[act-ma] Open Media Boston seeks contributors for test news/arts website launch

[Jason Pramas]

**Please Forward Widely***

11/15/07

Dear Boston area progressives, media mavens, news junkies and arts lovers,

On December 15th, a team of media folks, techies, designers and artists 
is launching the beta test version of a new progressive news, views and 
arts website for the Boston area. If you're a fan of democracy, social 
justice, fair and accurate reporting, and fun, then you'll want to check 
us out.

We're calling the site Open Media Boston, and we're looking for 
experienced journalists and essayists, photographers, radio and video 
producers, and digital artists (or artists whose work can be digitized) 
who are interested to become regular contributors. We're particularly 
interested to talk to folks who'd like to cover one of the various 
community, political, and thematic "beats" that we'll run content about 
on an ongoing basis. Be it a community like Roxbury or Allston, a polity 
like the State House or Boston City Hall, or a interesting theme like 
Anti-War or Technology or Theater, Open Media Boston wants coverage in 
text, photos, audio and video. We're also planning to make room for 
academic publications and youth media--and doubtless other areas of 
interest we haven't thought of yet.

The editorial perspective will be from the broad left, the focus will be 
Boston and environs, the technology will be the latest social media 
built on free and open source software, but the material we'd like to 
spotlight will need to meet basic journalistic standards as overseen by 
Open Media Boston editors.

Regular contributors will see their work featured on our Front Page. All 
contributors will retain all rights to their work.

If you're not an experienced media person, no problem. People of all 
levels of experience are sought to post content to our Open Forum and to 
comment on published works in all areas of Open Media Boston--after 
signing up for a free User account. Editors will constantly scan the 
Open Forum looking for material to publish to the Front Page.

After testing and fine tuning the site for a couple of months, we're 
currently planning to do our full site launch in February.

Open Media Boston, a project of the non-profit Media Working Group--a 
national progressive media producers collaborative--will be all 
volunteer at first, but as we raise money over the months to come we'll 
seek to pay as many editors, staff, and regular contributors as we can. 
In the best spirit of community, collaborative and social media, we 
believe that many editors and staff will ultimately come from the ranks 
of the regular contributors. So we encourage folks to get involved in 
the project on the ground floor.

Anyone interested in becoming a regular contributor for the beta test 
launch should send 3 samples of their work (or web links to their work) 
to jpramas at igc.org . We'll get back to you as soon as we can. Anyone 
who'd just like to sign up for a User account for the test period should 
email the same address. All questions or comments are also welcome.

We look forward to working with the Boston area progressive and artistic 
communities to build a great media outlet. Stay tuned for more 
announcements from us in the weeks to come.

Cheers,

Jason Pramas
Editor/Publisher
Open Media Boston
jpramas at igc.org