Resource:
The Media Consortium
- Links: Website | Consortium Report | Twitter | Facebook
- People: Jo Ellen Green Kaiser
- Tags: Audience Development, Business Models, Co-op, Collaboration, Infrastructure, Media Consortium, Sustainability
The Media Consortium is a network of the country’s leading independent journalism organizations. We support smart, powerful and passionate journalism that redefines American political and cultural debate. The Media Consortium is creating a solid cooperative infrastructure that will serve a 21st-century audience and offer a sustainable future for independent media. Millions of Americans are looking for honest, fair, and accurate journalism-We’re finding new ways to reach them. Our strategy has three focal points: Making Connections, Building Infrastructure, and Amplifying Our Voice.
Making Connections
Through meetings and collaboratively built projects, The Media Consortium enables our members to build relationships, strategize, and constructively work together to reinvent the independent media sphere.Building Infrastructure
We’re analyzing who reads, watches and listens to our members’ work so that we can reach millions more Americans looking for honest journalism. We’re making joint investments in training, technology-sharing, advertising, promotions and learning how to communicate effectively with one another.Amplifying Our Voice
It’s time to do together what we can not do alone. The Media Consortium seeks to fulfill the role of media in a democracy. We’re strengthening a vibrant, fact-based community of independent journalism producers that educate, inform and engage citizens to create the world to which we all aspire.” Source: The Media Consortium
The Journalism Accelerator is not responsible for the content we post here, as excerpts from the source, or links on those sites. The JA does not endorse these sites or their products outright but we sure are intrigued with what they’re up to.
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6 comments so far.
If you don’t mind me asking, what resources and/or networks are you pulling from for the bulk of your content?
Hi pdxliveandlocal – We’re constantly looking for information, ideas, tools, experiences, experiments, research, etc. that we think may be useful to the broad journalism community generally, and innovators in particular. We welcome suggestions. If you’re wondering specifically about the Media Consortium – we’ll tip Jo Ellen to check this thread out. Thanks, Emily
I’m very intrigued by this project. I find that finding terse and unbiased news is (ironically) becoming more, not less difficult. How exactly is your organization defining what is “honest, fair and accurate journalism?”
Hey, the quote is from old material–I’m going to help JA update it. We would no longer use that phrase “honest, fair and accurate” (mainly because it sounds too Fox-y). I can’t speak for the 50 outlets that make up our network, but I can say that as an organization we are passionate about journalism that reports the what, where, when–this is the basis for the claim that we care about being honest, fair and accurate. However, as an organization, we also look for the how and why. We don’t believe there is such a beast as unbiased journalism, so we suggest media be clear and transparent about the context as their reporters understand it.
The David Weinberger quote being tossed around is “Transparency is the new objectivity”, which is a good way of saying objectivity doesn’t exist, so do your best to be transparent about where you’re coming from.
Even that has some issues as no journalist can be completely transparent about everything, in part because there can be safety issues, and also because journalists are human beings with flaws that can be blown out of proportion by those who have interests in keeping them silent.
I prefer to say integrity is the new objectivity. Have integrity as a person when you report by being honest and representing all sides to an issue. Be willing to admit mistakes and keep your articles alive and updated as times change and new information comes along.
The world is getting smaller and we all live in public now 🙂 It’s both scary and exciting.
Integrity as objectivity, that’s a nice way of thinking about it. It’s a shame that certain news organizations use “news” to shackle people instead of freeing them from potentially hazardous ignorance pockets. It’s a platitude, but knowledge certainly is power. Some people try to impart that power back to our community and some try to wield it as a commercial weapon against their own people. I would assume you’re talking about the former when you use the word “integrity.” Thank you for the thoughtful reply.