Month: January 2002

Last Sunday’s edition of Radio Free Conscience is on-line now, featuring news headlines, John Anderson talking about the Workers Independent News Service and news about Pacifica. Click here to listen (30 minutes in RealAudio). Download it in mp3 at Urbana IMC.

The Radio Enron? Danny Schechter, Mediachannel’s News Dissector, almost compares Pacifica to Enron, taking note of the financial monkey business that apparently went on at the network prior to the formation of the new interim Nat’l Board. The full scale of the network’s debt and financial blood letting is just becoming known, along with the…

Zines on Tour I picked up a cool punk ‘zine called War Against the Idiots at Quimby’s (an excellent read, by the way, look for review soon) and happened on an interview with some volunteers from the Bookmobile Project, which is a traveling bookmobile of zines treking across the US and Canada. I sent them…

Browsing the Small, Independent and Underground Press I was up in Chicago on Sunday and finally got a chance to drop into Quimby’s bookstore, which is well known for stocking lots of underground, small press and independent publications, with a pretty good stock of ‘zines. I dropped only about $30 on a stack of diverse…

When You’re FCC Chair You Can’t Make Everyone Happy Electronic Media has a short article on how FCC Chair Michael Powell is taking things more slowly than originally expected, not pushing deregulation as hard and fast as hoped by the industry and feared by us mere mortals. The article quotes the director of the Center…

The Online Journalism Review reports on “Modern Day Muckrakers, The rise of the Independent Media Center movement.” Focusing on the Philadelphia IMC, which just recently purchased a building to house their activities, the article is a nice and fair profile of IMC. Unlike a lot of mainstream journalists, the author doesn’t seem to feel the…

FCC Stuff Washtech reports that “Lawmakers Urge Stronger Telecom Act Enforcement From FCC” — the focus of attention is local telcos, like SBC/Ameritech, opening up their networks to competitive carriers for all sorts of digital services. Lest anyone think this is an example of pernicious regulation being imposed on free enterprise, it’s important to recall…

Laura Flanders says “After years of focusing on issues of personnel and policy, it’s time for Pacifica to refocus on programming.

…and then, after all that finger-tapping rumination about blogging I stumbled on (thanks to blogdex) Blowback, self-described as “dedicated to elevating mediocrity to modest heights, which is harder work than it sounds. It takes elbowgrease and browsweat to cobble recycled news and ill-formed opinion together into an appalling package; a formidable challenge to mount a…