Abby Martin is an artist, activist and citizen journalist based in Oakland, California, who recently launched a collaborative, online media project fueled by citizen journalism. In full disclosure, Martin, along with San Diego media reform advocate Mera Szendro Bok, and myself, are beginning a campaign that we hope will contribute to a national discussion about media reform. This campaign frames media reform as a human rights issue, an idea that is codified in international law, which will be the subject of further writing. But for now, I want to focus on Martin’s latest project and what she has to say about the growing independent media revolution that is making big changes in the information ecosystem.
MediaRoots.org launched recently on the principle that citizen journalism is necessary to provide the adequate information for a democracy. The name is a metaphor for how a tree sustains itself - with a network of roots below ground that are many times more extensive than the structure above. The idea is that in a democratic society, as it is in nature, there can be no progress without the “grassroots.”
“In order for people to build up their communities, they need to be well informed on the issues that impact their lives,” the about information on the site says. “Far-reaching grassroots networks of information and activism created by us must extend far beyond the institutional structures created for us.”
In a recent phone call with Abby Martin, the site’s creator, she discussed how Media Roots and other independent and citizen media sites are attempting to fill a void left by a retreating mainstream media. Out of this vacuum of comes a demand for information, which is causing resurgence in the citizen media movement.
“Worldwide, we see citizen journalism happening everywhere,” she said. “It’s a renaissance. I think that’s where media is headed, as far as real media.”
The latest reports show that independent and citizen journalism is growing in the United States and abroad. Spot.us, a San Francisco-based, crowd-funded community journalism site recently announced it will expand its investigative journalism network to cover Seattle. Meanwhile, in the Czech Republic, hyperlocal community newsrooms are in bloom, with an investment firm there financing the expansion of café/cooperative newsroom hybrids.
Martin says Media Roots, beyond providing more content for the public, is also a pathway beyond the blocks that inhibit the free flow of content into mass media. Publication ownership, private interest advertising, source dependency, and flak machines are all blocks to the free flow of information, and form the basis for Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky’s “propaganda model."
“This is what you say, this is what you’re told,” Martin said. “People don’t understand that everything they see and hear is filtered.”
Fulfilling this purpose also means collecting information from other sources across the web and presenting them to visitors.
“It’s scary because the web has so much information, and it’s important to guide people to the most credible information,” she said.
To that end, Martin’s site currently features aggregated news content from mainstream and alternative news content. But she’s hoping to find citizen journalists to create original content that will dominate Media Roots. She’s already received word from several journalists who want to produce content for her site, including an Apache attack-helicopter pilot stationed in Germany who plans to file behind-the-scenes reports and perspectives.
While citizen journalism and the hyperlocal newsroom are gaining momentum, they are only plugging small streams coming from a massive communication dike. On a national scale, the media system still is collapsing. Ahead of a May 11 national summit in Washington, DC on the future of journalism, public media and open internet, Free Press released a paper that described the situation as “grim.”
“The implications for our communities are dire: Even after decades of newsroom layoffs and broad cost-cutting, traditional news outlets continue to produce the vast majority of original reporting,” Free Press wrote in the paper, “New Public Media: A Plan for Action. “Blogs and amateur reporting are not enough to fill the void. Professional reporters, fact checkers and editors are needed to keep a watchful eye on the powerful and to reliably examine the vital issues that most Americans don’t have time to follow closely.”
The media reform organization advocated new sources of funding for the country’s anemic public media budget, including reducing the commercial broadcast industry’s $10 Billion annual entitlement of public radio spectrum, to be placed in a trust fund for long-term viability. Martin doesn’t have a trust fund, but she has something else that the citizen journalism movement needs to survive.
“I don’t have 100 grand,” she said, “but I do have my spirit.”
MediaRoots.org launched recently on the principle that citizen journalism is necessary to provide the adequate information for a democracy. The name is a metaphor for how a tree sustains itself - with a network of roots below ground that are many times more extensive than the structure above. The idea is that in a democratic society, as it is in nature, there can be no progress without the “grassroots.”
“In order for people to build up their communities, they need to be well informed on the issues that impact their lives,” the about information on the site says. “Far-reaching grassroots networks of information and activism created by us must extend far beyond the institutional structures created for us.”
In a recent phone call with Abby Martin, the site’s creator, she discussed how Media Roots and other independent and citizen media sites are attempting to fill a void left by a retreating mainstream media. Out of this vacuum of comes a demand for information, which is causing resurgence in the citizen media movement.
“Worldwide, we see citizen journalism happening everywhere,” she said. “It’s a renaissance. I think that’s where media is headed, as far as real media.”
The latest reports show that independent and citizen journalism is growing in the United States and abroad. Spot.us, a San Francisco-based, crowd-funded community journalism site recently announced it will expand its investigative journalism network to cover Seattle. Meanwhile, in the Czech Republic, hyperlocal community newsrooms are in bloom, with an investment firm there financing the expansion of café/cooperative newsroom hybrids.
Martin says Media Roots, beyond providing more content for the public, is also a pathway beyond the blocks that inhibit the free flow of content into mass media. Publication ownership, private interest advertising, source dependency, and flak machines are all blocks to the free flow of information, and form the basis for Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky’s “propaganda model."
“This is what you say, this is what you’re told,” Martin said. “People don’t understand that everything they see and hear is filtered.”
Fulfilling this purpose also means collecting information from other sources across the web and presenting them to visitors.
“It’s scary because the web has so much information, and it’s important to guide people to the most credible information,” she said.
To that end, Martin’s site currently features aggregated news content from mainstream and alternative news content. But she’s hoping to find citizen journalists to create original content that will dominate Media Roots. She’s already received word from several journalists who want to produce content for her site, including an Apache attack-helicopter pilot stationed in Germany who plans to file behind-the-scenes reports and perspectives.
While citizen journalism and the hyperlocal newsroom are gaining momentum, they are only plugging small streams coming from a massive communication dike. On a national scale, the media system still is collapsing. Ahead of a May 11 national summit in Washington, DC on the future of journalism, public media and open internet, Free Press released a paper that described the situation as “grim.”
“The implications for our communities are dire: Even after decades of newsroom layoffs and broad cost-cutting, traditional news outlets continue to produce the vast majority of original reporting,” Free Press wrote in the paper, “New Public Media: A Plan for Action. “Blogs and amateur reporting are not enough to fill the void. Professional reporters, fact checkers and editors are needed to keep a watchful eye on the powerful and to reliably examine the vital issues that most Americans don’t have time to follow closely.”
The media reform organization advocated new sources of funding for the country’s anemic public media budget, including reducing the commercial broadcast industry’s $10 Billion annual entitlement of public radio spectrum, to be placed in a trust fund for long-term viability. Martin doesn’t have a trust fund, but she has something else that the citizen journalism movement needs to survive.
“I don’t have 100 grand,” she said, “but I do have my spirit.”
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