The Big Thaw

The Big Thaw is here!

Read our groundbreaking new study, The Big Thaw: Charting a New Future for Journalism.

Welcome to the Media Consortium!

The Media Consortium is a network of the country’s leading independent journalism organizations. We support smart, powerful and passionate journalism that redefines American political and cultural debate. The Media Consortium is creating a solid cooperative infrastructure that will serve a 21st-century audience and offer a sustainable future for independent media. Millions of Americans are looking for honest, fair, and accurate journalism-We’re finding new ways to reach them. Our strategy has three focal points: Making Connections, Building Infrastructure, and Amplifying Our Voice.

Making Connections

Through meetings and collaboratively built projects, The Media Consortium enables our members to build relationships, strategize, and constructively work together to reinvent the independent media sphere.

Building Infrastructure

We’re analyzing who reads, watches and listens to our members’ work so that we can reach millions more Americans looking for honest journalism. We’re making joint investments in training, technology-sharing, advertising, promotions and learning how to communicate effectively with one another.

Amplifying Our Voice

It’s time to do together what we can not do alone. The Media Consortium seeks to fulfill the role of media in a democracy. We’re strengthening a vibrant, fact-based community of independent journalism producers that educate, inform and engage citizens to create the world to which we all aspire.

RSS Consortium Report

  • Weekly Diaspora: Autumn Holiday Edition
    By Nezua, Media Consortium Blogger Ed. Note: This week’s Diaspora is short because of the holidays. We’ll be back to full-length next week. Last Tuesday, Amy Traub dismantled a few harmful myths about immigrants for The Nation. Traub takes on the old ‘immigrants steal our jobs̵...
  • Weekly Mulch: Countdown to Copenhagen
    By Raquel Brown, Media Consortium Blogger On Wednesday, President Obama pledged to cut U.S. carbon emissions “in the range of” 17% below 2005 levels by 2020. Obama also confirmed that he will attend the international climate conference in Copenhagen next month, as Aaron Wiener notes for the Wash...
  • Weekly Pulse: Crunch Time in the Senate
    By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium Blogger Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is determined to get a health care bill passed in the Senate by Christmas. This is a momentous time, as John Nichols writes in The Nation: …Harry Reid has a health-care reform bill, and it is advancing. Indeed, w...
  • Now is the Time for Immediacy
    Everything about the web is becoming more “live,” from activity feeds, micro blogging, live streaming video to real-time analytics. Consumers’ demand for accessing news, in particular, has become more immediate and granular. Publishers work hard at adapting to this demand while maintaining the...
  • Weekly Audit: Unemployment Fueling Political Storm
    By Zach Carter, Media Consortium Blogger Unemployment figures in the U.S. are staggering: The official rate stands at 10.2%, the highest in 26 years. A broader measure that includes people who are involuntarily working part-time or who have given up looking for work is at 17.5%. That’s a full-...
  • Progressive Ideas Vs. “My Ideas”
    Progressive publishers have brought to light many important issues, including the implosion of the housing market and predictions about the Iraq War before the invasion. Independent media’s greatest value is often helping underserved communities address unmet needs. The new political environment h...
  • New Sources of Value
    What needs can be met, problems solved or desires fulfilled? In the old paradigm, the content that created the greatest value for mainstream media centered on the most popular and noncontroversial ideas. For independent media, the value stemmed from alternative ideas. Today, popular and alternative ...
  • Shifting Roles
    The new competencies outlined in Chapter 2 will help media organizations succeed in the new competitive environment. As a result, traditional roles will shift and overlap. (To read more of Chapter 2 and see charts of the shifting roles, download The Big Thaw.) These changes threaten many people’s ...
  • Weekly Mulch: No Treaty in Copenhagen?
    By Raquel Brown, Media Consortium Blogger Last weekend in Singapore, President Barack Obama acknowledged that a comprehensive international climate deal will not be reached during the climate change summit in Copenhagen. While many might view this as a letdown, lowering expectations might actually b...
  • Counterintuitive Ways of Working
    Funders and investors are already cautious of funding experiments since most fail. Counterintuitive ways of doing business and producing content may seem even more risky, but they can also be the biggest game changers. Counterintuitive Ways of Doing Business Many organizations in both the for-profit...

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