Obama Appoints Corporate Lobbyist to Head the FCC

The Federal Communications Commission is supposed to protect the public interest by regulating the media and telecommunications industries, but Obama has just appointed a former top lobbyist for the cable TV and cell phone industries as his FCC chair. Thank you, Mr. President, for change we can believe in.

Boston Bombing/ Media Meltdown

Memo to Journalism Students: This is what you should NOT do.  (H/t Karly)   Here's Mother Jones doing what it does very well: correcting mainstream media errors. (H/t Megan)

Rush to Misjudgement on Boston Marathon Story

Democracy Now! reports.

Public Access TV Channels . . .

...have offered diverse and local voices, launched careers, and led to Saturday Night Live spoofs from Mike Myers -- such as "Wayne's World" and "Coffee Talk with Linda Richman."

Why don't we have independent public TV like this in US?

Weeks before the Iraq invasion, the BBC's Jeremy Paxman and skeptical British citizens literally cross-examined Prime Minister Tony Blair about evidence/reasons/legality behind the invasion -- an interview whose transcript and Blair's comments became part of Britain's official Iraq inquiry in 2011. (Here's another tough Paxman interview of Blair . . . having nothing to do with Iraq.)

In our country, bullying from politicians + lack of insulated funding = embarrassing timidity at so-called "public television"...as evidenced by PBS surgically removing Tina Fey's comedic swipes at Sarah Palin from a broadcast in November 2010.

Country by country comparisons of spending on public broadcasting here. 

My column on media and militarism . . .

. . . generated nearly 1,000 comments on Huffington Post and a positive tweet from perhaps the greatest female tennis player ever.

Are we losing fast, open Internet in USA?

In recent studies, USA was behind other countries when it comes to access to broadband (15th place) and Internet speed  (23rd place).

There's a digital divide in our country whereby upper-middle-class kids grow up with fast Web-accessed computers at home, while kids in some rural areas and inner cities don't have fast Internet, or even computers.

In 2009, big Internet providers such as Verizon, Comcast, AT&T DID NOT APPLY for any of the billions in federal stimulus grants for expanding broadband infrastructure, according to the Wall St. Journal, because recipients of our tax money had to agree to respect Net Neutrality or Internet non-discrimination.

In August 2010, Keith Olbermann did a segment about Net Neutrality on his soon-to-end MSNBC show. Olbermann exited MSNBC as it was being taken over by Comcast, which lobbies against Net Neut. (Here's Jon Stewart's Net Neutrality segment from the same period.)

P.S. In January 2011, I was asked to appear on a talk-radio show on a big city station to analyze Oblermann's exit from MSNBC; when I suggested a link to the Comcast takeover and criticized Comcast's opposition to Net Neutrality, a producer asked me during a commercial break to stop the "Comcast-bashing" because "they're our biggest sponsor."

Did this blog inject distortions into mainstream media?

The late Andrew Breitbart, a former Drudge Report staffer, ran BigGovernment.com. In July 2010, the Obama White House fired US Dept of Agriculture employee Shirley Sherrod soon after BigGovernment posted a 100-second video excerpt purporting to show that, during a speech to the NAACP, Sherrod had boasted about discriminating against a white farmer while she was a federal employee during the Obama administration. Actually, as Breitbart later corrected, Sherrod was describing events in the 1980s when she was Georgia field director for the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, a nonprofit that had grown out of the civil rights movement to help Black farmers. More importantly, a fuller version of the speech aired by CNN indicated that Sherrod told the story to illustrate how she had overcome her racial hostility toward whites and ultimately helped the white farmer save his farm.

Months earlier, other selectively-edited tapes distributed by BigGovernment.com (played repeatedly on Fox News and elsewhere) helped put the anti-poverty group ACORN out of business. Rachel Maddow dissects the distorted presentation that doomed ACORN. (Fox News had goaded others in media for not doing enough ACORN-smearing.)

It wasn't just Fox News that promoted BigGovernment.com's misleading ACORN story. The Public Editor of the paper of record, the New York Times, went to absurd lengths to defend his paper's inaccurate coverage

When Drudge posts "Exclusive," readers beware

Perhaps Matt Drudge should stick to aggregating content from elsewhere (often with revved-up headlines) rather than "report" -- as demonstrated by this 1999 "world exclusive," which helped push the story into some mainstream outlets.

And as demonstrated by his 2007 "exclusive" in which he accused CNN reporter Michael Ware of "heckling" Republican senators during a news conference in Iraq and "laughing and mocking their comments." Drudge's evidence-free charge -- based on an anonymous "official" -- was picked up by rightwing blogs and the Washington Times.

What I Learned in Denver . . .

 . . . at this weekend's National Conference on Media Reform: I've seen the media activism future and it's in the hands of young women and girls who are creatively challenging the sexism/sexualization (and ultimately, I hope, hyper-commercialism) of mainstream corporate media. For example, the activist youth group SPARK. Check out their "Seventeen/Teen Vogue Challenge" at their blog or one of their leaders (age 16 I think) explaining that challenge at  41:30 of this video of the final plenary session in Denver.  

Can bloggers/columnists with strong views . . .

. . . still engage in independent commentary -- as opposed to partisan propaganda? Here is some critical commentary from the conservative National Review Online within hours of John McCain selecting Sarah Palin as his running-mate in April 2008.

Undercover video-taping of farm animal abuse...

...has prompted food libel laws in a dozen states, aimed at protecting powerful agribusiness interests that apparently have much to hide. Here's a video report from U.C. Berkeley News21 students.

Election 2008: Mayhill Fowler's Citizen Journalism for HuffPost's "Off the Bus" Project

Mayhill Fowler says she didn't hide that she was recording ex-President Clinton's angry words ("sleazy" . . . "slimy" . . . "dishonest" . . . "scumbag") about a Vanity Fair reporter, while he greeted voters in public as he campaigned for his wife in June 2008. BUT Clinton obviously did not know Fowler was a HuffPost "citizen journalist." Should she have ID'd herself? (She clearly got a more honest take from Clinton than if he'd known she was a journalist.)

Shouldn't public figures know nowadays that anything said in public -- especially rants (or racism) -- will be recorded and available forever? Exhibits A and B.

Mayhill Fowler's earlier reporting scoop that launched "Bittergate" uproar. The Bittergate of 2012 campaign: "47%-gate." 

I.C. grad Kate Sheppard

Kate will soon be a guest speaker in class, discussing her career in independent media, including at Mother Jones.

Blogger Takes Ethical Action

Here's an example of a blogger acting professionally and ethically. Blogger Ken Krayeske -- who gained fame by questioning University of Connecticut's basketball coach about his huge taxpayer-paid salary -- announced in Oct. 2009 that he wouldn't be covering Hartford City Hall because his girlfriend had a job there. If he'd disclosed the relationship and kept covering City Hall, that  might have been sufficient from an ethical standpoint.

Jon Stewart's mock interview of Rupert Murdoch

Jon Stewart gently asks questions of Murdoch about "Murdochopoly." The U.S. Federal Communications Commission is even more deferential to Murdoch and other media moguls than Stewart.  (Remember: Many years ago, Murdoch famously said: "Monopoly is a terrible thing, until you have it.")

Indy musicians build following . . .

. . . through Facebook, reported NPR's Laura Sydell in 2010. The report discusses cellist Zoe Keating and singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega.

Early You Tube Stars Get Big Bucks

What the Buck? Here's Michael Buckley's "My You Tube Story." According to a Dec, 2008 New York Times report, Buckley earned over $100k in the previous year (plus an HBO development deal) from his YouTube video-rants about celebs.

YouTube star Lisa Donovan or ""Lisa Nova"has talent for sketch comedy and parodies. Like Tina Fey, she liked to play Sarah Palin, including in this famous McCain/Palin rap. Now she heads a company that promotes hundreds of YouTube video producers.

Cory Williams and his smpFilms hit the bigtime with "Hey Little Sparta" (aka "The Mean Kitty Song" -- almost 70 million views). He told the NYT in 2008 that he was earning over $200k per year, partly from (ugh!) product placements in his videos.

For years, my 16-year-old daughter's favorite YouTube star and main source of daily news has been Philly D (of "The Philip DeFranco Show"), who offers his take on current events and celeb news. Should I have been monitoring my daughter's online activities better?

Become a YouTube Star and appear in a hugely popular music video with Weezer or the earlier one from Barenaked Ladies.

"Where the Hell is Matt?" became so popular, the guy has had his world travels paid by corporate sponsors for years.

Web Censorship/Persecution in China

After Yahoo provided info to China's government that led to the imprisoning of two Chinese dissidents in 2002 and 2004, the families of victims (Wang Xiaoning and Shi Tao) sued Yahoo. As a result, Yahoo announced in 2008 that it was establishing a fund for people jailed in China for posting human rights views online. Too little, too late?

In response to demands from China's government, Google agreed in June 2010 to quit automatically switching its users in China to Google's uncensored Hong Kong search site. But there's a tab users can click to be switched. Should Chinese citizens feel safe to hit that tab?

Web Censorship in the USA

The media reform group Free Press highlights media and telecom corporations caught censoring web or cellphone traffic.

Inner City Press, a monitor of Wall Street and the United Nations, temporarily is delisted from Google News. The de-listing happened soon after Matt Lee of Inner City Press challenged Google over its commitment to free expression.

In 2007, consumer rights groups mobilized to tell the Federal Communications Commission: "No More Media Consolidation." CommonCause was blocked from placing an ad against conglomerated media on My Space, which Rupert Murdoch had bought in 2005 (and later sold at a huge loss). The banned ad featured a photo of Murdoch and the caption: "This is the face of Big Media." "My Space" or "Murdoch's space"?

Guest speaker William Jacobson

Cornell law professor William Jacobson is a conservative political blogger with a national following. He launched Legal Insurrection.com in 2008, and much smaller CollegeInsurrection.com last August.   

Cheezburger.com gets (semi)serious about politics

Make the politicians wear the logos of their corporate funders on their business suits (H/t Steve D).

Mainstream News Can Have Standardized Content , , , AND FORMAT

A BBC correspondent lampoons and deconstructs the sameyness (and cliches) of  mainstream TV news reports.

Bloggers' Rights to Access

In March of last year, a Massachusetts court ruled that blogger deserve the same privileges in covering courts and trials as traditional media. (H/t former student Bianca N.)

Can Pay Walls Around Online News Content Save Newspapers?

No, says Arianna Huffington in May 2009 U.S. Senate testimony. And here's "Life After the Pay Wall" nightmare scenario from Advertising Age.  (A former indy media student complained about Boston Globe's paywall around the Globe's editorial.)

Singer/songwriter Jill Sobule . . .

. . . raised $75,000 in small donations from her fans in 2008 to pay for professional recording fees to produce her next album. Here's one of her semi-hits, "I Kissed a Girl" (not to be confused with Katy Perry song that came out a dozen years later).

Pre-financing of independent media/artistic/service projects

Spot.Us involves the community in funding watchdog journalism, and was founded in 2008 by David Cohn.

Kickstarter.com is "a funding platform for artists, designers, filmmakers, musicians, journalists, inventors, explorers..." A key aspect of Kickstarter and similar funding platforms is "All or Nothing funding."

On Kickstarter, a project must reach its funding goal before time runs out or no money changes hands. Why? It protects everyone involved. Creators aren’t expected to develop their project without necessary funds, and it allows anyone to test concepts without risk.

Here's a film project on newspaper cartoon artists that's already surpassed its funding goal on Kickstarter. Here's a local charity project being pitched at present.

Pre-financing of "Iraq for Sale" documentary.

This documentary was funded mostly by small donors BEFORE the movie was made -- an example of grassroots pre-financing of a work that had real impact.

Will a few companies come to dominate the Web -- like they dominate TV, book publishing, magazines?

According to Compete, a web analytics company, the 10 most-trafficked websites are far more dominant than just a few years ago: The top ten US websites accounted for 31% of page views in 2001, 40% in 2006, and 75% in 2010.

"The Internet Is My Religion"

Dazzling speech from Brave New Films' Jim Gilliam (who was raised a conservative Christian evangelical) discussing how the Internet offered him salvation -- and literally saved his life.

"Bloggers Bring In Big Bucks"

This Business Week slideshow in July 2007 discussed some of the most (financially) successful blogs at that time, whether covering technology, fashion, celebs, politics.  Almost all are still successful or more so today. (Here is the intro to the slideshow.)

Ramparts magazine of 1960s

One of the most explosive indy magazines of the 1960s, Ramparts, published photos of the impact of U.S. napalm (a chemical weapon that eats away human flesh) on Vietnamese civilians in Jan. 1967. Martin Luther King, Jr. credited those photos with being the spark that got him to break his silence and speak out loudly against the Vietnam War a few months later. MLK became the most prominent critic of the war. Besides investigative journalism and scoops, Ramparts was known for its cover art.

Journalists, Cops and Occupy Wall Street Movement

HARASSMENT OF JOURNALISTS COVERING OCCUPY MOVEMENT: Citizen journalist with video camera tapes himself apparently getting shot by police rubber bullet while covering a seemingly peaceful lull Occupy Oakland (CA).

At Occupy Nashville, a reporter for the long-established weekly Nashville Scene was arrested for violating a curfew imposed by Tennessee's governor (a night judge questioned whether that's legal), was threatened with a "resisting arrest" charge, and was later charged with "public intoxication." Here's a report on the arrest from Nashville's big daily.

Between Sept 2011 and Sept 2012, more than 90 mainstream and independent journalists were arrested while covering Occupy protests in the U.S. -- as tracked by Josh Stearns of the media reform group Free Press.

Acts of police brutality -- recorded by citizen journalists and ubiquitous cameras & cellphones -- led to more sympathy and activists for the movement: for example, in NY City and at University of California, Davis.

"THE MAYOR'S AFRAID OF YOU TUBE": In October 2011, hours after New York City authorities made a last-minute decision NOT to clear the Occupy Wall Street protesters out of Zucotti Park/Liberty Plaza, Michael Moore said this to MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell (begin 2:54 for context):

"One cop down there actually today. I asked...'Why don't you think the eviction happened?' And he said, 'Cause the Mayor's afraid of You Tube.'...The power of the new media, the media that's in the hands of the people -- that those in charge are afraid of what could possibly go out."

Harassment of indy journalists in recent years

Since the 1960s when the FBI and local police engaged in violence and continuous harassment against "underground weeklies," repression against dissenting U.S. outlets has deceased but it has certainly not ended. Example 1: The 2008 Republican Convention in Minnesota. Three years later, the journalists' suit against the police was settled, with $100,000 in compensation being paid by the St. Paul and Minneapolis Police Departments and the Secret Service. The settlement included an agreement by the St. Paul police to implement a training program aimed at educating officers regarding the 1st Amendment rights of the press and public, including proper procedures for dealing with the press covering demonstrations.

Example 2: The 2010 election for U.S. senate in Alaska. An online reporter was handcuffed and detained for asking questions of the Alaska Republican senate candidate, Joe Miller. The reporter -- a well-known journalist in the area and founder of Alaska Dispatch -- was handcuffed by Miller's security personnel after a dispute over his questioning of the candidate about his role as a former part-time city attorney. Here's Alaska Dispatch's version of the detention. The critical reporting on Miller's past -- and this heavy-handed incident -- contributed to Miller's stunning defeat in the November election.

1960s sex/drugs columnist "Dr. Hip" . . .

...paved the way for "Savage Love"  column by Dan Savage in today's alternative weeklies.

Margaret Sanger

Sanger is proof that media heroes are sometimes flawed. This article from Women's E-News discusses her flirtation with racist (eugenics-oriented) arguments in support of birth control.

Dinner with Amy Goodman

In the early 1900s, the socialist Appeal to Reason newspaper offered yachts, fruit farms and motorcycles as premiums to bring in revenue and subscriptions. Democracy Now! offers Dinner and a Show with Amy Goodman.

After meeting Amy at a dinner party, Regis and his sidekick acknowledge that their Regis and Kelly TV show is about "nothing."

Today's Upton Sinclair -- Is It Steve Colbert?

Stephen Colbert accepted the challenge of experiencing difficult working conditions. Here he is doing farm labor.

Students today carry on Ida B. Wells' legacy

In last dozen years, Northwestern University journalism students and their professor have been instrumental in proving the innocence of many prisoners in Illinois, several of whom had been sentenced to death. Their investigative journalism sparked the ending of the death penalty in Illinois

Lynching prompted the classic Billie Holiday song,"Strange Fruit," which she recorded in 1939 over the objections of her record company: "Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze, strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees." The song's lyrics were inspired by this photograph. Time magazine denounced the song as "musical propaganda."

Journalists Re-fight Old Battles

Sometimes journalism can help expose a problem -- like the jailing of people simply for being in debt -- thereby leading to reform. But other journalists -- years or generations later -- may have to keep exposing the issue...as these investigative journalists for the big mainstream daily in Minneapolis recently did.

"It's not a crime to owe money, and debtors' prisons were abolished in the United States in the 19th century. But people are routinely being thrown in jail for failing to pay debts. In Minnesota, which has some of the most creditor-friendly laws in the country, the use of arrest warrants against debtors has jumped 60 percent over the past four years, with 845 cases in 2009, a Star Tribune analysis of state court data has found."

I.F. Stone pointed out that some reforms don't happen except through the work of generations of journalists and democracy activists:

“The only kinds of fights worth fighting are those you are going to lose, because somebody has to fight them and lose and lose and lose until someday, somebody who believes as you do wins. In order for somebody to win an important, major fight 100 years hence, a lot of other people have got to be willing - for the sheer fun and joy of it - to go right ahead and fight, knowing you're going to lose. You mustn't feel like a martyr. You've got to enjoy it.”

Early Indy Newspapers -- Not Very Reader-Friendly

See crowded layout of William Lloyd Garrison's abolitionist publication, The Liberator, here and here. Not exactly HuffingtonPost. No half-naked actors. Cady Stanton's/Anthony's feminist publication, The Revolution, was almost as dense.

Content was king (or queen) back then.

Did you hear that sports blog are ruining sports journalism?

That was argued by traditional sports newspaper journalist Buzz Bissinger in a loud 2008 debate with Will Leitch, the founder of Deadspin.com, a sometimes out-of-bounds sports blog/website.

Formulaic News

Independent outlets sometimes offer not just different substance, but different forms of presentation. Mainstream TV news reports, which are often formulaic and cliched, are lampooned in this video from the BBC's Charlie Brooker. 

Ida B. Wells High School, San Francisco

How many newspaper editors who ignored or apologized for racist lynchings have schools named after them? Ida B. Wells High School is in San Francisco (just across the park from the famous "painted ladies" Victorian mansions.)

AOL's Journalistic Values

Soon after AOL announced its merger with HuffingtonPost in February, 2011 the Boston Globe published leaked AOL documents offering a glimpse into that company's journalistic approach -- not one that Arianna Huffington would endorse. (H/t to former indy media student Leah T, for summarizing the Globe piece.)

Internet Hoax

Question: Are younger educated people who were raised on the Internet LESS likely to be taken in by hoax emails such as Obama as "radical Muslim" than Jon Stewart's 80-year-old aunt?

Miss Representation

A 2011 documentary about sexism in media. 

Interracial Marriages -- Language Gap

Interesting article from Voices on NY.

Is our media system failing U.S. democracy?

A 2008 academic study compared the level of public knowledge about current events in Denmark, Finland, England and the U.S. It found that the countries with TV/radio dominated by public broadcasting -- Denmark and Finland -- were the best informed. Our country, dominated by corporate commercial media, was the least informed. The study's authors suggest that differing media systems play a role in those results.

A 2003 study of U.S. public knowledge of facts related to the Iraq War found that misperceptions were greatest among those whose primary info source was Fox News -- and least among those whose primary info source was public broadcasting. (A Pew poll taken in Aug. 2010 found that almost 1 in 5 Americans believed President Obama to be a Muslim; only 34% knew he is a Christian. 43% chose "don't know.")

Night(mare) in Tunisia for Longtime Dictator

Tunisia is a Mediterranean country in North Africa.  Back in 2007, Tunisian citizen-journalists and bloggers had documented the tourism/shopping sprees of the dictator's wife aboard the presidential plane to Europe and global fashion capitals. (H/t Global Voices)

In 2010, the TuniLeaks website was set up to post (WikiLeaks-released) U.S. Embassy and State Department documents candidly describing the Tunisia dictatorship.

Fascinating photo of dictator Ben Ali visiting the hospital bed of the desperate young man who set himself on fire in Dec. 2010 -- the young man didn't live long enough to learn that his act led to the overthrow of Ben Ali after nonviolent protests.

Amid the protests, Tunisian rapper El General put out this widely-circulated music video attacking Ben Ali and urging folks to join the protests. El General was arrested for it. Soon after, the dictator fled. (H/t to Steve Zunes.)

Dizzy Gillespie performs his classic jazz tune "Night in Tunisia," first recorded in 1944.

Mexico's "Yo Soy 132" Youth Movement

This Net-savvy movement didn't alter the outcome of Mexico's July, 2012 presidential election (the candidate allegedly being "imposed" by the two dominant TV networks won), but the student activists had impact.  Al Jazeera English reports on the historic presidential debate set up by Yo Soy 132 -- and this YouTube video ignited the movement.

Global Voices Online

Global Voices is a community of more than 500 bloggers and translators around the world who publish reports from blogs and citizen media, emphasizing "voices that are not ordinarily heard in international mainstream media."

This 2011 post features short videos from a competition on gender equality in the Ukraine.

This 2010 post features a public protest by a brave professor and blogger in China, offering himself as a slave.

Blogging and video for human rights

Vancouver Film School students created an inspiring video, "Iran, A Nation of Bloggers," and put it online months before the tech-fueled protests over Iran's disputed 2009 election.

Launched in 1992 with the help of musician Peter Gabriel, the nonprofit Witness.org began distributing video cameras in hopes of minimizing human rights abuses. Their slogan: "See it. Film it. Change it."
 

President Caught on Video: "Get Lost, You A*#hole"

Then-President of France Nicolas Sarkozy caught on video in 2008 calling a disgruntled citizen an "idiot" or "a**hole" (depending on translation). French politicians are having difficulty tolerating the scrutiny from new more aggressive online media (including online video) -- especially compared to deferential coverage they're accustomed to from traditional media.

One of our former presidents -- then governor of Texas -- caught on video.

Police murder of 28-year-old sparks Egypt uprising

In June, 2010, Khaled Said was beaten to death by police in public for the crime of Internet use and, apparently, exposing police corruption. His martyrdom inspired protests and Internet organizing that led to the uprising six months later that ended the Mubarak dictatorship. Middle East-based Google exec and activist Wael Ghonim set up the powerful Facebook page "We Are All Khaled Said." That's one Google executive at least who didn't "do evil.")

Egyptian bloggers/Net activists paved the way for uprising

With the Mubarak dictatorship in control of all major media in Egypt, brave Egyptian "citizen journalists" risked imprisonment and torture to blog or tweet about human rights abuses. Here's renowned Egyptian blogger Wael Abbas interviewed on BBC. Over the years, Abbas was harassed, censored and assaulted by authorities -- and was briefly detained during the uprising early in 2011.

P.S. Sharif Abdel Kouddous covered the 18-day uprising last year for Democracy Now!, and he was the central character in an HBO documentary about the Egyptian revolution. For his work in Egypt, he received last year's Izzy Award for outstanding achievement in independent media.

Amatuer Videographer. . .

. . . vividly (and inadvertently) captures a bomb explosion in Syria.

Upworthy?

Upworthy.com is big on social/political advocacy that can be made more viral or shareable through clever headlines and visuals or video, like this one on gay rights and this one on advertising/media impact on girls.

News vs. Advertising

As a U.S. newspaper publisher said many decades ago: "News is something somebody doesn’t want printed; all else is advertising.”

The WikiLeaks Controversy

Blogger Glenn Greenwald (a WikiLeaks supporter) explains independent journalism to CNN correspondent Jessica Yellin. WikiLeaks website is here. This leaked video (with more than 13 million YouTube views) shows the killing of employees of the Reuters news agency and wounding of children by US attack helicopters in Iraq. Photo above was taken last August when I visited the Ecuadoran embassy in London, where WikiLeaks' founder currently resides.

Local Nonprofit Watchdog News Sites

As dailies have shrunk, local online nonprofit news sites have sprouted, such as the well-funded VoiceofSanDiego.org and the professionally-staffed MinnPost.com ("a thoughtful approach to news"). Across the country, local watchdog outlets try to survive, reports Jodi Enda in American Journalism Review.

Glenn Greenwald & Amy Goodman: Winners of Inaugural Izzy Award (2009)

Soon after accepting their Izzy Awards in Ithaca, NY in March 2009, Greenwald and Goodman spoke about independent media on public TV's Bill Moyers' Journal.

News 21: Student Journalism, Multimedia Presentation

News 21 is a well-funded student journalism outlet (launched by two big foundations) that emphasizes in-depth reporting and multimedia presentation. Journalists at participating campuses investigated broad areas: for example, Univ of Southern California(USC)/money in politics;Syracuse/Latinos in Pennsylvania; UC Berkeley/food safety.

Mini-video Impacts 2008 Presidential Election

This 2008 Brave New Films video short "McCain's Mansions" (with over 600,000 views) boiled up through the media food chain into the mainstream.  It impacted the campaign, as shown by this self-promotional video, "The Making of McCain's Mansions."

Article examined funding of Boy Scouts

After Andy Birkey's investigative piece appeared in The American Independent, some corporate foundations -- with policies of not supporting groups that discriminate against gays -- reappraised their backing of the Boy Scouts.  Did this piece play a role in the Boy Scouts changing their policy on excluding gay scouts and leaders?

Youngest guest ever on Colbert . . .

. . . was 16-year-old indy blogger and Rookie Mag publisher Tavi Gevinson, interviewed on Thursday.

Journalists too cozy with their official sources?

 In 2003, a CNN executive boasts about giving the Pentagon an advisory role on who its on-air experts would be during the Iraq war. . . . . . At 2007 Radio-Television Correspondents Association Dinner, top journalists were literally dancing with a top source. These are social/charitable events where journalists and newsmakers are expected to have some fun, but is it symbolic of too much coziness? . . . . . Whether dealing with political leaders or athletes, the quest for access to newsmaker sources can undermine independent journalism, according to indy TV host Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks, one of the most successful web-based TV shows.

Brave, indy blogger launches major controversy

Former IC journalism student Chris Lisee reports on the impact that a single off-key journalist can have.

"Independent Media in a Time of War" featuring Amy Goodman

Video made by a volunteer group (Hudson Mohawk Independent Media Center) based on an April 2003 speech by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! At the time, many in mainstream media were cheering what they believed was a successful, nearly-completed invasion of Iraq.

"Stickin' It To The Man"

In the movie "School of Rock," a substitute teacher (played by Jack Black) explains the purpose of rock 'n' roll to his 5th grade students. Do rock & roll and independent media share a similar purpose?

Droning On at PBS

So-called public TV aired a documentary about drones -- used for intelligence and warfare. A problem: One of the funders of the documentary is a major drone manufacturer.

The Daily Show on Struggles at NY Times

The Daily Show's cruel 2009 look at the New York Times' "aged news."  It made me feel unusually sympathetic toward the Times.

Former MoveOn.Org Leader Eli Pariser . . .

. . . explains the declining power of mainstream newspaper front pages, and the increasing ability of mission-driven organizations to make and distribute news. Pariser cofounded Upworthy -- "a site dedicated to using social media to make mission-driven content go viral online." Here's a recent NY Times piece about Upworthy written by David Carr.

Syllabus for Independent Media course

Spring 2013 syllabus "Independent Media: Issues and Challenges"

Links to Student Blogs

Ava Carmeli . . . Jaclyn Cataldi . . .  Steve Derderian . . .  Joe Gentile . . . Andrew Kristy. . . Chengqi Li . . . Angela Mammino . . . Katie Mattner . . . Sara McCloskey. . . Ryan Myers . . . Karly Redpath . . . Megan Renner . . . Robyn Schmitz . . . Jamie Swinnerton