Press Pass

Jason Daniels, the executive director of Easton Community Access Television, found a way to get me and two of my students into the National Conference for Media Reform for free. All the students  had to do was agree to shoot one of the seminars as part of pool coverage of the event. All I had to do was serve as chaperone, but I still managed to get my first official press pass. The host of the conference was freepress.net whose main cause is "net neutrality"-the idea that this blog and commercial sites should have similar access to getting on the Internet, but the overall theme of the conference was the changing nature of media and journalism in America. By the way, this blog passes for journalism today although a book I bought at the conference suggests that blogs are passé, and we should be meeting on Facebook. Hey, at least my readership is going up unlike the Herald.

The seminar we covered was Big News in Boston: The State of Boston Media. The panel discussion was moderated by Carly Carioli of the Boston Phoenix and included representatives from WGBH, WBUR, the Boston Globe, El Planeta, and the Dorchester Reporter. Don't want to say too much about the panel since we will be broadcasting it on ECAT. However, there were plenty of fireworks-WBUR fought with WGBH about poaching audience members when 'GBH radio switched to all news last year. The two smaller papers fought with the Globe over ethnic and neighborhood coverage. Caleb Solomon of the Globe outlined the new for-pay service that the Globe is starting on the Internet and I will talk about that a little. The boston.com website is a hub of Boston information on the Internet. The Globe has decided to split it in two. The new for-pay version (bostonglobe.com) will look more like a newspaper with easy navigation of content provided by the Globe's top reporters. If you're getting your Globe at the end of your driveway as you're rushing off to work instead of in your door when you're having breakfast like you used to, this may be the way to go. (Maggie reminds me she still needs the real paper for the times I'm not around to take her out, and I admit I take pleasure in leaving Dan Shaughnessy's sport's columns face up!) The free site will remain boston.com. It will contain local  navigation information, all the newspaper's sports stories, access to 60-70 blogs, headline news, and the five top stories from the paper-perhaps all you need if you have become your own editor of stories from the web. Many people suspected this was not going to work as a revenue generator and feared what it might do to the actual physical newspaper.

One concern that I came away from the conference with relates to the difference between niche news organizations and broadcasting. I attended a second seminar on media education which highlighted the techniques that advertisers use to hook customers. A second message there was now that broadcast news was entertainment these manipulative techniques are being used by the likes of Fox News and Rush Blimpbaugh. Meanwhile, the Boston media was patting itself on the back about narrowcasting to microaudiences. The reporter from El Planeta touted her coverage of the Latino community in East Boston for instance-Hispanics talking to Hispanics. So the right wing gets to manipulate millions while the left wing breaks into tiny groups that only talk to themselves-no wonder the revolution has been postponed indefinitely.

After filming the seminar, inquiring reporters Brian Wright and Bobby Miller began filming interviews to add to the ECAT program. I interviewed Carly Carioli of the Phoenix, and an interesting promoter of a magazine called Orion (more on that in a later blog). The guys talked to representatives of the Harvard Crimson and Al Jazeera (OK, I had to explain Al Jazeera after I got the question "Who is he?"), but after a little prep, the guys did great. Al, the Arab News Network, is coming to American cable with an English version as well as having a high tech web presence. The boys also got an interview with a Leslie professor that attended our seminar and apparently had something to do with founding the band Rush. It should make for interesting TV at ECAT. Thanks Jason, Brian, and Bobby-you make me wish I was still going to be teaching next year!