Newswise — Ithaca College has officially launched the Park Center for Independent Media (PCIM), a national resource for studying the creation and distribution of journalism outside traditional corporate systems and news organizations.
"The growth in independent media is largely a result of new models of economic and entrepreneurial journalism made possible by technologies that drive audiences to other venues for information," says Jeff Cohen, director of the PCIM. "There's no doubt that the Internet has created havoc in the mainstream media, while at the same time it has opened up the gates for younger, newer, more aggressive journalists."
A longtime media critic and analyst, Cohen founded the media watch group FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting) and is the author or coauthor of five books, including "Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media" and "The Way Things Aren't: Rush Limbaugh's Reign of Error."
Cohen has appeared regularly as a media and political commentator on national TV and radio, and was a senior producer at MSNBC's Phil Donahue show. In the 1990s he cowrote the syndicated Media Beat column, and his writings have appeared in major daily newspapers as well as on independent websites like Common Dreams, The Huffington Post, and Alternet.
More than two dozen influential journalists, experts, and leading innovators will gather Sept. 15"16 for the Park Center for Independent Media's inaugural symposium on the "Growth and Power of Independent Media." The invited participants will discuss how to amplify the success of independent outlets — whether big or small, local or international — in terms of revenue, audience and technology.
The symposium keynote speaker will be Josh Marshall, who has built his Talking Points Memo blog into one of the most influential journalistic destinations on the Internet. Other participants will include filmmaker Robert Greenwald ("Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers," "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price" ), blogger Chris Bowers of Openleft.com, and representatives of The Huffington Post, Gotham Gazette, Free Speech TV, Maynard Institute, and Real News Network.
For more information, visit http://www.ithaca.edu/rhp/independentmedia/symposium/.
The PCIM is located within Ithaca College's Roy H. Park School of Communications, where Cohen also serves as an associate professor of journalism.
"If we were starting journalism today and deciding the best way to deliver dynamic, interactive, breaking information relevant to communities, we wouldn't put it on paper and drop it off on somebody's porch once a day," says Dianne Lynch, dean of the Park School and former executive director of the Online News Association.
"Corporate-owned media are no longer the sole gatekeepers of information, as more and more journalists produce their own content and distribute it directly through the Internet," says Lynch. "This new environment has prompted us to create the Park Center for Independent Media, which can serve as a national think tank on the changing media ecology and its potential implications for students and society."
For more information on the PCIM, visit http://www.ithaca.edu/rhp/independentmedia.
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