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New Name, Same Old?

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The universal “news” source, Facebook, changed its name to “Meta” Unfortunately, I once meta name and it didn’t work out so well.

Lucille Ball, years ago, talked about how a magic potion “meeta” could solve all your problems. While she proceeded to get drunk sampling it, the PR image was damaged. Will FB (I mean “Meta”) suffer the same fate, and do you need to be under the influence to appreciate it and ignore all your image problems?

HBM Fundraiser a success

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Last Saturday, Friends of Community Media held a bingo fundraiser at the entertainment / restaurant – Hamburger Mary’s – and it went well. 60-70 people attended and hundreds of dollars was raised. Richard Thompson organized the event, following in the footsteps of what put KKFI community radio on the air (BINGO) in Kansas City.

The fundraiser was to help launch a local journalism project, tentatively titled The Kansas City Investigators.  This is a nonprofit journalism project, which will be staffed mainly by volunteers, along with a paid editor-in-chief and three paid interns.  The goal is to promote ethical and transparent government.

Suggestions on Local KC News

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AUTHOR: Spencer Graves

MIGHT YOU HELP TRYING TO IMPROVE LOCAL NEWS?

      Friends of Community Media is working to develop a local consensus
for improving the quality of local news.  In this effort, we are
following the example that Freepress.net used to convince the New Jersey
legislature to create the New Jersey Civic Information Consortium
(NJCIC).  This is a 501(c)(3), which recently approved 14 projects
funded at $35,000 each to do different things in different parts of New
Jersey in conjunction with a professor at one of five leading public
universities in New Jersey.  We do NOT expect to do exactly that.
Instead, we want to ask leaders in government, business, nonprofits,
etc., if they are concerned about the quality of local news, and if yes,
what might they support to improve this.

      Below please find an email similar to what Spencer Graves sent to 22
different politicians at city, county, state and federal levels.  In
following up by phone on those mails, he spoke with 7 humans and left
voice messages for the rest.  And he had two follow-up meetings with a
legislative assistant for a city councilperson.  His next task is to do
something similar with local news outlets like the KansasReflector.com
and TheBeacon.media.

      Spencer would love to hear what you might like to do in this regard.
He would happily help you got contact information for anyone you might
like to ask about this and draft questions, if you would like that.  If
we get enough people discussing this with others, we can get substantive
action to improve the quality of local information available to people.
That, in turn, will encourage more people to vote and vote
intelligently, leading to better public policies, according to research
Spencer has seen and is cited in his email.

Spencer.Graves@EffectiveDefense.org

Improving Local KC Media

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Spencer Graves, Secretary of Friends of Community Media, has written a well-researched and thoughtful article on ideas to improve local journalism and Kansas City Media.

Freepress – Craig Aaron Interview

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INTERVIEW WITH CRAIG AARON OF FREEPRESS

TO BE AIRED ON KKFI 90.1 FM KKFI.ORG ON THURSDAY 4/29/21

Kansas City, Mo., 4/23/21  – An important interview will air this Thursday 4/29 on KKFI community radio show “Thursday Night Special” at 7:00 to 8:00 PM. 

Spencer Graves, FCM board member and secretary will discuss issues facing journalism and the need for media reform in the United States with Freepress CEO, Craig Aaron.  https://www.freepress.net/

People may also watch via Zoom videoconferencing and YouTube Live.

People with the Zoom session will be able to ask questions during the

session.  They can also suggest questions in advance via a complementary

post on Wikiversity.  Links are below:

https://kkfi.org/program-episodes/media-reform-per-freepress-net/

https://zoom.us/j/92099403742

https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Media_reform_per_Freepress.net#Draft_agenda



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