Why Does Public Media 2.0 Matter?

Don't miss this recent short by Nonso Christian Ugbode of the National Black Programming Consortium on why public media 2.0 matters:

Why Does Public Media 2.0 Matter? from Nonso Christian Ugbode on Vimeo.

We are excited to partner up with NBPC in their upcoming Public Media Corps project. Over at Current, Ugbode explores the potential of this project further, asking:

Is public media — often slow to innovate or take risks — capable of creating this new media town square on your TV, on your computer, on your phone? Do public media have a chance of reaching as many Americans as the audiences of commercial media such as CNN? Not today. As it stands, public media's resources for experimentation and outreach are far smaller. Ultimately we need public media to be as loud as CNN in the Twitterverse and wherever else people meet electronically. CNN allows us to gather and gawk — 9.7 million of us were live-streaming Michael Jackson's memorial service via CNN’s Facebook application, sharing our wit and our pain. The commercial media aim to create the broadest possible viewership, but their objectives are necessarily limited and usually diffuse. In contrast, public media should allow us to gather and gain. What could we gain? An Aspen Institute and Knight Foundation report, “Informing Communities: Sustaining Democracy in the Digital Age,” draws a strong parallel between informed communities and a more resilient democracy. The report boldly recommends “clear strategies and smart choices can produce a revolution in civic engagement, government openness and accountability, and economic prosperity.” Public media can be a catalyst for this revolution but only with new voices, new tools, and new partnership.