Is it not a little odd that the same pundits who were disastrously wrong five years ago about the war in Iraq are still in the pundit business? If you never even thought about the question–well, that’s part of what the media reform movement is about. Have you ever been in a room where more than half the hands go up when the moderator asks who in the room is a blogger? If not–well, that’s part of the media reform movement, too. Those were just two aspects of the discussion at the National Confernece for Media Reform over the weekend.

If you define movement as a broad cross-section of folks concerned about approximately the same set of issues, there’s a national media reform movement for sure. But if you define a movement as a unified set of groups or individuals working together for a common goal, then maybe we still have a ways to go. Read the rest of this entry »

In Minneapolis at the National Conference for Media Reform:

A crew for Fox News is in the room at a conference breakout, and Robert Greenwald of Brave New Films is not letting them get away with just picking up B-Roll background footage and sound. Greenwald calls for the crowd to turn toe tables on Fox–by everyone with a camera getting in the crew’s face and take pictures of them (they do, it’s fun).

This is not your usual conference. More than half the room are bloggers, and the rest are on Facebook. Hamish Campbell from Wales, who has been on a working vacation in the U.S., introduced himself as working for a group that, like the Workshop provides communication training and coaching. His group, Undercurrents, specifically offers coaching around storytelling and techniques for using video. He’d been planning to edit his video using power from his solar panels but they’re not working. How cool is that? Read the rest of this entry »