The Olympics: An opportunity for media innovation?
Find this article in The Tyee, rabble.ca, and VUE Weekly.
It was a holiday gathering much like any other, until I was introduced to a fellow "media person." To my surprise and amusement, he happened to be the Director of Communications for the Canadian Olympic Committee. I had a million questions: What did he think of independent and social media? What about the resistance to the games? What does his job actually entail?
Apparently, the Director of Communications is primarily responsible for keeping the "rights holders" happy and making sure they get to the front of the line of any sought media moment. His job seems to be to ensure that big media maintains its gatekeeper status. As for social and indie media, he didn't have much to say -- they aren't a part of his job. When I asked him about those critical of the games, he gave me a look that read, "Yeah, there's a few people who don't like the games, and that's too bad..." At the very least he seemed unprepared, at the worst, he's working in a media ecology that doesn't exist anymore.
Crumbling big media and a new media force
Fellow Fresh Media co-founders Kat, Vivian, Jacqueline and I have noticed an interesting development through our work with Fresh Media -- there is an influx of public interest in innovative web-based media. Our Fresh Media festival in October 2009 was an amazing success as nearly 300 Vancouverites filled the venue to the rafters, joyfully interacting and creating new media together. Why was it so successful? Perhaps because it captured the excitement and optimism that people feel for the new dynamics created by the open web, and the general web practices and values that are embedding themselves across the spectrums, from electronics to medicine to public space.
With big media in a state of crisis and new independent media taking up increased amounts of market share, media, communications and society itself are in a state of flux. It is becoming increasingly evident that big media is losing its stride, with new stories emerging every day about how that decline is being realized. Canwest has lost many of its leading newspapers to creditors and Rogers has fired media workers across the country at its various CityTV operations. Meanwhile, compared to 2008, the number of visits by British Columbians to The Tyee rose by 26 per cent, and overall traffic to the site has increased to 3,167,783 visits. In Vancouver, two new publications -- The Vancouver Observer and Megaphone -- have vastly expanded and reinvigorated their work over the last year.
Read the rest of this article on rabble.ca's website.
Steve Anderson is the national coordinator for the Campaign for Democratic Media. He is a contributing author of Censored 2008 and Battleground: The Media and has written for The Tyee, Toronto Star, Epoch Times, Common Ground, Rabble.ca and Adbusters.
Reach me at:
steve@openmedia.ca
http://www.facebooksteve.com/
http://www.steveontwitter.com/
Media Links is a syndicated column supported by CommonGround, TheTyee, Rabble.ca, VUE Weekly
Media Links by Steve Anderson, CommonGround, TheTyee, Rabble.ca, , VUE Weekly is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Canada License. You must attribute this work to Steve Anderson, CommonGround, TheTyee, Rabble.ca, VUE Weekly
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