On May 24th, 2006, community media and network neutrality supporters came together for a national Day of Out(R)age to protest efforts by giant telecommunications companies to take away local control of media and create a less open Internet.

(To learn more about the nationwide protests in San Francisco, Chicago, and New York on that day, visit Save Access. To learn more about the events in Boston on that day, read this report (w/video) from Andy Carvin)

Three years later, the big telecos are back. But this time they have another strategy – to change the laws one state at a time.

The new video service provider on the block (aka, Verizon), also the current Internet provider in Massachusetts, wants to make it more difficult for local officials to negotiate franchise agreements with video service providers within a reasonable period of time.

Cambridge Community Television (where I work) writes more about the details of the Verizon-supported legislation (House Bill No. 3765 and Senate Bill No. 1531, An Act Promoting Consumer Choice and Competition) soon to be decided on Beacon Hill:

Verizon’s proposed bill is harmful to cities and towns. It includes a shot clock provision where communities must act upon a new cable television license as follows:

A. Within 10 DAYS of receipt of an application, a city or town shall begin negotiations with the carrier, regardless of the city or town’s ability to identify its basic negotiations needs in such a short period of time.

B. Within 90 DAYS of receipt of an application, a city or town shall hold a public hearing on the financial, technical, and other qualifications to operate a cable television system.

C. Within FIVE DAYS of the public hearing, the city or town shall either approve or deny the application. If approved, a final license document must be issued within those five days! Issuing a final license document within five days of a hearing is obviously unfair and unreasonable.

This is a bad bill, written BY AND FOR one company without adequately balancing the needs of cities and towns in the Commonwealth. The current licensing law protects the needs of cities and towns to enter into thoughtful and meaningful negotiations.

The impact of this legislation could be devastating for local control of media.

Visit Open Mass to read more about House Bill No. 3765 – “relative to choice and competition for cable service” and Senate Bill No. 1531 – “for legislation to promote consumer choice and competition for cable service.”

To show your support for community media in Massachusetts on July 22, CCTV writes:

What YOU can do:
1. Come with other CCTV members and staff to the State House to show your opposition to this bill. Meet at CCTV on Wednesday, July 22 at 9AM to travel by Red Line to the State House, or meet us in Room A-1 at 10AM. You need not testify – just showing up will help to make the point that citizens of the Commonwealth do not want this legislation.

2. Send an email or letter to the senators and representatives on the Joint Telecommunications Committee – a list of their names and addresses and a sample letter is attached.

3. Make sure that your state representatives and senators, and City Councilors, know that you want them to oppose this legislation – send them copies of your letters and emails – their addresses are also attached.

4. Please send copies of any correspondence to CCTV, 675 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139. info@cctvcambridge.org

If you care about free speech and local control of our media system, then I hope you will join us on July 22, 2009 at 10AM in Boston to show your support and stand with us once again.

(Photo above by Steve Garfield available on Flickr under a Creative Commons license)

Click to play

(Video by Maria Burns Ortiz via Blip.tv)

Yesterday morning, I checked CCTV (where I work)’s website and found a story reported by Maria Burns Ortiz for NeighborMedia about the bomb scare in Harvard Square. I quickly posted the link to CCTV’s Twitter feed and went about the rest of my day.

Today, when I checked back on NeighborMedia, I noticed that Maria had also uploaded video (above) to her post along with photos taken by Eric Ortiz, who contributed to the report.

In doing some follow-up searches about the coverage via Twitter and Google, I noticed that Maria’s story had been picked up on Universal Hub, Cambridge Chronicle and Bostonist.

Needless to say, I was excited to see how these community sites found Maria’s story and linked to it to help provide context for their own reporting. This was an excellent example of how community news, both professional and citizen journalism, on the web can work together to help bring a physical community the news.

I’m excited to announce that I’m producing a special live television program tomorrow night, entitled “We Report, We Decide: Civic Media’s Impact on Mainstream News” on Cambridge Community Television.

The program will go live at 7pm on Channel 10 and will also be webcast. Unfortunately, our live webstream is not entirely sturdy, so I hope to provide live updates using my Twitter feed during the evening.  Video from the event will be available on our website and at the Center for Future Civic Media at MIT later in the week.

I want to thank the speakers and crew in advance of the production for volunteering their time and efforts on this important and timely discussion.

The second year of our NeighborMedia program at CCTV kicked off on October 8th. Three returning participants from last year’s program and nine new participants will take part in this year’s program.

Many of the new participants are currently taking classes at CCTV in areas such as video production, audio journalism, and new media production. We are also offering a course in digital photography specifically for NeighborMedia participants. The next few months are considered a training period for participants before they are expected to produce stories using our website and our cable channels.

Interestingly, many of our new participants are also current or former professional print and photo journalists. Many got involved in our NeighborMedia program because of the changes taking place in their respective industries. I have learned that many print and photo journalists are expected to have multimedia production experience. As a result, they are finding our program at CCTV to be a perfect fit based on their interests, needs, and trends taking place.

I am excited that these folks are finding a home at CCTV to gain these new skills. At the same time, I am also excited that those participants with little to no journalism background can participate on the same playing field. I am looking forward to watching how this blend of professional and citizen journalism will develop over the coming year.

I’ve also set up a NeighborMedia Facebook group where those involved in the program can share their stories online. I hope this space will also provide an opportunity online for others to participate in the conversation.

I am excited to announce that the second year of NeighborMedia (a New Voices Grantee) is getting started next week. We’re having an orientation at CCTV next Wednesday to welcome this year’s group of up and coming citizen journalists who will be sharing their stories about issues that matter to them and others in Cambridge.

Some of the individuals in the program come from professional journalism backgrounds and others do not have any experience producing media at all. This is why I am most excited about this group. They also share a common trait. They care passionately about local issues and want to express their views with others in Cambridge. All of them live, or have lived, in the community and can speak about their experiences in a way that uniquely separates them from many of the freelance journalists employed by our regional media conglomerates.

At a time when news organizations are investing large sums of money to retrain their staff to do more with social media tools, community media centers such as CCTV are uniquely positioned to help ordinary people have a voice using new and traditional media tools.

That’s why I feel so privileged to have the opportunity to help lead this important effort. I am thankful for the foundation that Julie Adler and my other co-workers established during the first year of the program. The evaluations conducted at the end of the first year (over this summer) were invaluable towards the planning and coordination of this year’s program. We’re excited to get started next week, and I hope you will follow their progress at NeighborMedia.org.

(This is a cross-post – with a different title – from here)

A few weeks ago, I spoke with Jared M. Gordon from NewEnglandFilm.com. He was doing a piece about the Flip Mino cameras and contacted me to learn more about how we’re using them here at CCTV.

The article, entitled “Three Filmmakers, Three Cameras” is now online at their website. Here’s a bit from the article:

“What projects are you currently putting together?

During this year I’ve been the project manager of what we call Bridging the Digital Divide. We’re putting computers and Internet access into the hands of people who need it the most in Cambridge. Another project, the Neighbor Media Program, is a citizen journalism program (neighbormedia.org) in which ordinary community folks are reporting on local news. A lot of what will be involved segues into the Flip Mino…

Tell me about your experience with your current camera of choice. What sort of work have you done with it?

We’ll be distributing [Flip Minos] to neighbor media journalists on a monthly basis. They’ll take them out, hopefully use it to cover stories, and we provide support, training, and all kinds of production skills that can help augment their stories. Some journalists weren’t ready for the advanced cameras and they wanted an easier way to start involving themselves in media production. We bought the Flips for that purpose, then realized that we could use them for our summer institute (youth program).

I have spent enough time to get to know some of its quirks, what it’s good for and what it’s not good for. For the money and for what it is, it’s absolutely worth it. It’s a cool little camera.”

Read more at NewEnglandFilm.com.

After my final class of Videoblogging Production last night, I’m already thinking about how I can do things differently next time. Thanks to my students who provided precious feedback about the course, I’ve decided to organize the sessions much more practically. For example, I’m thinking that the three sessions should be organized as follows:

• Session I: Shoot
• Session II: Edit
• Session III: Upload

This probably seems obvious for folks with experience. My intent with the last course was to focus more on storytelling and less on editing. However, I found that students were interested more on editing to help the storytelling apects of their pieces. So, next time I think I will re-focus the course to follow in a more natural progression.

In the meantime, I posted a link on my CCTV blog about how to capture stills (image above) from a Flip Mino Video camera using QuickTime Pro.

Also, here are two of the finished video blog posts for the course, one by Paula Cohen and another by Susan Needleman.

I look forward to teaching the course again in the fall.

Click to play video (QuickTime)

On Monday, June 16 CCTV is hosting an event featuring the work of the citizen journalists involved in our NeighborMedia program. The first year is coming to a close and we’ll soon be accepting applications from Cambridge residents interested in getting involved in the program for ’08-’09. More info online here.

More info about the event here.

From Zip Docs:

“Odd Fellows Hall and Dance Complex: a video on the history and use of a historic old building in Central Square, Cambridge. A production by members of the ZIPDOCS class at CCTV: Inéz Eizmendi, Liza Zvereva, Irina Danilova and Laureano Batista. Music by Brazilian Touch.”

It’s been an amazing couple of months working in my new role at CCTV as Community Media Coordinator. I’ve been involved with an amazing project to connect people with the tools, skills and knowledge to become empowered within a network society. I’ve taught two really fun classes on blogging and participatory media. And I’ve met some incredible people from Cambridge and beyond who have volunteered their time and efforts to create a stronger and more welcoming community at CCTV.

Now it’s time to finish my thesis and begin the work of graduating from Emerson in May. I have an enormous amount of work ahead of me but I am ready for the challenge ahead. I am cutting back my hours at work to concentrate on my thesis and the remaining work for my classes. I’m a bit freaked but I know that’s probably natural.

OK, here we go . . .