Media events Feb 27, 28, 29 and March 6th February 26, 2008
Posted by mediamattersottawa in Events, Independent Media.add a comment
In this email:
1) Wed Feb 27, 12-3pm: CHUO fundraising auction
2) Thurs Feb 28, 6:30pm: Media Matters meeting
3) Fri Feb 29, 7pm: Eyewitness reports on Haiti today
4) Thurs Mar 6, 7pm: Dominion Paper tour event
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This email is part of a regular series of media-related updates for the Ottawa area, from Media Matters, an action group of OPIRG-Ottawa. Please forward this on to anyone who might be interested. To be added to the list, email mediamatters@canada.com
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1) Wed Feb 27 from noon to 3pm: CHUO Fundraising Auction
At the Agora in the Unicentre, University of Ottawa
As part of the station’s fundraising efforts (their funding drive starts March 28), CHUO 89.1 FM is holding a bidding auction featuring items from local businesses. This includes gift certificates for music stores, for restaurants, things like ski passes, and a lot more. The auction is open to students as well as anyone else who can make it to there between noon and 3. For more info, phone 613 562-5965 or email info@chuo.fm
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2) Thurs Feb 28, at 6:30pm: Media Matters meeting
OPIRG-Ottawa office, 3rd floor, 631 King Edward Ave.
Just a reminder for all currently active or interested volunteers to come out to our meeting and discuss future plans and initiatives. Social theatre? Critical thinking and media literacy? A speaker event? Long-term planning? and any other ideas are welcome.
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3) Fri Feb 29, at 7:00pm: Four Years Later – Eyewitness Reports on Haiti Today
Haitian Community Centre of Ottawa, 876 Montreal Rd. (between Aviation Parkway and Blair Road)
Second floor of shopping plaza building, entrance in middle
Accessible from OC Transpo bus route #2
This event marks the 4th anniversary of the February 29 2004 coup d’etat that overthrew Haiti’s democratically elected government. It is organized in solidarity with the “Third International Day in Solidarity with the People of Haiti”, alongside events and actions in 36 cities around the world. All three speakers will be addressing the question of the current situation in Haiti, the role of ‘Canada’ in Haiti (government, corporate, and NGO), and opportunities for strengthening a movement of genuine solidarity with the Haitian people. Featuring three speakers:
Darren Ell – A photographer and independent journalist based in Montreal, Darren spent almost three weeks in Haiti in January 2008. He will offer a combination of photographs, video, and spoken commentary on his contact with trade union organizers, health care providers, and other grassroots movement activists.
Raymond Dubuisson – An independent radio journalist and organizer with the Haitian community organization CHORHA (Canado-haitiens de l’Outaouais pour la Reconstruction d’Haiti), Raymond spent several weeks in Haiti in September and December 2007.
Jean Saint-Vil (Jafrikayiti) – An independent radio and print journalist, and a co-founder of the Canada Haiti Action Network, Jean traveled to Haiti in July 2007. He has spent recent months working on models for extending economic solidarity to Haiti that do not reproduce the relations of dependency and paternalism that characterize existing government and NGO-controlled “aid”.
* Language of presentations will be a combination of English and French, with questions and discussion encouraged in Creole, French and English (informal translation to be provided as necessary)
Presented by Kozayiti/Ottawa Haiti Solidarity
Contact info: Kevin Skerrett (613) 864-1590
http://www.canadahaitiaction.ca
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4) Thurs Mar 6, 7pm: Own Your Media tour – Dominion Paper
Jack Purcell Community Centre, RM 201
The Dominion (http://dominionpaper.ca) provides accurate, critical news coverage on events, policies and movements in Canada. It is also a multi-stakeholder coop, owned and operated by its readers and journalists. The Dominion is now taking Canadian media to the next level. With a comprehensive five-year plan, The Dominion aims to build an independent news cooperative that will challenge the corporate press in Canada and publish the stories you need to know about.
You are invited to attend a presentation, where you will be given the opportunity to Own Your Media!
BROUGHT TO YOU BY:
Indymedia – Ottawa, EXILE INFOSHOP, OPIRG-Carleton, CKCU 93.1FM, CHUO 89.1FM
Dominion event, media resources, and links February 22, 2008
Posted by mediamattersottawa in Challenging Mainstream Media, Events, Independent Media, Media News, Media Reform.add a comment
In this email:
1) Next meeting Thurs Feb 28 @ 6:30pm
2) Dominion Paper tour event, Thurs Mar 6 @ 7pm
3) Media resources available at OPIRG-Ottawa
4) Web links on community media, alternative publishing
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1) Next Media Matters meeting is Thursday, Feb. 28 @ 6:30pm …
… being held as usual at the OPIRG-Ottawa office, 631 King Edward, 3rd floor. We are looking at starting to hold meetings regularly every second Thursday evening at this time and location, so if it doesn’t work for you and you’d like to come, please let us know – mediamatters@canada.com
Items on the agenda:
- strategic and long-term planning process (involving local communities as well as other media groups)
- creating a (local) media directory
- critical thinking and media literacy: speakers? a course? resources?
- social theatre possibilities
- a speaker event on “Getting Media Coverage for your Cause”
- and any other ideas people bring or send in
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2) Own Your Media tour stop in Ottawa – Thursday March 6 @ 7pm
Own Your Media! Building a Grassroots News Cooperative
Thursday, March 6, at 7pm
Jack Purcell Community Centre, Room 201
320 Jack Purcell Lane, Ottawa
Refreshments provided.
The Dominion (http://dominonpaper.ca) provides accurate, critical news coverage on events, policies and movements in Canada. It is also a multi-stakeholder coop, owned and operated by its readers and journalists.
The Dominion is now taking Canadian media to the next level. With a comprehensive five-year plan, The Dominion aims to build an independent news cooperative that will challenge the corporate press in Canada – and publish the stories you need to know about. You are invited to attend a presentation, where you will be given the opportunity to Own Your Media!
This event is part of a March national tour on the part of the Dominion’s editors.
Print out the poster from http://www.fairtrademedia.com/temp/dom/tourposter.pdf and then write in the Ottawa details, and post it at your workplace or in your community.
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3) Media resources available at OPIRG-Ottawa resource centre
We’d like to take note of some of the resources available at OPIRG-Ottawa, including two magazines that have issues dedicated to the topic of communication media. The resource centre carries books, DVDs and VHS that can be loaned out, while its collection of magazines must be read on-site. Hours are Mon-Fri 10am-5pm but the office is occasionally open earlier or later; phone 613 230-3076 to confirm.
The two magazines are:
Canadian Dimension, Jan-Feb 08 edition, with articles on ‘Why Media Refom Should be a Democratic Priority’, ‘Media Merger Mania’, ‘An Inside Look at the Irvings’, ‘Journalists Changing the World’, ‘The Fight for the Open Internet’, and ‘The Struggle for the Soul of Canadian Media’. Some of these articles are also available online at http://www.canadiandimension.com/
…and…
BriarPatch, June/July 07 edition, with articles on ‘Community Radio & the Frequency of Struggle’, ‘PropAfghanda’, ‘The Power of Imaginative Media’, ‘Covering Fallujah’, ‘Better Zine than Herd’, ‘Love’s Labour Lost’, and ‘Deep Integration Buried Deep in the Back Pages’. Again, some of these articles are available online at http://briarpatchmagazine.com/
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4) Web links
Community Media in Venezuela: http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news/3158
Alternative Publishing and Z-Net: http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/16562
Here is an excerpt from this, of a questioner and Micheal Albert:
BGST PH: What principles do you think a dissident web site who wants to share a rich content must have in order to be effective and widely known?
MA: The first thing about the question is “what does the word effective mean?” for a website, or for a publisher or for any of those things. For most people, effective means reaching a reasonable size of audience with good material. That’s not what I would mean if I use the word effective. What I would mean would be being part of a process that’s going to win a new society, and that’s very different if you think about it. So, for instance you can imagine a bunch of progressive websites who are functioning quite well, who are putting out a mass of useful information, and you can imagine that going on for a long time, but the whole society doesn’t change. To me, that’s not effective. To me, that’s running a successful business, but it isn’t being a successful movement operation. What’s effective as a movement operation is that the society is changing and even changing dramatically in new directions. So if I ask myself what is needed from a publisher or website or a political organization, the answer is more and more people consciously and militantly desiring a new society and working to win it. So that means that it isn’t sufficient to just put out of information, what is needed is to inspire and help people make good use of it.
BGST PH: Yes, sure.
MA: I think you have to build a community of people who by virtue of the information they are receiving and also their connections to each other become a movement, and even a more and more effective movement. So to me, the answer to your question about a website would be, well, of course, one thing is that it must deliver good content, good information which contributes to people becoming more and more radical. And if you ask me, what kind of information would do that? My answer is it’s partly what everybody does; partly it’s analysis of what’s wrong, analysis of foreign policy, analysis of poverty, analysis of racism, and so on and so forth. But to me that’s not enough because the real obstacle I think to people becoming active, to people becoming really involved, to people devoting themselves, committing themselves to winning something new, is gaining some clarity and confidence about what that new thing is. Clarity about vision. So my first answer to your question is that the first thing a publishing house would need to do is not just provide analysis but also vision, and not even just vision but also strategy. So the content which is being delivered, the information which is being delivered has to be about what’s wrong but also about what we want, what’s desirable, what we’re seeking and desire to win, and how we can go about doing so. So that’s the first part of the problem. The second part of the problem is that the website or the publishing operations should not just deliver content to an audience but should galvanize the audience into working together. It should somehow create out of its audience a community of active people
Feb 14 meeting, Feb 15 film, and more February 12, 2008
Posted by mediamattersottawa in Events, Independent Media.add a comment
In this email:
1) Next Media Matters meeting – Thurs Feb 14 @ 6pm
2) Upcoming MM film – Fri Feb 15 @ 7:30pm
3) Homelessness marathon on CHUO 89.1FM Wed Feb 20
4) Report back on Feb9 MM workshop
5) Call-out for support, ZMag
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Please pass this email on to anyone you feel might be interested!
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1) Next meeting – Thurs Feb 14 @ 6pm
After a rather successful turnout at our previous meeting (2 already involved volunteers and 3 new people), we are having another meeting this week.
Our previous meeting had a lot of discussion and questions regarding the issues we find important, and we decided that we’d each do some reflection and/or research and come back with some firmer ideas for possible actions we might want to take.
Feel free to join us on Thursday at 6pm at the OPIRG office, 631 King Edward St 3rd floor.
If you can’t make this meeting, either due to the date/time or due to the inaccessibility of the 3rd floor, but would like to make future meetings, please contact us and we’ll work to have a better fit for future meetings … mediamatters@canada.com
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2) Film screening – Fri Feb 15 @ 7pm doors, 7:30pm start
The Film ‘Un Poquito de Tanta Veridad’ (=A Little Bit of So Much Truth) – info at http://www.cinemapolitica.org/films/205
MacDonald Hall Auditorium (MCD 146), 150 Louis Pasteur St
University of Ottawa Main Campus
Discussion hosted by Media Matters following the film
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3) Homelessness Marathon on radio – Feb 20 @ 7pm – 1am
CKUT’s 6th annual radio marathon on the issues of homelessness and poverty – details at http://ckut.ca/homeless.html
This event is being broadcast across Canada on various community radio stations, including in Ottawa on CHUO 89.1FM from 7pm through 1am (the full programming from 5pm through till dawn the next morning will be available online from http://ckut.ca – there is also a toll free phone number to call in to participate)
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4) Report back on Feb 9 Media Matters workshop in Peterborough
The workshop – and the entire conference – was a success!
11 or 12 people participated in the workshop, and most if not all did contribute through comments and questions. An outline of the workshop is available online, with comments posted regarding some of what was covered, at http://ottawa.indymedia.org/en/2008/02/6810.shtml and includes a link to the handout for the workshop, http://ottawa.indymedia.org/media/2008/02//6811.pdf
Feel free to add your own comments – and look forward to the possbility of a workshop in Ottawa in March as part of U of O’s Social Forum !?!
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5) ZMag could use your financial support
ZMag/ZNet/ZCom is a well established, very useful and very successful independent media website, magazine and activist resource. If you haven’t heard of it yet, now would be a good chance to check it out – http://zmag.org/
Now in it’s 20th year, ZNet is issuing an urgent call-out to build a solid base of financial support for it to be able to successfully grow and fill the need for it’s type of work in the activist / media community. Check out the website to find out more and see if you might want to support them – http://zmag.org/
