Current Activites of FCM and in the past
A documentary will air on KCPT PBS on Monday 11/15/21 9:00 PM CST on Independent Lens. FCM will screen it for those who want to see it. If interested, email savethemedia@cs.com for an invite.
The documentary is called “Storm Lake, A Newspaper, A Family, a Community”.
https://stormlakemovie.com/
Art Cullen discusses his documentary on endangered local newspapers in Storm Lake, Iowa
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?
From the Washington Post – Fending off a Republican takeover of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/10/26/fcc-chair-rosenworcel-sohn/
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.
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.
