Digital Arts Service Corps - radio

Radio

Bill Brown — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 15:49:01 +0000

This area is for any and all resources related to radio.

Month 11: Final Workshops and Facility Recommendations

Stephen Fonzo — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 22:12:05 +0000

In May/June, I offered several training workshops, likely the last round of dedicated sessions as my year of VISTA service comes to a close. The remainder of my year will be devoted to compiling the training materials I've written, and writing the manuals I haven't had time to compose yet.

Of the three video production workshops I led, one was an interactive session with students from the READY School in Champaign, IL. After an initial tour of our facilities and those of Urbana Public Television, the students checked out free camcorders and videotaped a day at their school, with interviews and shots of classrooms, art, bulletin boards, and the building itself. Our training session covered the fundamentals of cutting, arranging, and editing scenes, using Adobe Premiere Pro. The students, whose school year is finished, now have two local resources for continued learning where they can finish this and other films if they would like.

Many of the training sessions were about A/V data backup, transfer, and duplication, as members of the IMC get ready to work more independently after I have finished my service. Beyond these and other basic recording and editing tips, two of the audio workshops addressed key issues for citizen journalists - 1) posting to the web and 2) understanding the principles of digital audio and their application. Finally, I have been working with our community radio station WRFU, to ensure that members are knowledgeable about making PSAs, news stories, and updating their Drupal site. In the last month, I will compile and share these resources; for now, I have been revising the manuals as I go, and sharing with smaller working groups.

Though we often use commercial software like Premiere at the IMC, the only real expenses that any artists or journalists should ever have to face are time and hardware (cameras, mics, computers, a/v equipment, etc.). I encourage everyone I train to use and tell others about free and open source software (FOSS), and this month I continued my research into these tools. Specifically, FOSS operating systems can be installed (easily and for free) and used to keep older and slower computers running quickly and efficiently - especially important for organizations with small budgets. Operating systems I recommend are Ubuntu (which has many variants, including one with media production applications called Ubuntu Studio), Puppy Linux, Dyne:bolic, and Pure:dyne. There are others, but these systems have familiar desktop and window environments, can be expanded to include office productivity and media software, and some even run off of live CDs, so no installation is necessary. We received a donated laptop that was quite slow, running Windows 98 - now with the most recent version of Xubuntu, it is much faster and is available for IMC members to use for on-location recording, broadcast, and web publishing.

A critical component of documentation is not just manuals or progress reports, but recommendations. The final aspect of capacity building requires communicating to your organization what they can do to grow after the absence of VISTA staff. At the IMC I am in the process of troubleshooting and listing improvements that could be made to the production facilities - via hardware that will need to be purchased, and software that is free. Luckily for us, we just hired some summer youth employees through the Champaign Consortium, and each individual has his/her own project to use as a learning experience and as a service to the IMC - adding to the continuity and capacity built so far with VISTAs.

Month 9: Curriculum & Program Development

Stephen Fonzo — Sat, 09 May 2009 20:40:53 +0000

Through March-April, a very intense month, I guided several initiatives to create new training programs for youth and adults, to build volunteer activities at the IMC, and to make general improvements to our facilities. The most involved of these is the Champaign, IL Don Moyers Boys & Girls Club (DMBGC) Teen Computer Lab project, a partnership between the Boys & Girls Club, the Independent Media Center, the University of Illinois, and the local, private computer consulting firm SupporTech. During the first month of planning, the partnering organizations agreed to a vision and mission for the new computer lab and training program to be offered by the DMBGC, which will be an ongoing program available to youth ages 6-18, throughout the year. The IMC has led the development of surveys, curriculum, and budget, informing the design and staffing being organized by the other partners. Our Program Development Intern Jason Keist wrote the surveys to assess the children's experience and interests, and I have been composing the lab budget and compiling a variety of technology and media tutorials and activities, all of which will also be stored with the IMC as documentation.

Along with IMC member Danielle Chynoweth, I presented a workshop on producing radio news for Free Speech Radio News (FSRN), a grassroots independent half-hour newscast available online and syndicated to over 100 stations worldwide. Please see the attachment for the training guide I wrote (geared towards Audacity, though any audio editor is appropriate). Anyone can pitch a story, headline, or feature to FSRN, and once you produce the content, FSRN pays you and includes your piece in one of its daily newscasts. I strongly recommend that other VISTAs encourage members, customers, and trainers in your organization(s) to learn and participate in FSRN as a resource for citizen journalism, media reform, smearing the digital divide, and earning income for a job well done.

I also participated in a roundtable discussion on social media presented at the University of Illinois by Chicago's Community Media Workshop (CMW), a group devoted to training news producers and journalists, and strengthening ties between media and populations in Chicago and the midwest. I recommend CMW as a useful resource to anyone working in these geographic areas. They inspired me to create a Twitter account for the IMC - simple, but necessary.

Spring was productive in even more ways at the IMC, and I organized three volunteer workdays - one for the Shows/Booking group to troubleshoot, repair, and re-organize the PA, mixer, stage, and cables; one for WRFU 104.5FM to produce new station IDs and clean and paint the studio; and another for just plain spring cleaning of the building. Along with volunteers in the Librarians and Tech working groups, Nicole and members of the Community Connections group, I setup a staffing desk with a computer workstation, IMC merchandise tables, and staff storage space in the entry to the main space of our building.

For the Production group, I offered three more workshops on video editing, wrote Terms of Use and Borrowing for our production room and public equipment, and upgraded one of our video workstations with funds we raised during the Film Festival. Finally, following Nicole's hard work to obtain summer youth (ages 14-24) positions at the IMC through the Champaign Consortium, I defined one of the positions, a WRFU Audio Trainer and Archivist, who will join us soon to produce regular on-air content, update our public affairs automation, train members on live and studio broadcast, and archive our existing audio materials.

And then there was all the planning for another major fundraiser, the IMC Fest... (see next month)

Month 6: Training, Event Planning, and More

Stephen Fonzo — Sat, 09 May 2009 04:22:08 +0000

I feel pretty bad that keeping up with these field reports has been so difficult - and because I have the flu... but that gives me some time to catch up and explain what kinds of things I've been doing at the IMC, one month at a time:

The IMC is in a college town (Champaign-Urbana), and a lot of our volunteers are students, grad students, and professors. Even though Dec-Jan was quiet, with many out of town, I had plenty to do.

The month started with an interview. To clarify, I was the one being interviewed, by two DJs whom I had trained, and whose semester project - as interns at our community radio station - had just ended. Maggie and Alex, AKA "The Amplified Librarians," asked me about all aspects of CTC VISTA, AmeriCorps service, and the Independent Media Center. It provided a great opportunity to reflect on my work and to share my observations with our listeners.

With a target date of the first IMC Film Festival looming in the near future (early February), this month was largely devoted to the intricacies of event planning. The Film Festival was something that fellow VISTA Nicole and I brainstormed earlier in the winter, and with help from our VISTA Supervisor, we solicited film submissions, arranged scheduling, format, promotion, sponsors, and a web site all in the course of a couple months. This gave me the opportunity to utilize and better acquaint myself with Drupal, as we developed the IMC Production Group and IMC Film Festival web site.

Despite the cold, empty climate, there was considerably demand for training, and I ended up delivering nine sessions to individuals or small groups, on audio editing for radio (in Audacity and Reaper); live radio broadcast; digital photo editing; field audio recording; and mastering. As much as I have wanted to stick to the goals of "training trainers," this is in part dependent on the attitudes and goals of those being trained. In our organization, in which everyone is volunteering whatever free time he or she has, most people just want to quickly be empowered with the knowledge and tools to accomplish some aspect of media or technology. They do not often have the time to train others after I have trained them. I suspect that other VISTAs in training positions have observed this scenario in their workplaces. It's not necessarily bad or good, but just the reality of working with busy and ambitious colleagues.

By the end of this period, we welcomed a new Program Development Intern to the IMC, and oriented him. I also continued to coordinate volunteers who produced IMC Video News for Urbana Public Access Television, and updated radio training materials, including a draft plan to revive IMC Radio News, which had been a successful project several years before I began my service.

Radio Nerds 2009

Megan Donovan — Mon, 04 May 2009 16:38:30 +0000

Hey there,

From March 31-April 4 I attended the NFCB (National Federation for Community Broadcasters) annual conference in Portland, OR. What struck me immediately when I arrived at the Hilton was:

1. I was one of the youngest, if not the youngest, person at this conference
2. The radio station I represent was the most illegitimate, pirate, DIY station out of any other station being represented
3. I thought I was nerdy but I barely was at all compared to these people

All the different sessions were separated into the following tracks: All, Producers, Development/Underwriting, Fundraising, Management, Youth, Community Engagement, Technology. Naturally, I chose sessions under the producers and development tracks for the most part because that is what I focus on developing in my work at ZUMIX Radio. I dabbled in a bit of everything to get a comprehensive learning experience at this conference.

The following are the sessions I attended: Interview Techniques, Strategic Planning, Marketing, Setting Up a Membership Program, Producers Shaping the Sound of Tomorrow, How Do I get more Latinos to Listen to My Station?

Generally, I found the conference to be an excellent learning experience. I was disappointed by a few of the sessions that I was counting on to be helpful, namely the marketing and getting more Latinos to listen sessions. I couldn't have expected every session to be amazing! I wished there was a session specifically geared towards getting underwriting going for a community station. Underwriting is something I have been working towards achieving for ZUMIX Radio since I began my year of service but sadly hasn't gotten much of anywhere. Bummer.

There was a field trip for conference attendees to KBOO which is a community radio station in Portland. I enjoyed this part of the conference immensely because KBOO is full of some of the most eccentric people I have ever had the pleasure of meeting, including this dude with this insanely tricked out bike:

Here is a snippet of the inside of KBOO:

My jealousy festers over their insane music library, and its color-coded organization!!!

I was invited to participate in a late night show after schmoozing with some staff people there! Sadly, none of the contacts I made followed up with any of my e-mails, the same goes for the people I met at the actual conference. Shrug. People are busy I suppose. All in all it was a great experience and a pretty cool city. I think I brought back some useful knowledge to ZUMIX and I would recommend this conference to anyone working for a community radio station. I would like to attend next year!

Month 5: Independence + Collaboration = Success

Stephen Fonzo — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 00:54:12 +0000

The past month was probably the most successful for my VISTA project so far. While this was due in no small part to the groundwork of the previous months, over the course of only the last few weeks I trained (trainers and students), recruited volunteers, made new community contacts, and produced media. I credit this productivity with a) working independently and b) communicating frequently about my work to others to involve them and get their feedback.

Mid-November started slowly, as I helped the Shows group (books concerts and events for the IMC) assume their own responsibilities, by helping to draft a new contract with the IMC Finance group, updating their Drupal site and web calendar, and training a volunteer on meeting facilitation, sound, and web/calendar administration. Having that particular group grow to be more independent and capable frees me from a lot of extra, small tasks, and saves the rest of the IMC time and effort, as well. With more time to focus on the broader goals of my assignment, I have been gradually giving closer attention to the Production group that I helped start in the summer. The Production group (site in development) manages the IMC’s media production room, loans equipment to community projects, produces original content, and offers training on multimedia. Along with Production volunteers, Nicole Pion and I started planning an IMC Film Festival for February 6-8, 2009, which will last three days and showcase a variety of genres, especially work by local/regional filmmakers, and will also include art, music, and food from local sponsoring restaurants.

Other accomplishments of the Production group, which now contains a core of six independent journalist/producers, were four new videos (a total of 3.5 hours) that we have shared with Urbana Public Television and which will also be available online at our site and YouTube channel. Coverage ranged from stories about a local activist, IMC concert footage, People’s Potluck Thanksgiving, and a Proposition 8 protest. A group of 3 volunteers filmed performances and interviews at a benefit concert for our radio station. I have also started helping the IMC’s Books to Prisoners program with a video project that they will begin shooting and editing in the New Year to highlight their presence in town, their training, and the prison libraries that they staff.

In the course of recruiting volunteers to produce new media, I did quite a bit of editing myself, especially audio, and it turns out that this is a modest source of extra income for the host organization, which makes it worthwhile. More valuable, however, is the opportunity to instruct others on how to edit. Between Shows, Production, and Books to Prisoners members, I trained three individuals who will now be ready to train others on the basics of production and got them to think about how they can utilize media technology to further their groups’ goals. Over the next few months, I will be compiling my tutorials (and other online sources) for a wiki that our VISTA supervisor Josh King is developing for the IMC (Josh has chosen Twiki, as it has revision control and is used by the global Indymedia network).

There was quite a bit of interest in learning audio recording and editing this past month, with IMC members attending a variety of public lectures, discussions, or wanting to produce their own interviews or radio commentaries. I offered a series of three one-on-one tutorials on recording field audio (using a Zoom H2); compiling a musical set list (ala the quickly arcane term, “mix tape”) for radio; and recording and editing speech for use on radio or film. I chose the free and easy Audacity for the training, and even though I know a lot of people are familiar with how to use it, I’ll attach my quick guide here just in case anyone is interested. There are many more tips and tutorials here.

The final area in which I feel I made great progress was at the IMC’s community radio station, WRFU. First, I revived the station’s Tech group, which had been inactive since before I started as a VISTA. The Tech group maintains studio equipment, updates and repairs software and Internet connectivity, and offers technical guidance for membership training. After a few e-mails about the lack of tech support, a core group of 4-6 of us decided to set up a new computer at the DJ desk, fix and label cables and mixer inputs, and begin a construction plan for more shelves, storage, and a patchbay. In September I had been responsible for training dozens of airshifters, but in the process of bringing back the Tech group, we realized that we were training more trainers (and training ourselves to be better experts and instructors at the station). Two University of Illinois graduate students in the Library Sciences department finished their radio automation and music library training manual, which I had been supervising since the fall. This manual, now available in our office next to the studio, gives DJs and tech support step-by-step instructions on how to add local music, PSAs, and other pre-produced shows to our non-live rotation, how to classify content as clean, and how to edit it if it is not clean. The system is based on ZaraRadio, iTunes, and the Juice podcast player, and the volunteers used Karen’s Directory Printer to generate a station inventory. Nicole and I visited the Library Science department for presentations on their projects and to represent the IMC, and while there we learned about other great community engagement/technology instruction programs that are going on in our town. Earlier this week the librarians even thanked me by having me on their final show of the semester for an interview about my role as a CTC VISTA.

CALLS FROM HOME

Julia Taylor — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 21:49:10 +0000

Right now I'm working on our outreach campaign for our upcoming CALLS FROM HOME national holiday radio broadcast for prisoners and their families. And, since I'm spending time getting bloggers to embed this on their sites, it seemed appropriate for me to share it here:

http://www.appalshop.org/h2h/calls/audio/Calls%20House%20Party.mp3
(listen to it! It's cool! and then make your call!)

Call 888-396-1208 on Tuesday, December 9 from 4-11pm EST to send your holiday greeting to someone who will spend the holidays in prison. Sing a song, read a poem, or share a simple holiday greeting!

check out www.thousandkites.org for more info

Month 3: “Done Too Much” – The Job Eclipses the Project

Stephen Fonzo — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 22:43:58 +0000

Month 3 (September 15-October 15) saw the growth of the IMC Production and Video News efforts that I began in the previous month. Together with other volunteers I recruited, we covered five on-location events where we recorded interviews, filmed, and took notes to share with other community journalists. We finished video previews/announcements about a local campaign to end truancy and a city Unity March that brought 150 people from different backgrounds together to support the local poor and to participate in county government. We also attended a reception for artists and art-buyers, a beer and chili festival, and a panel discussion on the challenges faced by African-American male youth. Our reputation grew as a voice of the people, and I used the opportunity to train another 15 volunteers on video editing, field audio recording, and radio broadcast.

Back at the IMC, I helped update the IMC web site by replacing old documents and language, and calling Web group meetings. I really did not do much else on the web site, though, and real credit is due to VISTA leader Josh King, who fully upgraded the site to the latest version of Drupal and also redesigned it to be more striking, effective, and bug-free. Trying to focus more on the a/v media projects at the IMC, I organized a group of Music Library volunteers to update the WRFU automation system, adding new PSAs, station IDs, and local music, and getting this database ready for publishing on our site. I continue to work with WRFU to make sure that its members can consistently produce new content for the station, and Production room maintenance and improvements are a slow part of reaching that goal. By the way, I’ll point VISTAs to ZaraRadio and SHOUTcast as good tools for community broadcast.

For several weekends, I organized volunteers in the IMC Shows group to raise funds for the IMC by sponsoring some concerts during the Pygmalion Music Festival. We packed up, set up, and tore down our PA about seven times in three or four different venues, but we got to assist and listen to some great music by local and non-local performers while getting out into the campus and raising some money for ourselves and area businesses. We played loud rock music in the middle of a clothing store – and then in a vegan restaurant, which was incidentally voted the best venue in the festival. We got to stand on stage in front of Dan Deacon when that very stage collapsed under the weight of his wild, raving audience and we worried that our speakers might not make it out alive. We were exhausted by the end of those shows and I still haven’t received our check to give to the IMC for the time, labor, and equipment.

Looming in the background of all these activities was a growing body of direct service that I was doing back at the IMC. During both September and October, I was responsible for calling meetings, taking notes, and facilitating the weekly operations of at least two IMC working groups – Shows and Production – and was often doing the same for other groups. It was ultimately the Shows group that began requiring too much from me and relying too much upon me. Since August I had been the only person administering the events/concerts calendar, responding to booking requests, reviewing contracts, and even running live sound and security at shows. Earlier this month I realized that no one else was volunteering to do these things, and that I could no longer do so, either. The more often people who came into the building associated me with the shows, the more they would come to me and write to me – instead of the group – for their requests, both big and small, while the other members of the group stopped showing up, or when they did show up, made such a mess of things technically and figuratively that I had to fix things or respond to angry “customers.” It was annoying on one level and aggravating on another, especially because it prevented me from focusing on developing media training curriculum and building community teams. As recently as one week ago, I found it harder to get project goals done at work than I did at home, because I was distracted by requests unrelated to my position, and I found it to be a very different and more negative interaction with the public than our video news outings.

Perhaps it was merely the long summer-like weather that kept everyone active and busy through the end of September and beginning of October – so busy that I found myself taking on the tasks of other volunteers at the IMC, which seriously cut into my VISTA project work. Overall, it was a good month if for no other reason than I learned a valuable lesson and communicated my frustration with my organization in a way that was well received and constructive.

The problem stems from an admirable philosophical commitment to volunteering at the IMC. There is hardly staff, decisions are made in consensus, and groups organize themselves around common goals and skills. So, what happens when a non-profit with no staff suddenly gets “staff” members (two VISTAs)? The new staff are asked to do everything from answer visitor requests in the office, to file leases and contracts and burn bulk copies of DVDs – because we’re there and no one else is, since everyone else is just a volunteer and shows up when they feel like doing so. Nevermind that we are also volunteers, that we are not being paid employee wages, and that we have specific long-term projects that ought to take up a major portion of our time.

None of this is really the fault of the IMC, but has more to do with group dynamics and my offering up too many of my services. Ultimately, I noticed this well enough in advance, and had the support of people like Josh and Nicole, to address the issues before they became too difficult to manage. I imagine that other VISTAs have had similar experiences in their organizations; do not be afraid to politely but firmly tell people what your job is and what it is not, especially when they are unloading a lot of their tasks, hopes, and expectations onto you.

Month 2: Out in the community already (“Hi public, we’re the media… but you can trust us.”)

Stephen Fonzo — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 20:53:20 +0000

I am submitting two reports at once this time. The past two months were so busy that there was little time to reflect or to write about what was going on.

During the second month at my organization, I delved further into media training and started an active video news project with some volunteers. Most of my work this month was interactive and in the community, so in contrast to my plans, I did not have much time to write training manuals. A notable exception was authoring a revised Airshifter Handbook for WRFU 104.5-LP, our community radio station, with an extra manual on remote/live broadcast and streaming radio. The last version of the handbook had been written two or three years ago, and lacked a discussion of the goals of the organization or a studio checklist for DJs new to the radio. After talking with the Station Manager, we realized that a new handbook alone would not have much effect unless we also scheduled small group training sessions so we could discuss the social, legal, and technical aspects of running a community radio show. Our efforts were successful and now WRFU has an established program for orienting new DJs and getting new shows on the air, while respecting the needs and goals of the IMC as a whole, which includes other groups beyond the radio station.

One of those other groups is IMC Production, a volunteer group that I helped create in order to carry on and combine the legacies of the separate Video and Radio News groups that ceased to exist around two years ago. Simply put, all the IMC groups make sure that some different aspect of independent media is alive, productive, and engaged with the local population. Production is here to create audio-visual content for the community and for other groups, and to provide the facilities and personnel to make this possible. While our work to improve the studio is slow, in only my second month as a VISTA, we were able to initiate IMC Video News. IMC Video News actively searches for local or regional stories that are not being covered by other stations, goes out on-site to interview and shoot, and then edits and produces short-length film for distribution online and on Urbana Public Television. Even though others in the IMC look to us for technical multimedia advice, we spend far more time interacting with the public than sitting in front of computer screens editing. This has turned out to be very beneficial for our organization’s outreach and public relations, because we are listening to – and publishing – voices that others are ignoring.

In September, we produced segments on a Greenpeace Solar-Powered Concert (where I ran the mixer, too – next to a solar panel the size of a roof) and the closing of Illinois State Parks. We also assisted with an Iraq Veterans Against the War forum on post-traumatic stress disorder (for UPTV) and re-published the local Books to Prisoners’ Our Volunteer Experience film online. A sample of our work to date can be accessed on our new UC-IMC YouTube Channel. To get this project going, we have been using Adobe Premiere, but we will be expanding to incorporate more open-source software for editing. Two open-source/freeware video utilities that have been crucial to my work here have been Handbrake and MP4CAM2AVI. Of course, Audacity is a robust, simple, and reliable solution for audio editing that I would recommend to anyone and which most people seem to know, anyway. Though not technically free (you can use it for free with no features suspended or get a license for $50), I recommend Windows’ Reaper for multi-track audio editing and sequencing because it is easy, allows for flexible routing, comes with high-quality processing built-in, and accepts most free or commercial VST and DirectX plugins.

It doesn’t end there, though. The Sunlight Foundation webinar that I scheduled between members of WRFU, Production, and Public i (the IMC’s independent newspaper) was a small event, but so useful that I am posting the links here for CTC VISTAs to view. Bill Allison guided us through an overwhelming tour of websites that allow any citizen with Internet access to closely investigate the finances, bills, and records of members in the United States Congress, as well as information on lobbyists, federal contracts, and elections. Obviously, these types of topics and data are of great interest to journalist and media organizations like mine in the IndyMedia network, but this set of links provides another set of tools that all community organizers can use to bridge the digital divide and help the groups they are working with attain greater access to knowledge and the political process in their states and in the nation:

Congresspedia
OpenCongress.org
GovTrack.us
Senate.gov
Federal Election Commission
Sunlight Media Services - This deserves a special note for technology users/junkies: widgets with updated political and congressional data that you can embed in a web site or blog.
Politicker.com
OpenSecrets.org
Fortune535
FedSpending.org
TaxPayer.net

Finally, when even progressive mainstream media does not address all the questions your community may be asking:
DemocracyNow.org
Pacifica.org

I hope some of you find these links useful in your own VISTA work. Between radio, video, and live events, I trained around 30 individuals in the second month and identified many new resources that have helped me and others. Meanwhile, I got inundated with direct service… but I’ll save that story for the month 3 report.

Yesterday had to be the coolest day on the job yet. And it was a Sunday!

Abigail Wendle — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 15:52:22 +0000

As part of my job as the Community Journalism Coordinator for MAIN, I will be reporting, writing and producing a local news show on our radio station, wpvm 103.5 fm. In order to prepare for this, I have been sitting in on other people’s radio programs to get a feel for the studio and to observe how to use the equipment. Last week I was invited to sit in by the hosts of a program called Wordplay, a show devoted to poetry and creative writing. I have been reading and writing poetry for as long as I can remember so, as you can imagine, I was very excited about this opportunity!
As luck would have it, one of the hosts was out for the day because of a family reunion, so the other host emailed me on Friday asking me to bring a poem along that I enjoy as well as some music I’ve been listening to. I spent Saturday hunting through the poetry books on my bookshelf trying to figure out who to read. I settled on an old love of mine, Pablo Neruda, and chose to read “Fable of the mermaid and the drunks” and “Ode to the sea.” I also picked some Paul Simon and brought a cd of some friends of mine to play.
It went really well. I was extremely nervous about being live on air, but once I got into the poetry and grew more comfortable with the headset and the mic, I really didn’t want to leave the studio!

In other preparations for our news program, I have been cultivating a small group of Ashevillians who will be community journalists along my side. I have been attending community meetings including a CopWatch meeting and a Coalition of Asheville Neighborhoods meeting, where I have given brief presentations on MAIN’s community journalism project.
I have attended various protests and vigils in downtown Asheville to test out my recording equipment and practice audio editing. I have also taught some of the core group of reporters how to use this equipment and held mock interviewing sessions followed by learning how to edit.
I have also signed up MAIN to be involved in Project Connect, an event held in Asheville to unite the homeless community with resources in the city. I will be there with my recorder conducting interviews to be compiled on MAIN’s web page, to be aired at some point in some form or fashion as part of the news program, as well as to be used by the Homeless Initiative of Asheville as documentation of the plight of the homeless in our city. We are hoping this material can be used to advocate for the homeless at City Council meetings and the like when politicians make decisions on things like housing and development in Asheville.
I have also been sitting down with one of the web development staffers to learn more about how to redevelop MAIN’s web page so as to incorporate the community journalism project. This has been an interesting process because I really have not had any of this kind of technical training or experience, but Chris has been extremely patient and supportive!
I am in the process of researching organizations that support local independent media or help to explain the phenomenon on community journalism. I have found these sites:
J-Lab : www.j-lab.org
J-Learning : www.j-learning.org
Knight Citizen News Network : www.kcnn.org
Center for Citizen Media: www.citmedia.org
Center for Future Civic Media (C4FCM) at MIT: http://civic.mit.edu
Citizen Media: Fad or the Future of News? http://www.kcnn.org/research/citizen_media_report/

other cool sites: www.wordpress.org and www.archive.org

In my down time, I have been reading a lot of local news and listening to local news programs on the radio. I have also done research on genetically modified foods, development and the housing crisis, and the ecological crisis in Patagonia (kind of off topic, but every thing's connected in the end). Part of this job has to do with rethinking how we frame stories and trying to create new ways of framing stories that help create dialogs in the community about important issues like (over) development, homelessness, the abuse of power (cop watch), but also to help empower people with information and create an awareness in Asheville that will allow people to create a better (and talk about what that means) city.

On an odd note, I found myself with a pen and a beer in my hand at a friends house, ripping apart a local magazine advertising all of the beautiful mountain top, golf course, huge housing developments surrounding Asheville. It's really cool to have a job that encourages me to read the fine print and tell other people about it!

Hope everyone else is getting along well. Finances aside, I'm pretty happy at this point.

p.s. I'm figuring out how to get the WordPlay media in here. It will probably be in an above post.

Abby