JMS

I’m in San Francisco at a Ford Foundation convening for public media grantees and guests, hosted by the Institute for Next Generation Internet at San Francisco State University.

It’s the fourth gathering of this group under the umbrella of Ford’s 5-year $50M “Global Perspectives in a Digital Age” public media initiative that launched about 2 years ago.

PRX is one of the 11 partners, nestled in with some usual and unusual suspects like NPR, PBS, Public Radio International, Public Interactive, Public Radio Capital, the five minority consortia (National Black Programming Consortium, Center for Asian American Media, Pacific Islanders Communication, Latino Public Broadcasting, Native American Public Telecommunications), ITVS, LinkTV, the Sundance Documentaries, and New American Media.

It’s a full agenda with some guests speakers and presentations by members of the group.

Orlando Bagwell, deputy director of Ford’s “Media, Arts, and Culture” division, set out the theme as “innovation, investment, and imagination”. I dig it.

Joaquin Alvardo is our host, and as founding director of The Institute for Next Generation Internet at San Francisco State University he tantalizes the group with visions of a broadband and fiber-fabulous future that harnesses the explosion of democratized media expression. I’m sold.

The bulk of Monday’s meetings were presentations by partners in the initiative:

- ITVS talked about new strategies for multi-platform outreach and engagement around the films they fund like HIP-HOP: Beyond Beats and Rhymes, and the internal organizational challenges and changes in adapting to a new environment.

- We get a heady dose of rights wrangling from Pat Aufderheide from the Center for Social Media, Fred von Lohman of EFF, and Sue Kantrowitz of WGBH.

Pat walks us through the copyright wrongs and ways to address them for users as creators, focusing on fair use and pushing the boundaries in practice. Fred tells the group that as broadcasters we’re still playing under the old rules - including “strict liability” - while new competitors like YouTube and others have started playing by totally new rules. The new rules aren’t yet even rules, and some of the pending litigation and deal-making surrounding YouTube will have an impact. I ask Fred how safe the DMCA Safe Harbor (the part of the DMCA that protects sites from liability for infringement if they take down material when rights-holders notify them), and if it’s big enough to accommodate YouTube is it big enough for the rest of us too… He basically says “yes” (good thing, I’m the “DMCA agent” on record for PRX…). Sue decodes the dicey state of play for WGBH and other content providers and distributors in the hybridizing world of broadcast and new media. It’s a rights and clearance nightmare, particularly for shows like American Experience that can have dozens and dozens of third-party elements with different terms that need addressing for any new uses. It’s a mess.

At lunch Orlando interviews Jim Dolgonas, President and COO for the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC…pronounced “scenic” rather than “cynic”) and we learn about the remarkable capacities of the coming fiber-optic enabled Internet 2, and the potential for a public media partnership with educators in bringing it to life.

I’m up next and do my PRX bit, updating everyone on the fact that stations have now licensed over 10,000 pieces from PRX, we have over 22,000 members and have paid out over $250,000 in royalties to hundreds of independent producers and stations. I segue into my other riff of the season which is about the social media opportunity and the themes of Relevance, Participation, and Trust.

Mike Litz from OneWorld US shares lessons they’ve learned from building an online network of NGOs sharing content, community, communications, including focusing on the “single” not the LP in terms of syndicating content (in other words, figure out how to embed as much context into atomized bits of content as possible when you can’t count on someone encountering your page); and how to serve as a “values-based lens on the world”.

An interesting discussion breaks out about the fickle fate of 20th century style journalism in a 21st century social media world.

Last up are Susan Harmon and Marc Hand from Public Radio Capital (PRC). PRC was also incubated at the Station Resource Group where PRX still makes its home, and I’m always admiring their bold moves in building a national case for preserving and extending the reach of public radio with new signals. They’ve already helped move $100M in transactions and have bigger ambitions in the works. With the new owners of Clear Channel gearing up to sell 450 stations (PDF) we need to think very big indeed to take full advantage of the opportunity. I want PRX to play a role in thinking about new formats for new stations and new audiences. Public radio should have far more diversity in sound than the current duplicative crop of news and music streams represents.

Monday night I luck out and get to hang out with Davia Nelson of the Kitchen Sisters at the holiday party for Zoetrope - the Francis Ford Coppola company housed in a super cool building (where Godfather was mixed and where the Sisters have their office, among other things).

Ok, running out of steam here…

Tuesday those of us who stayed on got a real treat. Sandy Close invited us to New America Media’s headquarters - a big news room with an amazing mix of people assembling, creating, annotating, amplifying youth and ethnic media from around the country. We learned about The Beat Within - a weekly publication of writing and art from kids in juvenile halls and prisons around California. New American Media was one of PRX’s first producers, I believe they were even a beta tester before we launched, and we’re planning to lure them back as they relaunch some radio programs in the new year. Also check out the short video report from the First National Ethnic Media Awards they put on in DC a few weeks ago.

Next up was a visit to BAVC (Bay Area Video Coalition) - “the most advanced noncommercial media access and training center in the nation”. And you could tell. About 7,000 people per year get trained at BAVC, including 1,000 young people working on video/audio/music production at the main facility and in sites at schools and centers elsewhere. Fantastic. Thanks Ken Ikeda and the staff for giving us the tour.

I managed to cram in a PRX business meeting at the end of the day, dropping by the offices of the Internet Online Distribution Alliance (IODA) where we are gearing up for a partnership to distribute more PRX pieces through a variety of new digital services where public radio content is so far mostly absent.

All in all this was a fitting whirlwind end to a whirlwind year - drinking from a fire-hose of inspiration, opportunity, connection, convening, communication. I leave in a few hours for Mexico through the holidays, where I’m hoping days upon days of being unplugged in the sun will work wonders on the firing neurons, helping tease out an important pattern that’s emerging…