Twin Cities Daily Planet (https://www.tcdailyplanet.net/category/special-sections/media/page/9/)
When the significant date of an historic event arrives, all of our analog and digital media get together to transmit in a variety of ways what I’ve decided to call a Calendar Reactive Anniversary Pile On, or CRAPO. Continue Reading
“I have been working hard revamping and increasing the traffic of the Powderhorn 365 photography project Facebook page,” reported Sara
Jose Luis Morales was born in Nicaragua and grew up during the Sandinista revolution. He participated in the literacy brigades, teaching reaing and writing to others, and later worked as director of media for the Sistema Nacional de Publicidad, including radio work. After a change of government in 1990, he worked in publishing and sales and graphic design until moving to Minnesota in 2001.
“For us on the North side, we are always pissed off at the media because they say crap about the north side,” said Debra Stone. “I never thought of myself as a journalist until I was accepted into this media skills class. I was hung up on the fact that a journalist gets a MA degree from Medill and Columbia and you have to have all of these credentials and get accepted into this small, elite little group.”
Hamline’s International Education Week discussions focused on social media and international affairs. The conference emphasized four different angles: social movements, society, a student panel and public policy.The discussions covered a wide range of aspects of social media: from their influence on conventional media to their role in enormous international events, such as the Arab Spring. From academics, including Dr. Michael Jäckel (President of the University of Trier) through journalists, including Ann Alquist or Ahmed Tharwat (Arab-American TV), and activists such as Maya Dusenbery (Feministing), and public employees, such as Graham Lampa (Department of State), viewpoints varied and showed the difficulty of living in a world with easily accessible and democratized tools of social media.The common theme of the conference sessions was the importance of direct participation of the citizenry and, at the same time, audience in ways that were not easily achievable before social media became so widespread, including the production of information and media content.The exhaustive analysis of Social Media left no place for excessively optimistic or pessimistic claims. While Tharwat and Dr. Leila DeVriese – professor at Hamline University and expert in the role of Social Media in Middle Eastern politics – explained their huge influence in the Arab Spring, hints of realism were also highlighted. The International Education Week initiative, created by the U.S. State Department and U.S. Education Department, was cosponsored by the State Department, State of Minnesota, Certificate in International Journalism program at Hamline and the Hamline departments of Communications and Global Studies. Four panels included 13 speakers of diverse academic and professional backgrounds.Speakers:Dr. Leila DeVriese, “Reinventing Contentious Politics in the Digital Age: New Publics, Counter-Narratives and Oppositional Frames”Ahmed Tharwat, “Between Toppling Mubarak and Toppling Revolution”Maya Dusenbery, “Reflections on Social Media in the US Feminist and Reproductive Rights Movement”Dr. Firas Atrakci, “Has Social Media Let Down?”Dr. Michael Jäckel, “The Judging Audience”Ann Alquist, “The Role of Social Media and Public Broadcasting”Dr. Christa Ward, “The Use of Social Media and Skype as Education Tools”Kendra Boyle Hoban, “The News Framing of Chinese Twitter Weibo”Jenna Potter, “The U.S. News Framing of Palestinian Twitter”Eleanna Mathioudis, “Democratization from Below: A Study of the Role of Contentious Politics in Morocco”Dr. Philip Niemann, “Social Media and Elections in Germany”Graham Lampa, “Realizing the Promise of Digital Diplomacy”Maura Youngman, “Balkanization of the Internet in Russia”Relating to current situation in Egypt and the power of Abdul Fatah al-Sisi, Tharwat said: “What we witnessing today is the defeat of Facebook (…) When you look at the most successful movement in Egypt they used traditional media.”On the other hand, Dr. DeVriese used the example of Bahrain to show that the potential ties to promote social movements through social media are not necessarily strong enough to make the change happen.The Arab Spring was not the only social media-related phenomenon considered. Dr. Christa Ward, from Walden University, discussed the possibility of using of Skype for educational purposes; Dusenbery and Lampa linked social media to topics more closely related to American citizens, such as feminism and reproductive rights movements and outreach to “regular people” from the administration, respectively; Alquist and Dr. Jäckel considered the coexistence of conventional and new media in a “judging audience” environment, such as the project of introducing social media tools into PBS on-line broadcasting to guarantee the sustainability of the channel. Continue Reading
Why did we invite a hip-hop artist to be the keynote speaker at the Twin Cities Media Alliance’s ninth annual fall media forum?Easy. The theme of this year’s forum is “Getting the Word Out: New Media Strategies for Engaging Diverse Communities.” And hip-hop performer Guante has a lot to say about how activists, artists and non-profits can use media more effectively.Aside from being a critically-acclaimed hip hop artist and two-time National Poetry Slam champion, Kyle “Guante” Tran Myhre is a longtime media justice advocate– from founding an alternative publication in college, to being a founding member of the Opine Season op-ed co-op, to blogging regularly, to running social media trainings for artists and activists, and more. His writing and/or multimedia work has been featured at The Progressive, Racialicious, Feministing, the Asian-American Literary Review, Rain Taxi, MSNBC and elsewhere. We’d love to have you join us. Click here to pre-register.Space is limited and pre-registration is requested. Same-day registration begins at 9 a.m; program begins at 9:30. Continue Reading
Last night, while watching the Daily Blathers (some call it “evening news”; a good friend, yesterday, referred to it more precisely and accurately: “CBSNBCABCFOXCNN”), I set to the task of sorting Continue Reading
A night or two ago CBS Evening News did what news reports always seem to do: in order to capsulize the latest crisis, they had short interviews with two women in Virginia after Tuesdays election. The unsuccessful candidate for Governor had made Obamacare the prime issue, and while he lost, the margin was less than predicted. Continue Reading
You’d think with all of the attention local media gives to baby shooters and to groups holding “gun violence summits,” that they’d clamor to report on a Twin Cities event focused on gun safety to which they were all invited, right? Apparently not. According to an article written earlier this week by national gun rights blogger David Codrea on Examiner.com, the Twin Cities media completely ignored last Saturday’s Minnesota Carry Day & Safety Education Expo hosted at Zylstra Harley Davidson in Elk River. The event was promoted as a self defense and gun safety awareness event sponsored by Alpha Apparel & Promotions and Twin Cities Gun Owners & Carry Forum, a community-based information and outreach group. The stated mission of the event:To help educate and inform the community about permit-to-carry holders and Minnesota’s permit-to-carry law. To promote the safe and responsible ownership and use of firearms and provide education about firearm and personal safety practices and products for all. From the Examiner.com article: Despite contacting “about 65 individual reporters … from about 30 different media outlets …[n]ot one showed up or even printed/posted the information about” Saturday’s Minnesota Carry Day and Safety Education Expo in Elk River, the group Twin Cities Gun Owner and Carry Forum announced yesterday in a post-event recap.andThat’s despite the event being actively supported by Sheriff Brott… The sheriff “had three of his deputies on hand at their info table talking to attendees about gun safety,” particularly about options available to gun owners with children.andBy ignoring the expo, the media also ignored [two] “Gun Ownership 101 for Women” workshop[s], which [were each] “attended by about 30 women interested in connecting with resources designed to help women with all aspects of gun ownership.”That seminar featured important contributions from expo co-organizer Gretchen Morris, a local businesswoman and a new gun owner who is currently going through the learning curve of training and getting a carry permit, and who wanted to share her experiences with other women who are considering following suit.”We wanted to reach out to others in the community, especially women, who may be intimidated about seeking information,” Morris stated, because women represent one of the fastest-growing demographics of gun owners. Why would Twin Cities media ignore an event focused on self defense and gun safety, and which was attended by close to 300 people including families and with at least 1/3 of the attendees being women? “The fact that every media outlet in the Twin Cities ignored this important event focused on gun safety speaks volumes about their agenda, especially in light of the fact that every local media outlet gave coverage two weeks ago to our local gun grabber group (Protect Minnesota), that held a fake ‘gun violence summit,’ but excluded all of us from attending when we sent our RSVP’s.”andThat the press would ignore an event devoted to safe gun ownership with special emphasis on keeping children safe puts to the lie the contention that those who would impose more restrictive gun laws do so with gun safety being their motivation. Here was an event put on by people with actual qualifications that was designed around the concept of true and informed gun safety, one that even had law enforcement support, and the press could (would) not be bothered to inform the public.This, of course, is but one more in a long line of documented examples where the fiction of a supposedly unbiased press has been shown to be a myth, and worse, a fraud. Continue Reading
Talk about a local venture: In four months or so, Northeast Minneapolis might have a new, low-power, non-profit FM radio station that can reach listeners three to five miles away.