We need an Army of "Paperboys/girls" - Media Echo Chamber

[sarahlee]

I've been thinking a lot lately about how - now that we have the bloggers and forums working together doing "distributed investigation", we needed to start work on creating a "distributed distribution network" so I was delighted to see this notice from Alternet in my inbox today.

Still I think we may need something even more organized to make sure we are getting the message out in all of the creative ways we had to learn campaigning (flyers, info printed on biz cards, working smaller regional forums, etc.) and we have to figure out how to get the message to every community in the country. But this and Raw Story's "Open Source Press Association" are good beginnings.
(for those who have missed that: http://rawstory.com/news/2005/index.php?p=114 )

Now we just need an army of "paperboys."

==From my Inbox===

How Progressives Can Win
Help create a powerful progressive media "echo chamber"

"I'm going out telling the story that I think is the biggest story of our time: how the right-wing media has become a partisan propaganda arm of the Republican National Committee. We have an ideological press that's interested in the election of Republicans, and a mainstream press that's interested in the bottom line. Therefore, we don't have a vigilant, independent press whose interest is the American people."
-- Bill Moyers, Final PBS "Now" Episode, Dec. 17, 2004

Dear Friend,

I am writing to you because Bill Moyers is right: A serious media crisis threatens our democracy. The conservative media message machine dominates our public discourse, undermining humanistic values and, as studies have shown, making people ignorant with propaganda masquerading as news.

It's time progressives have a media system that can compete with the right, and tell the truth. We hope you will help AlterNet fight back.

Conservatives Dominate Media

Conservatives have dramatically increased market share in American media through a vast network of Fox News, Sinclair television stations, talk radio -- Limbaugh on 600 stations alone -- fast-growing religious broadcasting, newspapers, web sites, columnists, and commentators.

Conservative media works together seamlessly to ensure that conservative messages are read, heard, and seen every day, repeatedly, by both core conservatives and the 60 million people who voted conservative in 2004.

Without the conservative media machine, George Bush would probably have lost the last election. Without a more effective progressive media machine, conservatives will probably go on winning.

In contrast to the conservatives who have invested hundreds of millions of dollars over the past 30 years, progressives have failed to sufficiently invest in an independent media structure. It's time to change this pattern and invest much more in media of our own. This crisis requires new thinking and action.

"Echo" - The Next Wave in Media

AlterNet is working with independent media partners to help create an alternative -- a powerful progressive media "echo chamber" to challenge and overcome conservative dominance in the marketplace of ideas. This is a big job, and we need your help.

"Echoing" means collaborating to increase the reach and impact of facts and ideas that support progressive ideals and goals and undermine conservative claims. Echoing means repeating messages that communicate our values and our vision in as many places and as many ways possible.

Imagine the clear framing of a progressive vision or a hard-hitting investigative article shown on cable, satellite, and pay per view; downloaded to your TiVo; distributed on DVD; streamed on the internet; broadcast on the radio; and printed in magazines and webzines, all at the same time.

Five years ago it wouldn't have been possible to tackle the big media machine. Today, the technology revolution makes it far easier to produce quality media faster and cheaper. Meanwhile, the Air America radio network is growing and Link TV, Democracy Now and the powerful array of progressive bloggers and web sites are all finding new audiences and increasingly working together.

We Need Your Support

AlterNet will continue to provide the high quality journalism, sharp opinions, and smart analysis that you expect. But that isn't enough if we are to win in the future. We hope you agree.

AlterNet, through our Echo Chamber Project, is working to bring together the smartest tech minds in the progressive sector to help chart the new technology landscape. Our aim is for progressive media to reach more people in more different ways -- even on their cell phones and handhelds.

Can you help support our immediate projects?
https://www.alternet.org/donate/echo/

- PEEK - a blog on the blogs, so people can go to their computers in the morning and know what the blogosphere is saying.

- The first true online Progressive Media Guide, a daily catalog of all the significant media events that national progressive audiences can access via streaming, television, video, or DVD.

- Publishing our new book, Start Making Sense: Turning the Lessons of Election 2004 into Progressive Victories in April. We'll go on the road with the book for readings and debates working to broadcast the dialogues the book generates on TV and the internet.

We need your support to accomplish these goals and more. We can no longer be victims of the right-wing media machine.
Please donate today to help AlterNet become an important hub in a new, powerful, and growing progressive media echo chamber.
Join us to build a progressive media machine for the long haul.

Sincerely,

Don Hazen
Executive Editor, AlterNet

P.S.: Want more information about right-wing media?
View in-depth statistics on conservative media dominance.
http://www.alternet.org/mediafacts/

Read and sign up for PEEK here:
http://www.alternet.org/peek/

[EVDebs]

1. The resistance has begun. Fight Operation Mockingbird and the

'Mighty Wurlitzer' of the right wing. Find out if taxpayer dollars are illegally funding this paleocon Con game !

[Clark2008]

2. OK - the blogs are already buzzing, but how do we get Judy

WoofWoof (Bow-Wow-Down to Rove is more accurate) and the rest of the media whores to get this info out to people who either A.) Don't use the Internet or B.) Don't get their news from anything other than Faux?

I'm all for this project, don't get me wrong (hell, I changed the channel in the waiting room at the Jiffy Lube from Faux to MSNBC today, so I'm doing SOMETHING - and MSNBC is only marginally better because of Olbermann and Reagan and, on a good night, Tweety). I just don't know how our voices will ever be heard over the righwingers who OWN the cable news stations. We need our own cable news network, damnit.

[sarahlee]

3. Well there are people (Soros)

working on getting more cable news shows - we have FreeSpeech TV already, but it is not "mainstream enough" for Joe and Jane America.

You are correct - Judy and Wolf and your local news anchors are not going to cover the news fairly or get our talking points out there. Not enough of America that is not overly biased is listening to Air America.

Until we get more public airway time, then we have to be the delivery system. And we have to figure out how to organize the "paper routes" and delivery systems. Those folks with the talent are already busy doing the writing and the investigation. What the rest of us have to figure out how to manage, is the delivery.

We know how to do flyers, how to write letters to the editor, how to post in forums (we just need to locate all the small community ones and all of the "special issues" forums and newsgroups where we can get people to join and help spread the truth on their issues.). We know how to put newsletters together (- or subscribe to places like cpr4democracy where a newsletter is already created for subscribers.) so we need to publish them and distribute locally. We know how to leave them on bus and subway seats for the next rider to pick up. We need to form local media groups to buy ads on buses and busstop benches.

Indymedia.org has a lot of local media groups - we need to be pooling resources and talent where we can.

We need people looking into setting up pirate radio stations all over the country:
http://www.freeradio.org

Read:
WHAT IS A "DISSIDENT MEDIA GROUP?"
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/

Seems that if we could get a structure in place, then we reach out to all of the existing networks from PDA to DFA, to environmental groups, to memberships in the various blogs until we have every part of the country covered with an underground distributed delivery system.
We need to be brainstorming on how to build the delivery networks.