About the geek behind the ‘geek

My name is Paul Riismandel, and I have been the mediageek since Feb. 2000. But I’ve been Paul since before then. (And I’ve decided to write this bio in first person, since I’m actually writing it).

I’ve been making media ever since I could hold a pen or work a tape recorder. But I’ve been making something closer to mass media for nearly twenty years. Starting with college radio at WTSR-FM at Trenton State College (now the College of New Jersey), I really caught the media-making bug and also was introduced to more alternative and underground media.

After college I moved to Champaign-Urbana, IL for graduate school, where I stayed for more than fourteen years. I hung around this Central Illinois college town because I got involved in community radio WEFT, which immersed me in community radio and the world of alternative and independent media that surrounds it. In fourteen years of involvement at WEFT I hosted three different shows, chaired the station’s programming committee and coordinated several pledge drives.

WEFT is the birthplace of the mediageek radioshow, which I’ve been producing since March, 2002. The radioshow gives me an audio outlet for the issues I blog about here, in addition to an excuse to interview interesting people who are out there making their own media.

The 1999 WTO ministerial that became the Battle in Seattle convinced me that there was greater power to be captured in the nexus of the internet with existing alternative media. Along with a group of about 20 other local media activists, in 2000 I helped organize the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center, which opened its first physical storefront location on the day of George W. Bush’s first inauguration in Jan. 2001. The U-C IMC now owns the historic post office in downtown Urbana, IL.

In April, 2008 I left Champaign for the more urban environs of Chicago to take a position as the Director of Curriculum Support for the School of Communication at Northwestern University. One of the great benefits of this job is that I am also the adviser to the student radio station WNUR. I now also have the privilege of producing the mediageek radioshow from WNUR, bringing it to an even wider audience.

mediageek is an outgrowth of my studies and my lifelong passion for media that lies outside and opposes the mainstream.