Yup, believe it or not, I'm still at it, working on the whole citizen media thing. And I still can't tell you what I'm cooking up. Sorry about that. Soon, though. Yeah, I know, you've heard it before, but hey, trying to facilitate a transformation of how humanity communicates with itself is tricky business. But I will say that United Citizen Media is becoming something quite considerably different than what's described on this website. In other words, THIS WEBSITE IS HORRIBLY OUT OF DATE and doesn't reflect the current organization very well at all. The heart's still in the same place, but the approach has changed a bunch. There will be a different website or two launched elsewhere soon, but I'm keeping this domain handy just in case. I'll announce big news like new sites here, though. In the meantime, enjoy the cool video to the right. Thanks for checking back in.
Paul Benson, Founder
May 9, 2008
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This media revolution is brought to you by United Citizen Media is a new public service organization dedicated to helping transform the mass media system into an environment where real diversity thrives. We foster a media climate that becomes increasingly friendly and rewarding to citizen media-makers, and to those who consume their media content. We’ll pursue these goals by:
The primary activity of United Citizen Media will be providing assistance to citizen media-makers themselves. We’ll provide them with access to studio spaces, media equipment and software that they might not be able to afford as individuals. We'll provide them with training in media skills and with technical assistance getting their media projects online. We'll do everything we can to put in their hands the tools they need to make their media projects better. ORGANIZATION FOR THE MOVEMENT: United Citizen Media is where media-makers band together, pool their resources, combine their skills and talents, share equipment and studios spaces, and set out to teach each other the various skills needed to make their media projects better. We work to get members of the public interested in citizen media, and then bring them aboard by teaching them how to produce and consume media themselves. We organize the movement to maximize communication, cooperation and collaboration between the various organizations and communities involved with citizen media. We continually work to devise and refine strategies and methods to assure citizen media stays on the cusp of new digital technologies and production techniques. How can citizen media ever compete with "Big Media"?
With our assistance, individuals create better media, and with better content, their audience grows. As citizen media audiences grow, the movement gains credibility, and the public begins gravitating away from big media and toward citizen media. A central strategy in turning the citizen media movement into a revolution is COLLABORATION. As individuals, our media projects are often limited to what we can produce in our spare time on tight personal budgets and with limited media skills. To put it bluntly, much of today's citizen media ends up looking pretty amateurish when compared to mainstream media productions. But, by making it easy for media-makers to find other individuals to collaborate with, we have a way to move past our own personal limitations. By working in groups, we have more time, more skills, more equipment, and more creativity to draw upon, and so our media projects will naturally become vastly more interesting and sophisticated. In time, lots of citizen media will be so well done that it will truly be competitive with traditional media. |
THE TECHNOLOGY IS HERE. THE PEOPLE ARE READY.
THE REVOLUTION BEGINS.
Americans distrust the media more now than ever. Our media system just isn’t what our nation’s founders intended - at all. It’s not the forum for free inquiry it’s supposed to be, and it’s not properly reflecting the diversity of the people. Our media system is broken, and this sad reality puts our republic in peril. Fortunately, a cure is on the way. The long-promised potential of the internet to revolutionize media is finally within reach, and the citizen media movement is on the rise. New technologies now allow individuals to distribute virtually any type of media content from anywhere to anywhere at little to no cost. And it’s just getting easier and cheaper. United Citizen Media plans to take the existing citizen media movement to the next level – to ramp it up and turn it into a New Media Revolution, where the power of the press truly is in the hands of the people, where it belongs. Our group aims to build the organizational infrastructure of a whole new media system - where citizen media gains the credibility needed to compete directly with big media, and where the national public discourse becomes as diverse as the American public itself. Because we’ll be headquartered locally, Humboldt media-makers will be among the first to benefit from our tools and facilities. But with your help, we can do much more. We can make Humboldt a major hub in the new media system, with lots of interesting local job opportunities. SOME OF OUR PROJECTS: ESTABLISH “MEDIA NODES” – A Media Node is a fully-equipped studio space within a community where people can create media projects, develop their media skills, & collaborate with other local media-makers. We’ll establish one or more node here in Humboldt, & then assist others to open them in their own communities, until nodes are spread across the nation & the world. Together, these nodes will form the physical infrastructure of a whole new media system. Build "MEDIA MAKER SEARCH" collaboration tool: Our online networking system, to be deployed at mediamakersearch.com, will get the people with the right skills & resources hooked up with the right media projects. Similar to a dating website, our searchable system will let media-makers search for people to collaborate with. Featuring rich personal detail and powerful search options, the collaboration network lets us easily form the working relationships we need to make awesome media together. All these new relationships will add up to a vast decentralized network of loosely-associated media-makers, who will together form the backbone of the new media system. ETC. - There’s much more to this organization. The video will explain the basics. |