Boston Media Reform Network Launched as Progressive Voice in Regional Media Politics

Yesterday 30 people - a nice mix of media professionals academics and advocates - founded the new Boston media reform network at a meeting at the encuentro 5 movement space in Chinatown. Sure that may not be the name that the network will end up using. And true we’re not exactly sure what projects we’ll be working on yet. But it’s a good sign that we’ve gotten past the initial hurdle of launching a group that will work on progressive media reform campaigns in Massachusetts. I say “we” because I was chairing the meeting. And I put a lot of effort into organizing this new network over the last year and Open Media Boston has put our resources behind the project. My reason for doing that work is straightforward. Boston is a big regional media hub. It is also the state capital and therefore the seat of state politics. So a lot of important media policy gets made here. Yet for many years Boston has had no progressive media reform organization of any kind - while other cities like Seattle have had vibrant media reform movements. The last major group that fit at least part of that bill was Boston Media Action led by Z magazine that started in response to the First Gulf War in 1991 and folded tents not long after. There have been other attempts to get something going in the interim years but they haven’t succeeded for one reason or another. Meanwhile Massachusetts like much of America is facing corporate attacks on cable access stations right-wing attacks on public broadcasting and fights over critical issues like net neutrality municipal wifi public broadband commercial broadcast licensing low power FM radio licensing non-commercial radio licensing - plus looming issues around whether or not America will continue to allow a “digital divide” to exist between digital have nots - mostly communities of color dealing with structural poverty caused by chronic and systemic unemployment - and digital haves (i.e. everyone else). With all those issues to grapple with - and many others waiting in the wings - I thought it was past time for local progressive media makers and media activists to pull together a network to score some wins in the public interest. So I was gratified when Free Press responded to my concern that there be some concrete local outcome from holding their big excellent National Conference for Media Reform here in Boston this spring and gave us a workshop slot at that confab to hold a roundtable to discuss forming a Boston media reform network. That event was backed by the other members of the NCMR Local Host Committee - which Open Media Boston had a seat on - and drew over 60 people. From those roundtable attendees and people that attended a pre-event in advance of NCMR we ended up with a good sized list of interested people and did outreach for yesterday’s meeting to that group. At the meeting we had a conversation about what kinds of working groups we were interested to form - and then attendees broke into those new working groups to start discussing potential issues and action steps. By meeting’s end we had seven working groups in formation: media ownership/public interest outreach/communications PEG (cable) access low power FM radio legislative community technology and children’s media. We called our next meeting for July 16th and called it a day - after I left the attendees with the admonition that the network would rise or fall based on whether the working groups got going and did work or not. Between now and the next meeting the working groups will meet and keep in touch through a variety of means - online and otherwise. And the groups will report back to each other at full meetings of the network and gradually build more organizational structure and infrastructure as the network grows. Anyone who defines themselves as a progressive - which I would define broadly as anyone with a belief in democracy social justice and human rights - and has a interest in doing work to improve the media in Massachusetts and beyond is welcome to join the network. We haven’t built a website for the network yet but we do have an announce-only email list that Open Media Boston viewers are welcome to join. Once you’re on the list you’ll be able to get plugged into other communications platforms we’re using and join whatever working groups you’d like to get involved with. You’ll also get all the info on upcoming meetings and events. Here’s the link http://groups.google.com/group/bosmediareform-announce And here’s to America’s newest regional media reform network … whatever we end up deciding to call it. I’m going to vote for keeping a simple descriptive name but maybe we’ll end up with something more zippy. Join up and give your $.02 on that and bunch of more critical issues. Jason Pramas is Editor/Publisher of Open Media Boston and a member of the Boston media reform network Bookmark/Search this post with: Delicious Digg StumbleUpon Reddit Newsvine Facebook Google Yahoo Technorati