Tactical Minutes April 18th

Sorry this is so late in going up on the blog. I'm overwhelmed with school work and my kids. Makes everything so hard to get done. Anyway here are the minutes from our meetin in which Crystal presented on Community Media models.

Housekeeping
-please sigh up for note taking and facilitation on the tactical wiki or at least volunteer to do it at the beginning of meeting.
-there will be some additional workshops thanks to peter; his brother and father will be leading workshops on Final Cut and digital storytelling. keep your eyes posted to our list for announcements.
-fill in the project grid that fred has passed around so that your projects and plans are made known
-jose's presentation is coming up. be sure to get the handout he prepared as it is quite informative

Agenda
Collaborative Media Project Update
Discussion on Virginia Tech media coverage
Crystal's presentation

Va Tech
-you all know the story so I won't repeat it here. we did have a detailed discussion on the event in terms of its relevance to interactive/collaborative media. jason led the way with lots of interesting analysis. the main points we made as a group were the lack of salient media coverage, how the student media at Va Tech did such a superior job at reporting the event
check out this website for more on this horrific episode
this website is also indicative of the community media innovation going on in blacksburg

Collaborative Media Project
Well the social media workshop already has taken place as I am getting this up on the blog late. I hope all of you that were there found it interesting. We are in the process of putting community media definition up on Wikipedia and will let everyone know when that is done. Should be in the next week! stay tuned
for more on vlogging go here

Crystal's Presentation on Community Media Models
Crystal Galvin gave a wonderful presentation on the different models of community media based on her experience as someone working in community radio in west virginia.
she used power point to present her content.I will try to get the power point file from her and get it up on the tactical wiki as it will be a much better guide to her presentation than my textual description.
some important points that came up in the course of her talk include:
-community radio in the US is typically low power radio
PEG Access is also known as cable access and is protected by first amendment editorial policy meaning that contributions cannot be censured
-a good example of PEG Access in boston is BNN
the board is appointed by Mayor Menino and as in most cased of cable access there is a interplay with city politics
-another important point about PEG Access is that it is held to standards above mainstream media and often times leads to unjustified criticism of content and censorship diatribes
the main focus of the presentation was on editorial policy and the red tape that is found in community media models which is somewhat ironic given the supposed principles. nonetheless community media in its various forms serves a critical democratic function and the possibilities have not yet been realized to their fullest extent. thank you Crystal!!