Freedomedia

For those that have been wondering why I’ve been so quiet here, please visit my daily blog Mediasphere. Right now, I’m dropping blogs detailing my time at the Web Video Summit. Check it out.

         

For the past two years or so, I have been the organizer for the Bay Area Media Makers. Once a month we all get together, network, and catch up on what’s going on in the Bay Area media-sphere and how we can plug in.

Our next meeting is this Wednesday, in Oakland, and you should come! We’ll be meeting at my work, peralta.TV on the 9th floor of the Laney Administration building (right at the Lake Merritt BART station). So come one, come all. The meetup starts at 7:00PM and should go until around 9:00. Allister will be giving a teach-in: The Power of the Shot.

Hope to see you there!

         

I headed to Washington DC last month to meet with members of Congress and their staff about the Free Flow of Information Act of 2007 which had just been introduced days before my visit. For those that don’t know, the bill would extend the same protections journalists are afforded in most state courts to the Federal level. These laws are generally known as shield laws and offer legal protections against forcing journalists to testify about their work, and there is some level of shield afforded to journalists in almost every state.

So why are these shield laws important, and why should journalists be afforded this protection in the first place…

Come check out the rest of my perspective on the issue at my brand new blog Media Sphere.

         

So my comments got corrupted while I was flying back to SF tonight… I’ve restored the database but lost a few comments in the process… I’ll recreate them sometime tomorrow.

         

Prisonblogs.net is devoted towards empowering those behind bars and providing a means for them to get their reports, their stories, and their artwork out to the world. As a volunteer organization, prisonblogs.net works by pairing a prisoner with a sponsor who will transcribe their messages and put them up on a personal blog site set up for each participant.

In order for the project to be a success we’re going to need sponsors though, so if you have any interest in helping to get these perspectives out where they are accessible, then please sign up. Also, there are many artists in jails and prisons across the world, so if you have a scanner and can digitize someone’s artwork for the web your help is especially needed.

And even if you’re not interested in becoming a sponsor please visit Prisonblogs.net because every voice deserves to be heard.

         

This Tuesday, June 12th, I will be interviewed by Stephen Colbert, the man TIME magazine named one of the 100 most influential people in the world. For anyone who doesn’t know, The Colbert Report is a satirical spin-of of The Daily Show produced in the vein of The O’Reilly Factor. It’s going to be fun, so you should tune in.

Don’t have cable? Neither do I. The Colbert Report is available in iTunes. And if you’re in NYC, drop me an e-mail and maybe we can meet up. I’ll be in town from Monday evening through Wednesday afternoon.

In other news, I have a new blog coming out later this week called Media Sphere. Matt Smith at the SF Weekly tried to get the skinny on the project at the Progressive Convention last week, but managed to get a few things wrong. These things happen when talking about projects before they launch, but this cloud of confusion will be cleared before the week concludes. The blog launches this Thursday. Stay tuned for more details…

         

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This past Saturday, after catching a quick breakfast in the Upper Haight with a visiting relative, I headed out to the 2007 Progressive Convention with the hope of witnessing one or more progressive challengers announce their candidacy for Mayor of San Francisco. While no viable candidates rose to the occasion, the event served as a good opportunity to revitalize a community that hasn’t had this much collective energy since Matt Gonzalez almost beat Newsom four years ago.

Chris Daly has since announced that he will not be running, but Ross Mirkarimi has been somewhat coy about his possible run. Aside from an interview in BeyondChron, Matt Gonzalez has also been quite non-commital. So who will run against Gavin Newsom?

For more on the story, see the editorial in the Bay Guardian.