comprehensive local news...

And we must wonder: How dedicated will the leaders of publicly traded news companies be to spending the money necessary to publish hard-hitting, top-notch newspapers and websites that profit their communities' well-being, even if it means somewhat lower profits for shareholders?

Part of me wants to yawn...this is old news and my capacity for outrage has all but vanished. Corporate journalism is dying, killed by commercial and ideological pressures of all kinds; the much more interesting question is, what business and editorial models are replacing it?

Speaking of old news: way back on Oct. 25, 2005, music journalist and Can't Stop Won't Stop author Jeff Chang commented on the merger of New Times and Village Voice Media. It's a great comment, and deserves being cited:

Competition in the "alternative weekly" sector has been all but eliminated. The New Times is adding magazines like the Los Angeles Weekly, City Pages, and Seattle Weekly to its list, and will command 25% of the market.

It is now the Clear Channel of alt-weeklies...

From the point of view of the principals, the NT/VVM merger is the next logical step in rationalizing the industry.

Here's a business that started in the McCarthyist 50s as a true alternative--the papers used to be called 'undergrounds'--and took flight during the "whole world is watching" media explosion of the 60s. Lots of assholes got exposed, lots of rebels got their shine, and lots of cutting-edge culture got introduced to the world. Then, just like a lot of lefty orgs in the 70s and 80s, the alt-weeklies began to implode. Those decades were rife with purges, shakeouts, closures, and union-busting drives.

All these burned bridges were long forgotten by the go-go 90s, when dot-com money flooded alt-weeklies across the country. That's when VCs started checking out the scene, and corporate hounds like [New Times CEO James] Larkin started moving in...

But then the bubble burst, and everyone was assed-out again...

What media conglomerates began to learn after 2000 was that it wasn't enough to be the big daddy, to have collected all the pieces on the Monopoly board. Properties actually had to make money, and after the bubble, there was a whole lotta head-scratching going on...

In the meantime, the thing that got the alternative press going in the first place--content--suffers.

The Voice, sort of the alt-weekly of record, has been undergoing an extreme makeover during the past 3 years, heading towards a NT template: shorter, less substantive pieces, writing that veers toward breezy over deep, less investigative and more pop-cultural. Some of the changes have been good, a necessary updating for a new generation of readers. Others have left great writers like Gary Giddins (and many others who, unlike Giddins, decided to stay) completely denatured...

When the paper becomes only about selling the latest CD, concert ticket, movie ticket, sex toy, or call-girl service, what the hell is "alternative" about that?...

I'm gonna pour a little out on the sidewalk for the alt-weekly, then I'm gonna go try and find me a real alternative.

Exactly. Don't mourn, organize! Or, in this case, keep writing, publishing, innovating, and scaling up the true alternatives.

Media Reform Worldwide: the Maldives, Thailand, and Australia

2006-03-26T10:16:00.000-08:00

I have a Google Alert out for "media reform" and all my hits are coming from the Maldives, Thailand, and Australia. We're not reading or hearing about any of these hotspots in U.S. media, so here's a rundown:

In the Maldives, activists are struggling to loosen government control of the media.

In Thailand, the family of Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra owns the telecom giant Shin Corp., which fired 21 journalists (for apparently political reasons) from its iTV television station shortly after Thaksin became prime minister in 2001. During the past year opposition to Thaksin's authoritarian rule has mounted and rallied around the issue of media freedom. Last week, a Thai criminal court acquitted media critic Supinya Klangnarong, from the advocacy group Campaign for Popular Media Reform, of suggesting that Shin Corp had profited from its connections with the government - which in fact it has.

In Australia, the Howard government is trying to push through a media reform "blueprint" that sounds as though it is modeled on the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which unleashed a wave of media consolidation in the States and vastly increased the power of the corporate media over distribution and content. There's no question, however, that Australia needs some kind of media reform - when traveling there in 2004, I was immediately struck by the centralized character and dullish content of many Australian media outlets.

For a solid overview of the issues, see the this page from the PC Users Group of Australia. The government's blueprint calls for lifting restrictions on foreign investment in Australia's media sectors, compelling the Australian Broadcasting Corporation to seek advertising revenue, and easing limits on cross-media ownership that prevent investors owning television stations and newspaper operations in the same city. Writing in the Australian newspaper The Age, Stephen Conroy attacked the government's plan:

Australia needs media reform. There is no dispute about that. The emergence of digital technology opens up great opportunities for media companies and for consumers. We need a regulatory regime that allows the potential to be realised.

Regrettably, however, the media options paper released by Senator Coonan contains a poison pill at its heart. Reforms to stimulate the take-up of digital services are tied to an acceptance of the Government's plan to abolish the cross-media ownership rules.

There is simply no need for these matters to be linked. Across the developed world, countries are rapidly moving to digital broadcasting. Yet only the Australian Government is making this process contingent on changing media ownership rules.

MP John Murphy is even more direct.

Yep, sounds like the American model - Australians would do well to review the legacy of the Telecommunications Act, which, BTW, will be up for renewal in 2007. Get ready to mobilize!

Community Wireless Summit; SF Municipal Wireless Update; BlogHer; Anti-War Media Protest

2006-03-23T09:00:00.000-08:00

Some odds and ends:

1. The National Summit for Community Wireless Networks is happening on March 31-April at Lindenwood University in St. Charles, MO. I won't be able to make it, but you should.

2. The City of San Francisco has posted redacted versions of municipal wireless proposals online. The redoubtable Media Alliance published a a very useful comparison chart on the proposals, evaluated based on the following issues: free Internet access, free or affordable hardware, technical training, technical support, resources for creation of locally relevant content, and creation of digital inclusion fund to resource these projects. Such provisions are not pie-in-the-sky: earlier this month, Philadelphia signed a municipal wireless contract with Earthlink that called for the company to "subsidize Internet access for low-income households at $9.95 a month and share future revenue for funding of certain social programs."

A joint Google/Earthlink proposal is considered (for reasons that seem to have more to do with business-page buzz than anything else) the front-runner in San Francisco, but the outlook for a deal that closes the digital divide is mixed. "We are cautiously encouraged by the fact that some of the proposals address our recommendation for a Digital Inclusion Fund to resource affordable computers, training, and locally-relevant content," says Media Alliance's blog. "Surprisingly, the Google/Earthlink proposal does not mention the creation of such a fund, despite the fact that Earthlink has committed to this in its contract with the City of Philadelphia." Hopefully, Philly will put some pressure on liberal SF.

If you live in San Francisco, get involved with Media Alliance's Internet 4 Everyone Campaign. Nationally, the cable and phone industries are organizing against municipal broadband projects, seeking to actually make them illegal on state and federal levels. To learn more, and find out how to act, see the Free Press Web site.

3. BlogHer is a great new organization of female bloggers, that holds a conference, organizes writing clinics, and highlights woman-written blogs. If you blog and you're a woman, or if you're a pro-feminist man who blogs on gender issues, check it out.

4. Over at MediaChannel, Danny Schechter reports on their March 22 protest of war coverage in the media. I was struck by Schechter's grumpy assessment of the movement and the success of the march:

It wasn’t major by any means and was quite overshadowed by a march to save the Seals in Canada, an issue that seems to have generated more excitement than saving democracy in America. That fact was pointed out to me by a reporter from the Globe and Mail of Toronto who came along with us whilst the mighty NY press ignored us to a fault. I explained to him this was a first attempt to join the media issue with the issues of the war in Iraq and is not yet an obvious enough connection to the anti-war crowd that seems happy to just bash Bush over and over and blame it all on the Republicans....

Mediachannel was there but many of the colleagues we respect couldn’t make time for it including our friends at FAIR, MoveOn and even United For Peace and Justice who embraced the idea but didn’t or couldn’t help mobilize for it. Too busy, I guess, to be charitable. It was easy to recognize that big protests take time and organizing efforts (including resources and experience) of the kind we lack. We gave it a try anyway.

Unlike Mussolini, who allegedly had the trains run on time, we were late to the first stop at CBS "Black Rock" headquarters which was surrounded by a construction fence. I got there before the other organizers and posters did and ran into some of the acrimony some activists are famous for: rushing to judgment without any facts. At least one person immediately assumed the worst about my intentions, and then, without listening, stormed off to preserve a sense of self-righteousness.

I have a lot of respect for Schechter and MediaChannel. But for what it's worth, I would respectfully suggest that if the march was less successful than organizers would have liked, they should take a hard look at the tactics they've embraced. It sounds to me (reading between the lines of Schechter's account) that the march was simply not as well organized as it could have been. More critically, I've never felt - and I think many activists would agree with me - that marching on media outlets is an effective way to move media coverage on an issue. It's much better to invest time and money in a comprehensive communications and media critique strategy, while fighting for public policy and building alternatives that will allow dissident voices to flourish. MediaChannel does all that, too: to take online action on Iraq media coverage, click here.

Bring the Noise: Building Indy Media in an Age of Consolidation

2006-03-20T07:39:00.000-08:00

What defines our media landscape? Consolidation of ownership and downward commercial pressure on journalists and other media workers; the deaths of old business models and the emergence of new ones; the growth of more personal and participatory formats like talk radio and blogging; the concomitant shift from news to entertainment and opinion; and the fragmentation of media consumer markets. For those of us who are working for a more just and democratic society, these trends offer both threats and opportunities.

I routinely encounter people, many of them liberals and progressives, who openly scorn the proliferation of blogs, Xeroxed zines, and other kinds of grassroots independent media; even professionally run indy outlets with circulations in the quarter-million range like Mother Jones are derided as marginal: "in a cut-throat field with little to protect itself but its good intentions." Last week I heard one person dismiss grassroots media as "mere noise." If you're not making a big impact, she said, you're wasting time. Conservative polemicists like Andrew Keen, meanwhile, attack the participatory technologies that fall under the umbrella term "Web 2.0":

The consequences of Web 2.0 are inherently dangerous for the vitality of culture and the arts. Its empowering promises play upon that legacy of the '60s--the creeping narcissism that Christopher Lasch described so presciently, with its obsessive focus on the realization of the self.

Another word for narcissism is "personalization." Web 2.0 technology personalizes culture so that it reflects ourselves rather than the world around us. Blogs personalize media content so that all we read are our own thoughts. Online stores personalize our preferences, thus feeding back to us our own taste. Google personalizes searches so that all we see are advertisements for products and services we already use.

Instead of Mozart, Van Gogh, or Hitchcock, all we get with the Web 2.0 revolution is more of ourselves...

In the Web 2.0 world... the nightmare is not the scarcity, but the over-abundance of authors. Since everyone will use digital media to express themselves, the only decisive act will be to not mark the paper. Not writing as rebellion sounds bizarre--like a piece of fiction authored by Franz Kafka. But one of the unintended consequences of the Web 2.0 future may well be that everyone is an author, while there is no longer any audience.

Doubtless Keen - who is a blogger and podcaster - counts himself as one of the Mozarts of his field, denied his rightful audience by an "over-abundance of authors." It's death by a thousand cuts! Or, in this case, hits. Maybe Keen should take his own advice and stop writing? No, I think he should stick with it. He really shows some promise. Of course I agree with Keen's criticisms of Silicon Valley utopianism; I also strongly agree that personalized electronic media can encourage narcissism. But even as grassroots citizen media proliferate, mass media are consolidating. Many Americans of many political and cultural persuasions have stopped trusting and believing in media which is more and more about the bottom line.

And so what do you do, and where do you go, when you don't see anything in the media that resembles your life and values? You make your own media, for a start; that helps you to find other people who are facing the same struggles. You link together; you help each other; you share ideas and sharpen your critique. You get active in your community. Maybe you write books. Maybe what you write is mere noise, but at least it's your noise. Our noise. Separately, we're just telling our stories. Together we are making a big impact.

On Saturday I took my infant son Liko to the Anarchist Book Fair - not a place where you'll find the likes of Andrew Keen. There I met Rahula Janowski (whom I've been seeing out of the corner of my eye with her daughter Natasha for years around the Mission) and bought her parenting zine Joybringer; I also met Tom Moniz and bought his zine Rad Dad. After we got home and I put Liko down for his nap, I read both Joybringer and Rad Dad cover to cover. Neither of them is particularly beautiful or skillfully put together; Joybringer and Rad Dad are produced by people who are doing other things in their lives, raising children, teaching, organizing. Yet I found them both heartening, gateways to a wider community of parents who are trying to raise kids in radical ways.

Rad Dad is full of noise about trying to be a radical dad, raw, honest moments that you're not going find anywhere else:

There is a silence among men about fathering. I experienced this as I've talked with men about it; they are excited and yet scared, nervous about making mistakes, most are dying to parent in ways that many of us weren't fathered. But there are very few role models...

In the second issue, Tom writes that Rad Dad:

Has been a failure...Ultimately I feel I've failed to live up to the potential. Failed the timelines, failed to promote it well enough, failed to make the effort to distribute it in ways that it should be, failed to work hard enough to get people to send in more stuff, to be a part of it more.

Tom is harsh with himself, but as a father I learned a lot from Rad Dad. It helped me feel better about trying to be the dad I want to be, and not the one I'm supposed to be according to the mainstream media. This isn't narcissism; it's a culture: the sum total, says my Webster's, of ways of living built up by a group of human beings and transmitted from one generation to the next. Elites are losing control of the means of cultural transmission - a centrury-old process - and that makes elitist ideologues like Keen uncomfortable.

Salon.com's Scott Rosenberg critiqued a recent panel, chaired by Keen, on elitism and blogging:

"What is the value in sharing experiences?" Keen asked at one point, with a touch of disdain in his voice - as if he wanted to say to the entire universe of millions of bloggers, "I grow weary of your scribblings." My jaw dropped. Isn't "sharing experiences" the root of literature, the heart of conversation, a primal impulse of our humanity? Who would sneer at it?

At the heart of Keen's complaint and others like it is an outmoded habit of thought: an assumption that every blogger seeks and might be owed the same mass-scale readership that old-fashioned media have always commanded. But it just doesn't work that way. Publishing is no longer a scarce resource (as Tim Bishop well put it). The blogger who is telling the story of her final exam or his fraying marriage or her trouble with her two-year old? None of them cares whether Keen reads them, and they certainly don't expect him to. Their "shared experiences" don't diminish the opportunities for the kind of "expert journalism" that Keen values...

A year-and-a-half ago I led a discussion at BloggerCon III about blogging and journalism. I started with the assumption that the "War between Bloggers and Journalists" was over; we were are all - however different our delivery mechanisms and business models - in the same boat, searching for information and voices we can trust, trying to inform and entertain and move the people who read our work, whether it is on paper or screen, whether we're paid or not, whether we're read by ten or ten million.

Exactly. I have nothing else to add. I make my living as a consultant, or as some would have it, a mercenary who flits from project to project. But all the work I do is driven by a single mission: to amplify dissident and disenfranchised voices, and help independent media projects build the business models that can support their diverse editorial missions. In this blog, I plan to share the lessons I learn and models I find, while promoting media reform and media justice efforts like Free Press, Reclaim the Media, and Media Alliance. Welcome; I invite your comments. Let's make noise.

(Both Joybringer and Rad Dad are old school hobby zines; you won't find them online. But you get back issues of Rad Dad by writing to Tom at tom_moniz@riseup.net or 1636 Fairview St., Berkeley, CA 94703. You can get copies of Joybringer at 4104 24th St., PMB #669, San Francisco, CA 94114. Send money: two bucks per copy plus postage should do it.)