Todd Mundt

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John Barth of PRX sent comments on my recent New Realities rant post, and now that I’ve rescued them and others from WordPress moderation purgatory, I want to bring them to the front page so you don’t miss them.
John writes:
My public remarks [at New Realities] were intended to push people beyond their comfort zones and [...]

Note: this is very much a working document. It’s a snapshot of a “living” line of reasoning and is likely to evolve over time. This began as a collection of my thoughts, but it’s been improved immeasurably by Mark Fuerst of iMA; I sent this to him and at least a third of this document [...]

Moderator: Patricia Aufderheide. Participants: Mark Cooper, Consumer Federation; Diane Mermigas, The Hollywood Reporter; Dan Nova, Highland Capital Partners.
Because of a minor issue (let’s call it Autosave), these notes are adapted from Jessica Duda’s excellent summary on the Beyond Broadcast blog. I summarize them here not to pass them off as my own but to have [...]

Charles Nesson, co-founder and faculty director, Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard Law School
Nesson delivered a brief and powerful address about the rhetorical space of the Internet, the central value of openness and the challenge posed by those who would curtail that openness. He spoke about universities and the mandate to create an “open [...]

Beyond Broadcast organizers offered the option of several loosely structured “idea generating/networking” dinners last night for conference attendees. I “moderated” a discussion among six individuals, based generally on the following question: how do we get the best content from our listeners? Participants included Josh Andrews of Chicago Public Radio, Jessica Duda of the Center for [...]

Tom Gerace (Gather.com), Thomas Kriese (Omidyar Network), Brendan Greeley (Radio Open Source), Rhea Mokund (Listenup.org) Moderator: Ethan Zuckerman (Global Voices, Berkman Center)
Brendan Greeley explained Radio Open Source’s approach to community media. The goal was to have the blog be the center, with the show as the outgrowth. Blogs are the new talk radio. Blogs [...]

Christopher Lydon, moderator; Bill Buzenberg, Minnesota Public Radio; Terry Heaton, Donata Communications; David Liroff, WGBH
Bill Buzenberg spoke about Public Insight Journalism: “for every story, someone in our audience knows more than we do”, their use of “idea generators” like The Future of Small Towns. Those ideas become reports and series on-air, become comments online, become [...]

Keynote: Reinventing the Gatekeeper
James Boyle, Center for the Study of the Public Domain, Duke Law School
We’re bad at predicting the future of technology; we have to understand that and the policy implications of it.
The inability to see the potential of commons-based media: we are blind to the opportunities this kind of media offers at every [...]

Consultant Robert Paterson left some thoughtful comments here that put the New Realities event into a broader perspective. I don’t want them to reside only in the comments section, where some might not see them:

I left more hopeful. My concern as you so accurately stated was that the work for the people there was to [...]

Halfway through the first day of the NPR New Realities sessions in Washington, it occurred to me: a well-placed bomb would do wonders for the future of public broadcasting.
Consultant Robert Paterson began yesterday’s session with this warning:
It’s time to grow up and take responsibility for the things you’ve blamed others for all these years.”
The room [...]

I’ve spent some time digging around Gather.com and the Public Interactive Public Action beta and I’ve come away with somewhat more positive feelings about both.
I think the social networking aspect of these and other sites has less potential for public broadcasters - at least for now, while our main demographic is still late-GenX/Baby Boom. This [...]

BBC is spending 106 million pounds on an overhaul of its web operations - from Paid Content.
The money quote comes from Ashley Highfield, BBC’s director of new media and technology:
“We want to allow Internet users to go into their own BBC space containing all the content they’re interested in, all the TV shows they like [...]