[act-ma] Free Event - "A Robot Sent to Destroy Me": The New Media Invasion and the Future of News, 10/21, 7 p.m.

[Jason Pramas]

[please forward widely]

http://www.openmediaboston.org/node/2047

by Jason Pramas, Oct-12-11 *OMB Editorial

* <http://www.openmediaboston.org/taxonomy/term/235>

So, ok, the official title of the event is the *Town Hall Meeting on 
Media and Democracy* 
<http://civic.mit.edu/event/town-hall-meeting-on-media-and-democracy>. 
But we thought that sounded too low-key; so we decided to zip up our 
promotions a bit this week.??Anyhow, Open Media Boston and the other 
event co-sponsors - *Free Press* <http://www.freepress.net/>, *Lesley 
University* <http://www.lesley.edu/>, *Mass. Global Action* 
<http://www.massglobalaction.org/>, *MIT Center for Civic Media* 
<http://civic.mit.edu/>, and *MIT Comparative Media Studies* 
<http://cms.mit.edu/> - are pleased to invite everyone who wonders about 
what the rise of social media means for the future of journalism to come 
to the famed lecture hall *MIT Room 10-250* 
<http://whereis.mit.edu/?go=10> (Building 10, 2nd floor, Room 250) at 7 
p.m. on Friday, October 21st and join us for a fun, informative 
discussion. The evening will be hosted by the *Boston Media Reform 
Network* <file://localhost/bostonmediareform> with support from 
*Participant Media* <http://www.participantmedia.com/>.

The documentary *Page One: Inside the New York Times* 
<http://www.takepart.com/pageone>, which chronicles the transformation 
of the media industry in the face of changing economic and technological 
realities, will frame the conversation. We will explore how the shifting 
media landscape impacts our democracy, and what that means for the news 
and information needs of local communities, especially in Boston. Clips 
from the film will be shown, several media experts will be asked to 
share their thoughts and experience on this changing landscape, and 
audience participation will be strongly encouraged.

And how about those media experts? We'll have *Brian Stelter* 
<http://www.brianstelter.com/> of the New York Times (who is featured in 
Page One), *Cindy Rodríguez* <http://cindyerodriguez.com/> from Emerson 
College, *Sasha Constanza-Chock* <http://schock.cc/> from the MIT Center 
for Civic Media and MIT Comparative Media Studies, and *Craig Aaron* 
<http://www.freepress.net/node/122> from Free Press. *I will be* 
<http://about.me/jpramas> moderating. Plus we might have some extra 
special guests on hand. Incidentally, the quote in the title of this 
editorial refers to something that *David Carr* 
<http://www.nytimes.com/ref/business/bio-carr.html> of the New York 
Times media desk says about his colleague Brian Stelter in Page One. 
It's a funny scene that reflects the passing of the torch from older 
reporters like Carr to younger social media savvy ones like Stelter, and 
one of the big reasons we thought it would be a blast to build this 
event around the film.

This panel is also the opening event of the *Social Movements/Digital 
Revolutions conference* <http://www.digitalmediaconference.org/> - which 
we'd love you all to attend. We've *already written about that* 
<http://www.openmediaboston.org/node/1996> in detail in these pages, but 
we'll be putting out a special editorial on it next week - with a list 
of speakers and workshops.

Given the role that social media is playing in the rise of the #Occupy 
movement nationally, and in the global wave of uprisings from which it 
sprung, we think this conversation could hardly be more timely. So we 
strongly encourage *#OccupyBoston* <http://www.occupyboston.com/> folks 
to come on over to the both the opening panel on Friday, October 21st 
and the main conference on Saturday, October 22nd.

That's it for now. If anyone has any questions about either event, just 
email us at OMB ... info [at] openmediaboston [dot] org. And if you're 
coming on the 21st, we'd appreciate it if *you would RSVP* 
<http://act2.freepress.net/survey/townhall_media_Boston> so we'll have 
an idea of how many folks are definitely planning to attend. Thanks!

/Jason Pramas is Editor/Publisher of Open Media Boston/



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://act-ma.org/pipermail/act-ma_act-ma.org/attachments/20111013/d3592e3e/attachment.html>