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News from the Future of Public Media
Live from Main Street: Independent outlets band together to hone in on election issues
email discuss Posted by Jasmine Touton on Sep 29, 2008 at 8:12 AM
Flip to a primetime news show or crack open a newspaper and chances are you’ll see a variation on the day’s news story surrounding the 2008 presidential election: Mr. Future President attends this church. Mr. Future President had that medical examination yesterday. Lipstick.
But fifty independent media organizations and one popular radio host have banded together to shout over the ruckus of news media that have so little to say about so much, choosing instead to invite regular people onto the soap box to share their opinions about key issues.
Host Laura Flanders, the personality behind GRITtv and author of several books on progressive politics, was touring the country for her most recent book Blue Grit a couple years ago and incorporating live radio broadcasts as she went. Dropping in on town squares, public libraries, and restaurants to tackle the real problems facing communities, she thought to herself: “Wow, wouldn’t it be great if we could do this on TV?” The Media Consortium—a membership network whose ranks include the nation’s most visible progressive journalism outlets, along with such hubs for emerging public media as the Center for Independent Media, Grist.org, and New America Media—was developing a similar plan.
Through a series of group brainstorming sessions, Live from Main Street (LFMS) was born. The series organizes town halls featuring local and national media-makers and activists, focused around real issues and communities. The original strategy: tackle five issues in five cities over the five months leading up to the election, and put the media back in the hands of the people. As Flanders put it in the Minneapolis town hall: “For all the attention that goes to the racetrack—the real juice, the real action—is in the stands.”
“The emphasis has been on physical events for interaction between the media and its audience,” says Erin Polgreen, a program assistant for LFMS. She also says that five years from now, LFMS planners would love to see the news media maneuver away from the talking heads of politics, spend less time evaluating the clothes and families of politicians, and center their coverage on specifics.
In order to deepen coverage, LFMS has pulled Media Consortium members in to participate in “investigation weeks” related to the town halls, creating multimedia blitzes around individual issues. In addition, LFMS producers have worked to include local voices from advocacy groups and independent media projects. For example, following an investigation week on the housing crisis, Flanders led a Miami-based Town Hall panel of experts in talking about the local impact of the downturn. Sonia Succar of the Emerging Green Builders of South Miami, Max Rameau, author/founder of Take Back The Land, and Jobs With Justice Membership Director Caroline Delgado were among those who participated.
LFMS also hosted a town hall in Minneapolis on media reform and justice issues to coincide with the National Conference for Media Reform, and one in Denver to coincide with the DNC that explored the political buzzword: “change”. Each town hall drew in different local and national publics. In Denver, Flanders and her panelists interacted with a more politically motivated audience. The show attracted more members of the media when in Minneapolis. In each case, Media Consortium member outlets carried related stories, audio and video to amplify the issues at hand, creating echoes across the diverse independent media sector.
This week, the Media Consortium and Flanders are trying something different: a virtual town hall will gather experts to discuss voting fraud each day, with a focus on Ohio as an important swing state. Titled Live From Main Street Columbus: Will Your Vote Count?, the segments will air on the LFMS and GRITtv sites. Articles, video and blog posts by Media Consortium members on voting rights issues will bolster the daily panel discussions, and members can also choose to post or air the LFMS segments and related articles.
“This one we’re doing virtually because we really want to experiment with new ways of communicating for a week-long event,” said Media Consortium Director Tracy Van Slyke. “We felt like voter protection issues are extremely, extremely important…we wanted to open it up on a national level because it’s so critical in the next 40 days.” The subject matter is expected to attract attention not just from progressive audiences, but from mainstream reporters and voting rights activists The media buzz that LFMS has generated in traditional outlets like The Miami Herald and CBS highlights the important work of independent reporters, while furthering the goal of bringing power back to the people.
The final Town Hall will bring viewers to Seattle in October to consider women’s perspectives on national security. After Seattle, LFMS will shut off its lights and leave the crickets chirping – at least for the immediate future. Polgreen says the program was created to overlap with the election and is set to conclude as voting day nears, but that doesn’t mean Flanders and the Media Consortium won’t work to recreate the town halls later on.
Meanwhile, the Media Consortium is experimenting with other ways to collaborate around coverage of issues to drive buzz and results. The network recently announced its latest project—NewsLadders, which aggregate coverage from members around targeted topics and allow readers to rank and promote stories. Current Media Consortium NewsLadders focus on coverage of Republican candidate John McCain, immigration and healthcare.
“Our world has changed and the political conversation has grown,” write Van Slyke and NewsLadder founder James Boyce in The Huffington Post. “We all have a voice and and a vote, not only in who wins in November but every day with what is really the top story of the day.”
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