ACMEBoston Chapter No Longer Active

ACMEBoston has been inactive for some time now. Therefore, we have decided to officially close the chapter. This site will be left online as an archive of our work over the past few years.

Thank you to everyone who participated in making ACMEBoston such a successful project. If you are interested in restarting the Boston Chapter, please contact the ACME national organization. Thank you.

Help Celebrate ACME’s 5th Birthday!

From the Action Coalition for Media Education:

“Greetings media literacy education friends and colleagues, and happy FIFTH BIRTHDAY from all of us here at ACME!

In honor of ACME’s fifth birthday party, we invite you to consider joining or renewing your membership to the Action Coalition for Media Education. If you are already a member, you already know about ACME’s TEN BENEFITS of membership.

But, if you are new to us, you may not know that five years ago this fall, more than three hundred scholars, media educators, journalists, public health advocates, and interested citizens gathered in Albuquerque, New Mexico to create something unique. The world’s first independently-funded and volunteer-run media literacy education coalition: ACME.

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Boston Globe Article on Grassroots Community Radio Initiative

In today’s Globe, Clea Simon writes

How does someone start a radio station? And why would anyone want to? These are the questions that community activist Grace Ross and radio journalists David Goodman and John Grebe have been asking themselves since last spring.

Next month along with other colleagues as members of the Grassroots Community Radio Initiative, they’ll be filing papers with the Federal Communications Commission. This is the first step of a lengthy application process, but only the latest development in what has become an ongoing project.”

Read the article here.

To learn more about this process, visit GetRadio.org.

Take Action to Support Independent Media

From Free Press:

Save Small and Independent Publishers

“Postal regulators have accepted a proposal from media giant Time Warner that would stifle small and independent publishers in America. The plan unfairly burdens smaller publishers with higher postage rates while locking in special privileges for bigger media companies.

In establishing the U.S. postal system, the nation’s founders wanted to ensure that a diversity of viewpoints were available to ‘the whole mass of the people.’ Time Warner’s rate increase reverses this egalitarian ideal and threatens the marketplace of ideas on which our democracy depends.

It’s time stand up for independent media. Demand that Congress step in to stop the unfair rate hikes. Sign the letter below to alert Congress and put the Postal Board of Governors on notice.“

State House Hearing on Tuesday June 5 at 10AM in Gardner Auditorium

From Cambridge Community Television:

Join CCTV at the State House 6/5 to Oppose the Verizon Bill!

“Verizon is pressing hard to change the way that cable companies do business in the Commonwealth. They have proposed a bill at the State House that threatens CCTV’s channels and funding, as well as the City’s control over our streets and sidewalks. We need YOU to come to the State House on June 5th at 10 AM to tell our legislators to Kill the Bill!

The hearing before the Joint Committee on Telecommunications is June 5th at 10 AM in Gardner Auditorium (or meet up with other CCTV members at 9 AM to travel to the State House together). Even if you do not plan to speak, your presence will have an impact. If you DO speak, talk briefly about your experiences as a user of CCTV’s services, and your fears that public access will lose funding and channels under the proposal.

In the meantime, please contact your state legislators and City Councilors and urge them to oppose the bill. Attached is a 14-point list of reasons to oppose the bill and contact information for our legislators and those on the Telecommunications Committee. If you do contact anyone in writing, please send a copy to info@cctvcambridge.org, or CCTV, 675 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA. 02139.

You can read more about the bill here:
http://www.cctvcambridge.org/node/1148
and here:
http://www.keepitlocalma.com/

Here is what YOU can do:

• Contact your state legislators and those who are on the Joint Telecommunications Committee, and urge them to kill the bill! (contact information is attached to this article)

• Contact your City Councilors and urge them to oppose the bill

• Come to the State House Hearing on June 5 at 10 AM in A-2“

• Download “10 Reason to Oppose the Verizon Bill” (PDF download) to learn more about the issues and take action!

• Download a list of Legislative Contacts (PDF download)

 

Civic News Library Listening Series May 17 in Boston

ON MAY 17, BOSTON-AREA EXPERTS TO DISCUSS AND
SHARE CHANGES IN NEWS AT COMMUNITY LEVEL;
FIRST NENF “CIVIC NEWS LIBRARY LISTENING” EVENT

BOSTON — Sweeping changes in the technology and economics of news that create new opportunities for building community are the topic when the New England News Forum holds its first “Civic News Library Listening Series” event Thurs., May 17 at the Boston Public Library.

The 6:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. event is free and public and will include a Q&A session during which the audience can share ideas and initiatives at local community building. The session is entitled: “Restoring Media Trust: The News Revolution — What It Means to Your Community?”
Among expert speakers will be John Wilpers, editor of BostonNOW, the new free daily newspaper;  Ellen Hume, director of the Center on Media & Society at UMass-Boston and founder of the New England Ethnic News Wire, Callie Crossley, of WGBH’s “Beat the Press” and NPR’s “News & Notes,” and Lisa Williams, originator of H2Otown.info, a citizens-news website for the city of Watertown and an acknowledged expert on so-called “placeblogs” — a term she’s coined and will explain.

FULL STORY:   http://www.newenglandnews.org/?q=library
PDF VERSION:  http://www.mediagiraffe.org/pdf/library-boston.pdf
PROGRAM: http://dbs.hosting.crocker.com/wiki/index.php/Library
WHO’S COMING: http://dbs.hosting.crocker.com/wiki/index.php/Library- boston-roster
PDF POSTER:   http://www.mediagiraffe.org/library/poster.pdf

Consumer Culture: The New Childhood Risk Factor

Wednesday, May 16, 2007
7:00PM – 9:00PM
Suffolk University Law School
1st Floor Function Room
120 Tremont Street
Boston, MA 02108

Juliet Schor presents

Consumer Culture:
The New Childhood Risk Factor
Presentation/Discussion/Dialogue

(From Community Change)

“Children are increasingly at risk from a pervasive and familiar source: the consumer culture. Under-resourced urban communities, particularly communities of color, are targeted by advertisers and are disproportionately affected. The influences are many: from McDonalds’ food, to violent video games, to a must-have sneaker label, alcohol and tobacco advertising, or materialist values. In this presentation Juliet Schor will report on her research inside the advertising agencies which market 24/7 to our children, as well as on the results of her study on how consumer involvement is affecting children in the city of Boston.”

Presenter: Professor Juliet Schor

Professor and Chair of the Sociology Department at Boston College, Juliet Schor is the author of the national best-seller,The Overworked American: the Unexpected decline in Leisure, a book widely credited for influencing the national debate on work and family. She appears frequently on national and international media, and profiles on her and her work have appeared in scores of magazines and newspapers, including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Newsweek and People magazine. Schor’s latest book is Born to Buy:The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture(Scribner, September 2004)

Respondant: Susan McDonald, Program Director of the Youth Voice Collaborative at the YWCA on Consumerism and Systemic Racism

Moderator: Donna Bivens, Co-Director, Women’s Theological Center

Please RSVP Paul Marcus at 617 523-0555

CCTV on Verizon’s State Video Franchising Bill

Cambridge Community Television writes

“Verizon, having failed to change cable franchising in Congress, is now pushing state legislation that would remove local control over the public rights of way and threaten funding for Public, Educational, and Governmental access channels and funding.”

There is a public hearing on May 15 at the Massachusetts State House in Room A-2. Please come out and show your support for community media.

In the meantime, if you live in Massachusetts, please contact your state legislator and tell them that you oppose “An Act Promoting Consumer Choice and Competition“. To learn more about this bill and ways that you can get involved, visit MassAccess.org (The Massachusetts Chapter of the Alliance for Community Media).

Verizon Bill Strategy Blog

John Donovan (CCTV) created People First, a “weblog/strategy piece”, as a way for people to work together to defeat the Verizon bill in the Massachusetts State House. The site provides a comprehensive approach towards achieving this goal.

“Verizon has introduced a bill into the Massachusetts State Legislature which is a disaster in more ways than one could even count, and they are putting a full-court lobbying and media press on to pass it, with extraordinary local and national dollars behind it. We need to kill this bill, but it’s going to take a seriously organized effort to win.“

If you’re concerned about the future of community access to media and free speech, check out the blog and get involved.

Action Alert! from The Alliance for Community Media

Demand Fair Play for PEG Community,
Our Towns And Cities!

(From The Alliance for Community Media)

Take Action Now!

“The Alliance is calling on all supporters of Community Media to call and write the FCC no later than Wednesday, December 13!

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is preparing to issue a rule-making on video-franchising. This rule-making is the bureaucratic version of the national telecom laws we helped to defeat this past year. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT. We cannot allow the FCC do to us what some members of Congress were unable to do.

Part of what is being proposed:

• All PEG, I-Net and other in-kind services would be counted against 5% franchise fees. 5% would be an absolute cap.
• Municipalities would have to approve new franchises for telephone companies within 90 days or allow them to operate without franchises.
• There would be no build-out requirements allowed whatsoever.

We expect a vote by December 20th.”

Take Action Now!