Beyond Broadcast: A Report from the Conference

A segment from a map of the blogosphere from the Beyond Broadcast conference.

On June 17, 2008, I attended the 3rd Annual Beyond Broadcast Conference, titled “Mapping Public Media,” at American University. It was organized by the Center for Social Media and ran at the beginning of the week of SILVERDOCS Film Festival and Conference.

Since the event was so well-documented (see the conference organizers’ incredibly comprehensive report), I’m not going to attempt to re-cap the day here -- instead I will use this space to share some comments from conference participants.

I came to the conference with a set of ideas I wanted explore -- both out of my passion for studying media and also out of a more personal quest to envision a healthy, sustainable career path in documentary/media. Here are some of my initial questions:

How are people earning a living in this ever-changing world of media convergence?

What role does public media play in our evolving demographic picture?

I entered the lecture hall and walked to a seat towards the front, slowly taking note of all the participants actively checking email and Facebook and twittering about on their laptops. I didn’t think this represented a lack of respect towards the presenter, but highlighted how our attention is shifting, and illustrated the ability of a tech-savvy audience eager to thrive with multiple sensory inputs.

Early in the day we heard from Chaacha Mwita, training director at Media Focus on Africa Foundation, based in Nairobi. He shared stories of how mobile phone technology has become an essential form of political media, gathering and disseminating information in Kenya that is absent in the media. What I found most moving was when he explained that “nomads looking for pasture and water in arid landscapes are using SMS technology to tell one another about where to find water, grass, etc. Whereas radio technology did nothing, mobile telephony did a lot for these people.”

During a break, I had a nice chat with a representative of the Census Bureau. We discussed its mission and challenges, and I shared with him my frustrations about the ethnic/racial categories in Census data collection. What a shame that over the history of the Census we’ve collected data on people based on skin color, and not on nation of origin or other cultural definers. He agreed, recognizing that even his own ancestry is not represented in the Census data collection.

Throughout the day, people explored concepts like: shifting the focus of participatory media, citizen participatory media, evolving business models, community engagement, shifting relations between producer, aggregator, station and audience, community healing, and media as a trusted guide.

In the afternoon, there was a panel called "Mapping the Money" where Ernest J. Wilson, Walter Annenberg chair in communication and dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California, summed up the seriousness of the situation, “We are in real trouble, and this is not going to be solved only in public broadcasting…newspaper people are shell shocked, they are letting 1,500 to 2,000 employees go per year." He challenged the conference participants to take greater responsibility for the media environment, “If you in this room don’t get it right, democracy will suffer.”

Wilson also spoke of focusing next year’s Beyond Broadcast on international perspectives -- a kind of sharing that I think could generate great new models.

Read each of the interviews with some community media leaders I met at Beyond Broadcast -- each committed to a separate aspect of public media.

Pete Tridish from the Prometheus Radio Project

Kevin Weston from New American Media

Ivan Sigal from the United States Institute of Peace