Indy Artists Stay in Touch with True Fans . . .

. . . through Facebook, reported NPR's Laura Sydell in 2010. The report discusses cellist Zoe Keating and singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega.

Early You Tube Stars Get Their Income

What the Buck? Here's Michael Buckley's "My You Tube Story." According to a Dec 2008 NY Times report, "You Tube Videos Pull In Real Money," Buckley earned over $100k in the previous year (plus an HBO development deal) from his YouTube video-commentaries or rants about celebs.

For years, my 17-year-old daughter's favorite YouTube star and main source of daily news has been Philly D (of "The Philip DeFranco Show"), who offers his take on current events and celeb news. (Should I have been monitoring my daughter's online activities better?) A recent installment discussed the government of Turkey banning You Tube.

YouTube star Lisa Donovan or ""Lisa Nova"has talent for sketch comedy and parodies. Like Tina Fey, she liked to play Sarah Palin, including in this infamous McCain/Palin rap. Later she launched a company promoting hundreds of YouTube video producers.

Cory Williams and his smpFilms hit the bigtime with "Hey Little Sparta" (aka "The Mean Kitty Song" -- 78 million views). He told the NYT in 2008 that he was earning over $200k per year, partly from (ugh!) product placements in his videos.

Bcome a YouTube Star and appear in a hugely popular music video with Weezer or the earlier one from Barenaked Ladies.  "Where the Hell is Matt?" became so popular, the guy has had his world travels paid by corporate sponsors for years.

Brave New Films' "McCain's Mansions" played a role in the 2008 election campaign, thanks in part to You Tube. The Young Turks is a web TV phenom, and You Tube played a role in its success; here's a Turks' video on media censorship.

Web Censorship/Persecution in China

After Yahoo provided info to China's government that led to 10-year prison sentences for two Chinese dissidents in 2002 and 2004, the families of victims (Wang Xiaoning and Shi Tao) sued Yahoo. As a result, Yahoo announced in 2008 that it had established a fund for people persecuted or jailed in China for posting political views online. Too little, too late?

In response to demands from China's government, Google agreed in June 2010 to quit automatically switching its users in China to Google's uncensored Hong Kong search site. But there's a tab users can click to be switched. Should Chinese citizens feel safe when hitting that tab?

Web Censorship in the USA

The media reform group Free Press highlighted media and telecom corporations caught censoring web or cellphone traffic a few years ago.

Inner City Press, a monitor of Wall Street and the United Nations, was temporarily delisted from Google News. The de-listing happened soon after Matt Lee of Inner City Press challenged Google over its commitment to free expression.

In 2007, consumer rights groups mobilized to tell the Federal Communications Commission: "No More Media Consolidation." CommonCause was blocked from placing an ad on My Space against conglomerated media. Rupert Murdoch had bought My Space in 2005 (and later sold it at a huge loss, after Facebook eclipsed it). The banned ad featured a photo of Murdoch and the caption: "This is the face of Big Media." Was it My Space or Murdoch's space?

Tom Tomorrow, editorial cartoonist

The chaining of alternative weeklies undercuts alternative cartoonists like "Tom Tomorrow"/Dan Perkins.

A Win for Bloggers' Rights to Cover Courts

In March 2012, a Massachusetts court ruled that bloggers deserve the same privileges in covering courts and trials as traditional media.

Can Pay Walls Around Online News Content Save Newspapers?

No, says Arianna Huffington in May 2009 U.S. Senate testimony. And here's "Life After the Pay Wall" nightmare scenario from Advertising Age.  (A former indy media student complained about Boston Globe's paywall around the Globe's editorial.)

Austin's blog post on funding of nonprofit news outlets

Austin argues that funders will generally have less impact on mission-driven nonprofit news outlets than corporate advertisers who fund for-profit media.

". . . a donor need not shift and change and bargain with indy outlets to get them to publish material that the donor wants. The breadth of indy media is incredibly large, and virtually any donor can simply give to whichever outlet suits him or her. It's cheaper and smarter and more realistic to do this than try and change an established institution.In this way content drives funding/donations. In mainstream media, funding drives content."

Guest speaker William Jacobson

Cornell law professor William Jacobson is a conservative political blogger with a national following. He launched Legal Insurrection.com in 2008, and smaller CollegeInsurrection.com in 2012.  

"The Internet Is My Religion"

Intensely personal speech from Brave New Films' Jim Gilliam (who was raised a conservative Christian evangelical) discussing how the Internet offered him salvation -- and literally saved his life.

Pre-financing websites for independent media/art projects

Spot.Us involves the community in funding journalism, and was founded in 2008 by David Cohn.

Brand new project, Beacon, hopes to fund great freelance writers by seeking donations of $5 per month. (H/t Bethany G.)

Kickstarter.com is "a funding platform for artists, designers, filmmakers, musicians, journalists, inventors, explorers..." A key aspect of Kickstarter and similar funding platforms is "All or Nothing funding."

On Kickstarter, a project must reach its funding goal before time runs out or no money changes hands. Why? It protects everyone involved. Creators aren’t expected to develop their project without necessary funds, and it allows anyone to test concepts without risk.

Here was a successful Kickstarter fundraising drive to save a local movie theater. Here's a documentary movie project that I'm a tiny part of, which has used Kickstarter successfully.

Pre-financing of "Iraq for Sale" documentary

This Robert Greenwald documentary was funded mostly by small donors BEFORE the movie was made -- an example of grassroots pre-financing of a work that had real impact.

(Brave New Film's latest documentary -- "Unmanned: America's Drone Wars" -- was screened on Capitol Hill, accompanied by Pakistani civilians who testified about having survived U.S. drone strikes.) 

Singer/songwriter Jill Sobule . .

. . . raised $75,000 in small donations from her fans in 2008 to pay for professional recording fees to produce her next album. Here's one of her semi-hits, "I Kissed a Girl," (not to be confused with Katy Perry song that came out a dozen years later).

Is power over the Web concentrating in a few corporate hands . . .

. . . as happened years earlier to the TV and newspaper and book publishing industries?  According to Michael Wolff in the Sept. 2010 issue of Wired: "the top 10 Web sites accounted for 31 percent of US pageviews in 2001, 40 percent in 2006, and about 75 percent in 2010."

At a time of military intervention, the Russian state . .

. . . cracks down on Russia's independent media. 

"Bloggers Bring In Big Bucks"

This Business Week slideshow in July 2007 summarized some of the most (financially) successful blogs at that time, whether covering technology, fashion, celebs, politics.  Almost all are still successful or more so today. (Here is the intro to the slideshow.)

Paul Krassner and "The Realist"

The leading satire publication of the underground press -- a Mad magazine for adults -- was The Realist. My humble contribution in 1994. A famous Realist poster from 1963.

Hollywood movie on the work and love affair of 2 journalists . . .

. . . John Reed and Louise Bryant. The Oscar-winning movie is called "Reds." Long trailer here; short one here.

Upworthy announces partnerships . . .

. . .with ProPublica and other content producers.

Journalists, Cops and Occupy Wall Street Movement

HARASSMENT OF JOURNALISTS COVERING OCCUPY MOVEMENT: Citizen journalist with video camera tapes himself apparently getting shot by police rubber bullet while covering a seemingly peaceful lull Occupy Oakland (CA).  At Occupy Nashville, a reporter for the long-established weekly Nashville Scene was arrested for violating a curfew imposed by Tennessee's governor (a night judge questioned whether that's legal), was threatened with a "resisting arrest" charge, and was later charged with "public intoxication." Nashville's big daily reported on the dubious arrest.

Between Sept 2011 and Sept 2012, more than 90 mainstream and independent journalists were arrested while covering Occupy protests in the U.S. -- as tracked by Josh Stearns of the media reform group Free Press.  Removing journalists and citizen journalists from the scene seemed to be a strategy because acts of police brutality -- when recorded by citizen journalists and ubiquitous cameras & cellphones -- led to more sympathy and activists for the movement: for example, in NY City and at University of California, Davis. Like in the 1960s, the federal government built a large surveillance apparatus to surveill Occupy activists. 

"THE MAYOR'S AFRAID OF YOU TUBE": In October 2011, hours after New York City authorities made a last-minute decision NOT to clear the Occupy Wall Street protesters out of Zucotti Park/Liberty Plaza, filmmaker Michael Moore said this to MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell (begin 2:54 for context):

"One cop down there actually today. I asked...'Why don't you think the eviction happened?' And he said, 'Cause the Mayor's afraid of You Tube.'...The power of the new media, the media that's in the hands of the people -- that those in charge are afraid of what could possibly go out."

Announcing the 6th annual Izzy Award -- and brand new I.F. Stone Hall of Fame

Past Izzy Award winners Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill are the first members selected to the I.F. Stone Hall of Fame, newly established by the Park Center for Independent Media (PCIM) at Ithaca College.  Meanwhile, the center has announced that the sixth annual Izzy Award for "outstanding achievement in independent media" will be shared by journalists John Carlos Frey (for reporting on U.S./Mexico border deaths) and Nick Turse (for reporting on civilian war casualties from Vietnam to Afghanistan).  Full news release here.

Ramparts magazine of 1960s

One of the most explosive indy magazines of the 1960s, Ramparts, published photos of the impact of U.S. napalm (a chemical weapon that eats away human flesh) on Vietnamese civilians in Jan. 1967. Martin Luther King, Jr. credited those photos with being the spark that got him to break his silence and speak out loudly against the Vietnam War a few months later. MLK became the most prominent critic of the war. Besides investigative journalism and scoops, Ramparts was known for its cover art shown here and here.

Harassment of indy journalists continues

Since the 1960s when the FBI and local police engaged in violence and continuous harassment against "underground weeklies," repression against dissenting U.S. outlets has deceased but it has certainly not ended. Example 1: The 2008 Republican Convention in Minnesota. Three years later, the journalists' suit against the police was settled, with $100,000 in compensation being paid by the St. Paul and Minneapolis Police Departments and the Secret Service. The settlement included an agreement by the St. Paul police to implement a training program aimed at educating officers regarding the 1st Amendment rights of the press and public, including proper procedures for dealing with the journalists covering demonstrations.

Example 2: The 2010 election for U.S. senate in Alaska. An online reporter was detained for asking questions of the Alaska Republican senate candidate, Joe Miller. The reporter -- a well-known journalist in the area and founder of Alaska Dispatch -- was handcuffed by Miller's security personnel after a dispute over his questioning of the candidate about his role as a former part-time city attorney. Here's Alaska Dispatch's version of the detention. The critical reporting on Miller's past -- and this heavy-handed incident -- contributed to Miller's stunning defeat in the November election.

The legacy of 1960s sex (and drugs) advice columnist "Dr. Hip" . . .

...is carried on by Dan Savage's "Savage Love" column in today's alternative weeklies.

Glenn Greenwald answers absurd question from mainstream media star

In June, Meet the Press host David Gregory asked Greenwald a question based on false assumptions and ending: "Why shouldn't you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime?" He got a loud answer
.