Bennington-reports
Task Force Reports
Mission statement
Presented by David Pearson . . .
The Southern Vermont Center on Community Media is a regional focal point for the public to learn the sharing across all media forms of community news, information, ideas and cultural, creative expression; for convening and celebrating civic, educational, public and citizen resources; in order to foster participatory democracy.
What we talked about on the way to the mission statement: This has to be sustainable, economically, sustainable within the community as far as people's involvement. But that is implicit and we decided we're just trying to figure out the mission, now the "how" it will be sustainable.
We toyed with the idea of whether it was a physical or a virtual focal point. All liked the idea this could be place downtown like a cafe -- inviting to the whole community, were people could share ideas like they did in 18th-century London -- with lots of content created.
Implicit was the idea this would help the college and make it a more attractive place. A lot of discussion was that this has to be a vibrant community to achieve all those goals.
Q: Is it Center FOR or Center ON community media?
Pearson: We didn't want to just seem like it was a place. My vote would be to say Center for Community Media. We thought about the name. Instead of Bennington, settled on Southern Vermont to imply the whole area, not just Vermont but adjacent parts of New York state. "This region is very connected, despite state borders."
Q: David: Should it be on the campus or downtown? Would having it on campus isolate it?
Bowen: Your synergy is around public access TV and the radio station. And combining those operations into a physical place which is also a training place for the college opens it up to some synergy. You can original from campus via fiber.
Therrien: Downtown would be great to promote it; something downtown would be helpful to spread the knowledge of what you have.
Dowst: What's the problem with having multiple offices? And do we need a defined space to get this started. We're talking about a network of places that already exist?
Densmore: Agrees that this could start with no space -- the room we are in is the current space -- and move to a hole in the wall or a coffee show, and perhaps have a longterm goal of a building that brings together elements.
Hassett: It would be nice to have an office for the director. But really it is going to be at five or more locations.
Elliott: A website could bring this all together.
Pierce: Bringing students off campus is a good thing. A free-standing space in the community makes it a more neutral space. His experience in Troy is it is critical to have a physical location to build community. Steve Pierce is executive director of the New York Media Alliance. He was on the board of Pacifica for awhile. He is focused on doing economic and social change with media. If you don't grapple with these issues now you will have even less local identities. He also does media education. He is focused on hundreds of small donations to maintain independence. Diversified revenue based because they don't have much hope for long-term grant support.
Operational considerations
Presented by Tim Nulty . . .
Five people are business people, and three started businesses from scratch. You have to start out with some idea of mission, so they presumed that it would be something like what Wally talked about, with some slight differences. There was a sensation that it should be less free standing and more of a collaborative entity. The other thing was that it not be as overtly ideological "because we don't live in such a malignant environment."
Specifics
- What's the institutional framework? College.
- Where does the money come from? Have to hire someone.
Can't drive it just with volunteers. But the school doesn't have a lot of money. Didn't go into it in a lot of detail. If the school wanted to help create an entrepreneurial entity, there might have to be some amount of additional funding coming from the school but the school should tell the entity that it has to come up with a business plan and be financially self-supporting.
In that context it would be a PR advantage to the school. Listening close to Wally, it is financially free-standing and it has cash flow; it probably gets some grants but there are budgets and revenues. The school if it chose to, could do that and it could be put together and probably work.
Q: Was the connectivity mentioned?
Nulty:Not clear that both the media center and the ISP are feasible in this area. Activity shouldn't be predicated on the Burlington fiber-to-the-home project. You probably don't have that option but you may have other ISP options.
There are different financial models and different mixes of funding -- advertising, readers, etc.
Nulty: Who is going to organize all of this and babysit the news portal? That's a significant resource.
Bowen: At the National Conference on Media Reform in Memphis in January, the leaders said the key challenge is how to capture dollars that are flowing out of communities and turn them back to be used in the community.
Nulty: A major reason people quote for switching over to Burlington Telecom is they like that the money is going to the city to benefit city services.
Educational considerations
Presented by Rebecca Deliddo . . .
Curriculum needs to include:
- Critical thinking
- Understanding what journalism is
- History of journalism
- An understanding of media literacy
- A basic skill set around existing technologies
The goals is to leave them not afraid of technology. Just training on the latest technology is not the answer. It is the skill and not being afraid of using new technology. Curriculum is broad, and talks about history, politics, sociology, economics, but bringing them more intentionally into the curriculum than they are now. And there is a role in the curriculum for bringinng in the community voice.
Talked how students and faculty would interact with the center. One of the challenges has been differentiating between students working at a facility -- and having an educational experience. They are not the same thing. Learning has to relate back to their curriculum.
So the key components of what a facility would do:
- Providing a laboratory for skillsets -- such as filming, editing
- A way for student content to be provided to center partners
- A source of classroom support -- organizing and providing guest speakers
- Demonstrating skill sets required for broader world
As a small campus, our students don't hear very many voices. This provides an enriching experience. It's a resource and a support service for the college, rather than part of the academic program. The educational side of the college is the academic side of it is an enterprise of its own. The communication professor is not going to be running the center. That was tried with the radio station and it didn't work. It's two different hats.
Talked about having grant-funding workships in training or media literacy. The media center would provide people to do that as well as access points.
