This past Saturday was Media Democracy Day in Vancouver and around Canada.
While I was otherwise indisposed, the Vancouver event at the Public Library looked like a huge success (because of or in spite of the beautiful autumn weather), our man Scales was among the participants on stage on a panel to discuss "The Battle for New Media and Open Communication" along with Micheal Tippet of Now Public and others.
He used his experiences covering Olympic Games in Turin and Beijing as reference points to discuss the changing landscape of news gathering.
Our pal Tris Hussey was among the active audience live twittering the event to provide some excellent stream of collective consciousness reportage in: Journalism in a time of Big Media Domination & The Battle for New Media and Open Communication.
Tris captures snippets of the conversations ranging from landscape change and market woes to non-rights-holders covering the Olympics. Here's a taste:
"You won’t recognize the media landscape in three years" Michael Tippet
Scales still "super editor" and "unofficial" China desk editor on NowPublic
Streets of Torino, they couldn’t talk about the Olympics, IOC shut them down. Hmm. Guess you have to pay to cover, eh? Became cultural show
Along with thick photoset from Media Democracy Day Vancouver, Tris also contributed to the collective online media literacy by adding a another tasty flavour to the layer cake of the net neutrality discussion in: Vancouver Geeks Speak Out: Net Neutrality Part 2.
What net neutrality would ensure is that we don’t have “rich people’s internet” where because you pay a premium fee your email is delivered instantly and your traffic is uncontrolled versus a “poor person’s Internet” where a company will decide when traffic passes through its network and how.
Beyond Robson published Steve Anderson's manifesto: A Focal Point for Media Democracy in Vancouver
Miss604 gave our MDD08 preview post a thumbs-up Media Democracy Day in Vancouver 2008
Nick Naylor discusses being the enemy in Media Democracy Day (PS nice post about Elizabeth May Whistlestop Tour too - read my comments about train travel in the Vancouver Courier)
The Georgia Straight weighed-in with a short piece about Linda Solomon (an American "Canadian-in-training" who runs the Vancouver Observer)'s unpleasant exchange with CanWest in: Journalist alleges she was told that she'll never write for CanWest.