Web Censorship in China

After Yahoo provided info to China's government that led to 10-year prison sentences for two Chinese dissidents beginning in 2003 and 2005, the families of the victims (Wang Xiaoning and Shi Tao) sued Yahoo. As a result, Yahoo announced in 2008 that it had established a fund for people persecuted or jailed in China for posting political views online. Too little, too late?

In response to demands from China's government, Google agreed in June 2010 to quit automatically switching its users in China to Google's uncensored Hong Kong search site. But there's a tab users can click to be switched. Should Chinese citizens feel safe when hitting that tab?

Web Censorship in the USA

In 2008, the media reform group Free Press highlighted media and telecom corporations who'd recently been caught censoring web or cellphone traffic.

Inner City Press, a monitor of Wall Street and the United Nations, was temporarily delisted from Google News. The de-listing happened soon after Matt Lee of Inner City Press challenged Google over its commitment to free expression.

Tom Tomorrow, editorial cartoonist

The chaining and corporatization of alternative weeklies can undermine alternative cartoonists like "Tom Tomorrow"/Dan Perkins.

A victory for bloggers' access to courtrooms

In March 2012, a Massachusetts court ruled that bloggers deserve the same privileges in covering courts and trials as traditional media.

Can pay walls save newspapers?

No, says Arianna Huffington, as she testifies on "The Future of Journalism & Newspapers" before the U.S. Senate in May 2009 (at 59:02). (A former indy media student complained about Boston Globe's paywall around the Globe's editorial.)

Cofounder of Brave New Films: "The Internet is my religion."

Intensely personal 2011 speech from Brave New Films' Jim Gilliam (who was raised a conservative Christian evangelical) discussing how the Internet offered him salvation -- and literally saved his life.

Pre-financing of journalism and media projects

A new project, BeaconReader.com, hopes to fund freelance writers and indy media by seeking donations from the public for specific articles or topics. (Here is NY Times write-up from 2014, when it launched.)

Kickstarter.com is "a funding platform for artists, designers, filmmakers, musicians, journalists, inventors, explorers..." A key aspect of Kickstarter and some other funding platforms is "All or Nothing funding."

On Kickstarter, a project must reach its funding goal before time runs out or no money changes hands. Why? It protects everyone involved. Creators aren’t expected to develop their project without necessary funds, and it allows anyone to test concepts without risk.

Here was a successful Kickstarter fundraising drive in 2013 that saved a local movie theater. Here's a documentary movie project that I'm a small part of, which has used Kickstarter successfully.

Before Kickstarter was launched, the Robert Greenwald documentary on war-profiteering (Iraq for Sale) was PRE-funded mostly by small donors -- an example of grassroots financing of a work that had real impact.

Citizen journalist harassed/arrested

FAIR reports on recent arrest.

Historic outlets profiled in class

Common Sense by Tom Paine; focus on documents, not authors (or leaker), e.g. Ed Snowden; Frederick Douglass' North Star; Woman's Journal in 1911 reports on a victory; The Nation leader for decades, Oswald Garrison Villard; the muckracking magazine McClure's and a new website that seems to be the anti-McClure's; the weekly Appeal to Reason was one of our country's biggest ever indy; The Catholic Worker featured writers like Thomas Merton -- he and editor Dorothy Day recently praised by THE POPE; The Ladder, pioneering lesbian publication; one of the most important alternative weeklies, L.A. Free Press; the publication that inspired Steve Jobs, Whole Earth Catalog.

"Boggers Bring in Big Bucks" (2007)

This Business Week slideshow from July 2007 summarized some of the most financially successful early blogs covering technology, fashion, celebs, politics. Most are still success stories today. (Here is the intro to the slideshow.)

President Teddy Roosevelt on "The Man with the Muck Rake"

TR's April 1906 speech: 

The men with the muck rakes are often indispensable to the well being of society; but only if they know when to stop raking the muck . . . if they gradually grow to feel that the whole world is nothing but muck, their power of usefulness is gone.

Speaking of muckrakers, Warren Hinckle edited one of the most explosive muckraking magazines in U.S. history, Ramparts.

Biggest moments in journalism blogging history?

A list of historic moments in blogging from 1998-2008

Cops vs. Journalists Who Covered Occupy Wall St. Movement (2011/12)

HARASSMENT OF JOURNALISTS COVERING OCCUPY MOVEMENT: A citizen journalist with a video camera taped himself apparently getting shot by police rubber bullet while covering a seemingly peaceful moment during Occupy Oakland (CA) protests.  At Occupy Nashville, a reporter for the long-established weekly Nashville Scene was arrested for violating a curfew imposed by Tennessee's governor (a night judge questioned whether that's legal), was threatened with a "resisting arrest" charge, and was ultimately charged with "public intoxication." Nashville's big daily reported on the dubious arrest.

Between Sept 2011 and Sept 2012, more than 90 journalists (both independent and mainstream) were arrested while covering Occupy protests in the U.S. Removing journalists and citizen journalists from the scene seemed to be a strategy because acts of police brutality -- when recorded by citizen journalists and ubiquitous cameras & cell phones -- led to more sympathy and activists for the movement: for example, in NY City and at University of California, Davis. Like in the 1960s, the federal government built a large surveillance apparatus to spy on Occupy activists. 

And the surveillance of social movements continues today. 

"THE MAYOR'S AFRAID OF YOU TUBE": In October 2011, hours after New York City authorities made a last-minute decision NOT to clear protesters from the original Occupy Wall Street site in Lower Manhattan, filmmaker Michael Moore said this to MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell (begin 2:54 for context): 

"One cop down there actually today. I asked...'Why don't you think the eviction happened?' And he said, 'Cause the Mayor's afraid of You Tube.'...The power of the new media, the media that's in the hands of the people -- that those in charge are afraid of what could possibly go out."

Harassment of indy media in 2008

Since the 1960s when the FBI and local police engaged in violence and continuous harassment against "underground weeklies," repression against dissenting U.S. outlets has decreased. But it has certainly not ended. Case in point: the 2008 Republican Convention in Minnesota. Three years later, the journalists' suit against the police was settled, with $100,000 in compensation being paid by the St. Paul and Minneapolis police departments and the Secret Service. The settlement included an agreement by the St. Paul police to implement a training program aimed at educating officers regarding the 1st Amendment rights of the press and public, including proper procedures for dealing with journalists covering demonstrations.

Two Stars of 1960s Alternative Media

RAMPARTS: One of the most explosive indy magazines of the 1960s, Ramparts published photos of the impact of U.S. napalm (a chemical weapon that eats away human flesh) on Vietnamese civilians in its Jan. 1967 issue. Martin Luther King, Jr. credited those photos with being the spark that got him to break his silence and speak out loudly against the Vietnam War a few months later.  Besides its investigative scoops and dramatic story-telling, Ramparts was known for its cover art, shown here and HERE.

"DR. HIP": Syndicated widely to "underground weeklies," Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld dispensed blunt and humorous advice about sex (and drugs). That legacy is carried on by Dan Savage's "Savage Love" column in today's alternative weeklies. Savage started the "It Gets Better" project.

Two leading political reporters take joy ride with Trump . . .

. . . aboard his helicopter. Who could ever question their objectivity or independence?

I.F. Stone Inspires Today's Independent Journalists

New educational documentary, "The Legacy of I.F. Stone," in two parts.

Robert Abbott and Margaret Sanger

Robert Abbott of the Chicago Defender played a major journalistic role in the "great migration" of African Americans from the U.S. South.

Margaret Sanger, publisher/journalist/founder of Planned Parenthood, is proof that heroes, including heroes of indy media, are often flawed. This article from Women's E-News discusses her flirtation with eugenics-oriented arguments in support of birth control in the early 1920s.