Editorial

While finishing my MFA Visual Arts thesis this spring, I've been observing the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing and trying to decide what to say about it in a period when I've only had time to write about one editorial a month. Obviously, as I said in my editorial the day of the bombing, everyone on the Open Media Boston staff was shocked and saddened by the cowardly attack on civilians.

Somehow I always took the idea that Open Media Boston would make it five years as a given. As hard as it sometimes is to produce original journalism about grassroots struggles for democracy on the metropolitan level week-in and week-out - getting the necessary technology online, recruiting trained journalists and training new journalists to put in the field, scraping together a gradually growing budget, and building a community of viewers - I knew that all the many people who have walked the road of this project with me would get us to this milestone. And beyond.

Much as our staff likes the name of our publication, Open Media Boston, we're toying with the idea of changing it. Naturally, you all will be wondering why we're even considering such a move. Well, we're just starting the process of building a new website (finally!), and if we're ever going to change our name, now would be the best possible time to do it. When I first came up with the name in July 2007, I had a few reasons for choosing it over other ideas. First, I wanted something that fit with the spirit of the then-emerging online community news media. Open. Descriptive. Blunt.

A year ago today, the City of Boston destroyed the Occupy Boston encampment at Dewey Square in an early morning raid by the Boston Police Department - following a pattern that was repeated at most of the major Occupy camps around the country. A couple of days later, I wrote an editorialattacking the city and the cops for trampling on protected speech and stopping the press - including this reporter - from doing our jobs until all the tents were ripped down at the campsite and all the Occcupiers driven off or arrested.