[Imc-communication] The McClatchy Company => the Manufacturing-of-Consent-2.0 ? Re: [IMC-Tech] [Imc-drupal-dev] Knight Foundation Grant

[mark burdett]

On Thu, 06 Nov 2008 03:13:45 +0100, boud wrote:
> It's a foundation very closely associated with "the United States'
> second-largest newspaper company ...
-snip-

It is fascinating how the foundations are (finally) really into "new 
media", participatory journalistm etc.  not sure what is the ratio of 
organized manufacture of consent + accidental fad of the month but I 
guess you automatically get both with the big capitalist foundations.

For example in SF there is a new community news site established by the 
(uber-corporate) University of California and funded by the Ford 
Foundation, http://missionlocal.org/

The foundations are also definitely into funding f(l)oss development 
which i can't say is a bad thing.. At least, it's nice to think of 
philanthropists investing in free software as something like 
expropriation, in the sense that a permanently free public good is 
created which can be further used, hacked and redistributed.

My preference would be for IMCs to manage to insulate themselves from 
direct contact with the corrupt world of 6+ digit grants and foundation 
wine and dine events.  This seems especially doable with free software, 
since it is free afterall and it should not be impossible to get 
together volunteers to work on a vital project for the local community. 
And theoretically there should be plenty of funded projects working on 
software of use to indymedia that can be mooched off of.

But apparently, this is a real problem that many local IMCs are hitting: 
the lack of connection to volunteer labor & knowledge and the inability 
to actually make free (freedom+beer) software work for them.  not to 
mention the internet at large when you also think about issues of 
hosting.

I don't know what the answers are.  One of my favorites is just regional 
events where people can periodically meet, hash out ideas, skillshare, 
code sprint, get cajoled into working on stuff.  I think this is 
especially needed in the US where indymedia sites have been dropping 
like flies, and I think there was actually already talk of 
regional/national tech events at the US Social Forum to improve tech 
capacity, although I wasn't there and don't know what came of it.

--mark