Transmission Project

This year, Kristofer took the lead in developing and formalizing the curriculum for our youth-led policy program, the Digital Expansion Fellowship (DEF). After taking feedback and evaluations from our first DEF summer project, Kristofer redesigned the summer curriculum into a full 8-week summer course for a new round of fellows. The new curriculum is a comprehensive training in media policy research; combing basics in digital journalism and an introduction to policy analysis. This summer the fellows used their newly acquired digital reporting skills to examined mobile broadband and cellphone policy from a community perspective. They produced a news feature looking at how a proposed bill requiring ID for prepaid cellphones would impact low income and immigrant communities. They also produced four cell phone literacy workshops that will be included in a collaborative tool kit project focused on expanding cell phone literacy.

People’s Production House proposed a large community media network project during the second application round of the Broadband Technology Opportunity Program. Our proposal brought together 21 New York City community organizations to imagine a constellation of community media centers across New York that would work as media production centers for a community news outlet. Kristofer was the main outreach organizer for this application. He helped recruit many of the organizations to the project proposal and coordinated a lot of the application process with the groups. While we weren’t awarded our BTOP grant, the organizing provided us with an opportunity to advance our goal of strengthening our community media network. We are taking the momentum from our BTOP organizing to develop a New York City Digital Justice Coalition. Throughout the year, Kristofer also engaged with other community media organizations to share or work, exchange ideas, and collaborate on larger national projects.

One of the goals that Kristofer set for him self was to help us develop workshops and training materials in Spanish. Kristofer lead our first Spanish language community journalism training in his first year as a VISTA and he wanted to take it further by developing media literacy tools that could accompany the trainings. This year Kristofer helped organize the first Spanish language track at the 2010 Allied Media Conference. In developing the Spanish language track, Kristofer engaged some organizations that serve the Spanish speaking in New York, helping to develop Spanish language community reporters.

In addition to the work completed in our project proposal, Kristofer also helped refine our 12-week media community journalism training curriculum. The curriculum needed an upgraded and he assisted with the process. Kristofer also helped strengthen ties to partner organizations through his involvement in organizing the Allied Media Conference and his participation in the Media Action Grassroots Network. Through these conferences and networks, Kristofer has helped facilitate projects on a national scope, including our upcoming Cellphone Literacy Toolkit, which is a collaboration between allies in New Mexico, California, and New York.

The three main project goals for this position were to support the Girl Tech Collective program, support a media assessment of New Mexico, and support a project on media monitoring.

The Girl Tech Collective program began this past year, but was shifted to another staff person. Instead, Candelario supported another youth program in New Mexico called Digital Justice for Us! (DJ4U) program. This was a more strategic move because it connected to MLP’s work on broadband in New Mexico, a project that this VISTA member would already be working on. The Digital Justice for Us! program was successful and MLP learned a lot from this first year. Cande supported the youth involved in this program, assisted in organizing the event to showcase the young participant’s video work, lead an evaluation on the program, and documented the process. His work will make the DJ4U program stronger for the coming year. MLP’s Program Director helped support this program.

The second project goal was to support the New Mexico media assessment. This project took on the form of an assessment of broadband access in New Mexico. Cande helped to host researchers from the Social Science Research Council in our state as they conducted focus groups in the greater Albuquerque area. Cande also formalized new organizational partnerships around the broadband issue, helped to build MLP’s base, and participated in community conversations. The increase in supporters of MLP and the collection of stories and information on how broadband affects rural and low-income communities has greatly strengthened MLP’s programs and projects. All MLP staff, partner organizations, and community members helped support the goal for increased access to broadband in New Mexico.

The third project goal was to support the media monitoring project. Cande helped to support Siembra la palabra digna, MLP’s initiative to address responsible speech in our media. Cande assisted at outreach events, collected video stories from community members, and monitored media clips to examine how issues and communities are framed and reported on in various media. Support for this project has helped MLP develop better workshops and materials that connect responsible speech with access to media and storytelling. MLP’s Campaign Coordinator assisted the VISTA member in this initiative.

Tom played an essential role in completing the Youth Anti-Tobacco Advocacy Project (http://www.griid.org/antitobacco/) He collected and correlated all the data for this study and created the online report. He also worked with the student volunteers in creating the study and accompanied them when they presented the study to the Grand Rapids City commission. Tom also helped in the creation of several grant-funded video productions that GRIID produced, assisting in both the editing and the filming process.

Tom does about half of the actual news watching that GRIID undertakes, and is responsible for documenting and tabulating all of the news watching data collected. He also has taken an active part in writing GRIID studies examining local media coverage on various issues. Over the last six months, Tom played a significant role in creating the content in GRIID’s Election Watch 2004 feature.

Tom worked on the grant funded Video Voter Project. This project tied into GRIID’s election monitoring and education efforts. Tom’s work monitoring and documenting news coverage were important components of the Video Voter Project.

Tom has been involved in several projects designed to reach out and empower community groups. Tom has been one of the producers of Catalyst Radio, a weekly radio program on the CMC’s radio station WYCE FM. Catalyst Radio provides news analysis and interviews featuring local community groups and organizations. Tom writes half of the news analysis pieces as well as being one of the shows on-air voices. He also is responsible for setting up and conducting the interviews on occasion as well as updating the Catalyst Radio website every week.

Another community outreach effort that Tom has been involved with is GRIID’s work on FCC license renewals procedure education. This is an effort to build an awareness in the community on the FCC license renewal process which was designed to hold the local TV media accountable to community needs. As part of this project, Tom has given presentations, created mailing literature, and helped create online resources.

GRIID maintains a large collection of documentaries pertaining to issues of media literacy and media and democracy. Tom has helped organize and promote public showings of these documentary films. Tom also helped facilitate public discussions following the films.