
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.
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...
Recommended articles on media, politics and more...
- Time Inc.'s Squires Assembles Team of Rivals to Harness Digital Media | The New York Observer
Some of the magazine industry’s biggest names are on the verge of forming a new company that would allow them to take the digital future into their own hands. The company would make up one of the b... - iPhone and Android now total 75% of U.S. smartphone web traffic
It's a rather stunning number from AdMob in an October report. The firm reports on web requests from thousands of sites world wide. In the latest report, Apple has 55% of the domestic Smartphone ... - New Media Lab: A slideshow
Good 101 breakdown on the cultural/strategic shifts and 101 how to's of social media + journalism.... - The Media Consortium » Download
... - Newshare: Micropayments call? The web is not always free: Thoughts from Auletta, Schmidt, Anderson
More thoughts on revenue streams Free works for Google search. It will work for other sites. But it does not work for most content businesses. Whether the right model is micro-payments, or subscripti... - YouTube bows channel for citizen journalists
The world's top purveyor of Internet video has launched YouTube Direct, whereby TV and online news editors can obtain video from so-called "citizen journalists" -- and even request such... - The Media Consortium » Weekly Diaspora: Deporting Dobbs
... - The Blogometer: 11/10: This Will Not Stand: Liberal bloggers force Sen. McCaskill to reverse position on Stupak amend.
After liberal bloggers (McCarter, Cooper, digby) criticized Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) for saying that she could live with the Stupak amendment being in the final health care bill, McCaskill came ou... - Mediabistro Poll: The Crowd Says Newspaper Paywalls Would Be Disaster - mediabistro.com: WebNewser
The specific question we asked was, "Do you think paywalls will save newspapers?" Here are the specific options offered and what percentage of the vote each got: 65% -- No, in fact it&... - 5 Ways to find, mix and mash your data :: 10,000 Words
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