Dan Gillmor, director of the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism & Mass Communication has a timely article up over at Salon.
Gillmor asks “What should we call the people who are creating valuable new information in the new-media ecosystem?” and then tries on and casts off various ideas before concluding:
We are all creating media. Any one of us can, and many of us will, commit an act of journalism. We may contribute to the journalism ecosystem once, rarely, frequently or constantly. How we deal with these contributions — deciding to try one, what we do with what we’ve created, and how the rest of us use what’s been created — is going to be complex and evolving. But it’s the future.
This is basically the point of my recent Open Letter to Chuck Strome in which I posited that Talk of the Sound is media whether he or anyone else in our local government or school board like it. In the United States, where we have a First Amendment, it is not up to bureaucrats to pick and choose who is or is not media. The only reasonable criteria upon which to exclude a particular reporter or publication would be one of logistics. If an event has room for 20 reporters and 30 wish to attend the first effort should be to find a larger space but that not being available then selecting the 10 to be excluded should be a function of their audience — larger publications and those that maybe more niche regularly cover the subject at hand should be given preference. If there are no logistical issues then all 30 should be allowed in to cover the event.
There is no capacity issue when it comes to sending out emails with press releases or information on media availabilities and yet for 18 months, the City of New Rochelle has pointedly refused to include Talk of the Sound when press releases are mailed out to other media outlets in the area. And this is not based on some animosity built up over the past two years because this policy was established at a time when Talk of the Sound rarely covered City Hall issues (we were initially more focused on the Board of Education). Rather, this decision was based on a specific incident described in my “Open Letter” in which the City Manager made clear that he would not “cooperate” with Talk of the Sound unless I agreed to grant him “prior review” of articles. In other words, the City of New Rochelle is going to be make things as difficult as possible for news outlets that dare to publish or broadcast stories that the City officials do not like. This might then explain a great deal as to why there is so little media coverage of New Rochelle beyond press release puffery. Consider that Channel 12 News is part of Cablevision which must obtain permission from the City of New Rochelle to operate in New Rochelle, that the Sound & Town Report and the Journal News are “official” papers which are paid by the City to run official notices, and that WVOX depends heavily on access to City and School officials for its drive time radio interviews and advertising revenue from “partners” with the City of New Rochelle such as Cappelli Enterprises.
The Communications Director, Kathy Gilwit, has gone so far as to claim that she does not have any sort of list of who gets press releases yet somehow outlets like the Journal News and Sound & Town magically publish such press releases and Channel 12 News or WVOX mysteriously appear at press availabilities like the United Water press conference at City Hall. How much effort does it take to add an email address to an email address book group? Five seconds? Three? And why not do it? You will be hard pressed to find a single government agency, non-profit or business with a press list that will not happily add anyone and everyone to that list. After all, the purpose is to get a message out as far and wide as possible.
The other day on WVOX, Bob Marrone joined the summer interns on their hour radio show to discuss my Open Letter. I have asked them to get a copy of the show since I only caught the last 20 minutes but for the part I heard there was some rather bizarre comments. Some of the comments were to the effect that it was arrogant of me to insist that Talk of the Sound be get press releases and other notices like any other media outlet and defended the government’s “right” to exclude Talk of the Sound. If this is the mindset of young people who aspire to work as journalists in this country then we are all in trouble. I have never made the case that Talk of the Sound should be part of some select, favored group who gets access to press releases but rather that anyone who wants them should get access to press releases. There are, after all, public documents, produced on the public dime and are not considered “protected” or “secret” under the Freedom of Information Law. They are intended to be made public. The fact is that Talk of the Sound is likely to publish every single press release whereas
What is even more sad is the silence from other media outlets. Except for Hezi Aris at the Yonkers Tribune and Bob Marrone on WVOX, not a single media outlet has spoken out on this issue. Channel 12 News, Journal News and other local media should be first in line publicly demanding that Talk of the Sound be treated the same as every other outlet. Given the cowed nature of the local media, I do not expect that of them for the very simple reason that the fact that they are getting press releases and various announcement on press availabilities means they have already agreed to play by Chuck’s rules which largely explains why you see absolutely zero investigative reporting from any of them.
The real purpose of the City Manager — and the Superintendent of Schools — is to withhold something they imagine to be valuable. Locked in the mindset of a media paradigm that has creased to exist, they are under the delusion that by not including Talk of the Sound on their press list they can delegitimize or discredit Talk of the Sound and so the converse, that to add Talk of the Sound to their press list somehow gives legitimacy to Talk of the Sound we would otherwise not have. The lunacy of this position is made apparent by the fact that Talk of the Sound is almost always the only media outlet at Board of Education meetings, IDA meetings and other events and the only one the regularly publishes articles, photos and video from these meetings. Further, that while the Journal News has been firing people left and right and the Sound and Town Report is cutting back to twice a month, Talk of the Sound is flourishing. Lastly, that City Council members and School Board members are, largely, hypocrites who rise before every meeting to pledge allegiance to the American flag and then turn around and spit on the Constitution.