The Anatomy of Hitting the New Media Radar
Today I got two links from some of the leaders of the New Media movement -- Rebecca MacKinnon & David Weinberger. Here's how it happened. Last week, I had a chance to bounce some of my ideas about citizen journalism with Rebecca MacKinnon at the Online Social Networking conference. We went back and forth, and I got her attention. I wanted to follow up with her this past Wednesday, but she got swamped with other things including a conference at the Nieman Foudnation called "Whose News?"
I didn't hear about this conference in time to submit a proposal, and I wasn't invited since I've been operating underneath the radar screen of the major spheres of influence.
This morning, I was reading through the various blog entries about the conference here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. I was trying to keep tabs on the conference, and attempting to pitch in by making comments in various places. I was a bit frustrated with hearing the same perspectives on blogging and journalism, and I made an effort to make getting some of my perspectives heard in this closed conference.
Seems a bit odd that this conference about "Whose News?" is pretty closed to outside input -- Is this an implicit answer to their question of who the news belongs to? Conference participant and blogger Hally Suitt seems to think so.
Anyway, I sent Rebecca a long e-mail this morning listing everything that I was doing with The Echo Chamber Project, and then she posted a blog entry soliciting comments from the public to be included in the conference discussion. I posted a comment to her site, and then she posted my New Media Ecosystem chart that introduced to her at the Online Social Networking Conference, and the graphic that I sent to her last week. Then I got a plug from David Weinberger, and I realized that MacKinnon did more with her blog post than anything else she could've done at the conference.
These two blog links are near the top of blogospheric foodchain when it comes to New Media and citizen journalist issues, and these are more important than whatever the centralized centers of journalistic and media power think of my ideas.
What sucks is that I'm right in the midst of converting my site over to CivicSpace in order to actually implement the New Media Ecosystem, and I was hoping to get converted over before links to the site started spreading like wild flowers because all of my URLs will probably be changing soon. Oh well. Better that it happen too early and before I'm ready for it than never happening -- that's the way it goes. Anyone interested can sign up over at http://www.echochambermovie.com since I'm setting up Drupal there and will move it back to this domain when it's ready.
I've been working with Moshe Weitzman who is a Drupal developer and has been very gracious in helping me getting everything up and running. Weitzman responded to a plea that I gave on the CivicSpace discussion boards a while ago.
I'm hoping that this blip on the New Media radar screen will help attract some more advisors -- Right now I just have Dr. Andrew Cline of Rhetorica.net, Brian Newman of National Video Resources, and Adam Leonard of Ken Wilber's Integral Institute.
This will also help with other logistical resources that I'll need like support from journalistic institutions, legal advice on open source issues, and more volunteer Drupal / CivicSpace developers.
These links are a great thing for this project and for the sake of transparency, openness, and honesty being reintroduced into the civic discourse.
The introduction of critical thinking skills into popular culture has the potential to change the demand for infotainment from the bottom-up, and provide viable business models for hard-hitting investigative reporting.
If The Echo Chamber documentary can provide a proof-of-concept of intelligent investigative reporting that defies traditional media logic, then these large institutions will follow the trends and our society wins in the end.
