I’ll be literally phoning it in to my old haunt WEFT, 90.1 FM in Champaign-Urbana, IL, at 5:30 PM to do a special edition of the mediageek radioshow for their pledge drive. Long time readers/listeners may recall that WEFT is where the radioshow got its start and where it originated until April of this year. […]
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Media Monopoly in Champaign-Urbana?
Media Monopoly in Champaign-Urbana? Consolidation, Absentee Ownership Both on the Increase by Paul Riismandel and John Wason Originally published in the public i #1, Aug. 2001 Ever wonder why local news coverage on TV actually adds up to only a few minutes a day? Curious why there seems to be little difference between ‘extreme’ rock, […]
Creating Alternative Media: Examples from Urbana-Champaign
I’ll be participating in a little session during the lunch break at the Wednesday Media Consolidation conference along with some of my comrades in independent media from the ‘hood. It happens at 12:30 PM in the Krannert Center Lobby, between the session featuring Phil Donahue, John Nichols and Naomi Klein and the one featuring Len […]
Champaign-Urbana Community Radio on Media Matters this Sunday
Media Matters is Prof. Robert McChesney‘s weekly call-in talk show on our local NPR affiliate, WILL-AM 580. On this Sunday’s show at 1 PM I am one of the guests along with Mike Lehman, the founding force behind our new LPFM station taking to the air in June and a founding member of our local IMC, and Sandra Ahten, who currently works to produce the IMC’s weekly radio news program.
We pretaped this program last week, so you can’t call in. But you can listen on the radio if you’re in the northern half of Illinois. The station has a booming AM signal during the day that reaches nearly to Wisconsin on the North and almost to Indianapolis on the East.
You an also listen on-line when it airs or catch it in the archives afterwards.
5 Urbana-Champaign IMC Reporters Arrested in NYC, 2 Released
This is an example of how pre-emptive arrests by the NYPD could hit at any moment, even at the most peaceful of marches and actions.
Yesterday afternoon five reporters from the U-C IMC were at the War Resisters March, starting at Ground Zero and planned to go to Madison Square Garden for a die-in. Just a few blocks into the march, the police ordered marchers to go double-file on the sidewalk. Marchers complied, but then police pulled out the orange mesh barriers and penned in about 200 of them. After about an hour, modified city buses were pulled up and everyone was arrested.
Urbana IMC volunteers have been at the IMC taking phone calls from reporters in NYC since Sunday, recording the calls and posting text summaries and the audio to the U-C IMC website. So, yesterday’s summary reflects the sequence of the arrest as U-C IMC reporters called in.
All of the arrested reporters were hauled off to Pier 57, which is a former bus depot turned into a holding tank, now nicknamed “Guantanamo on the Hudson.” By all reports, the floor of the depot is coated thick in old oil and engine waste, which detainees are forced to sleep in . There are reports of people breaking out in rashes after being released.
Using a smuggled-in cell phone, two U-C IMC reporters called in reports this morning from Pier 57. You can listen to Sarah’s and Zach’s descriptions of the conditions.
The two male reporters were released around 5 PM CDT today. They were charged with disorderly conduct and parading without a permit and released ACD (Adjourned considering Dismissal). Zach called in a full and detailed report of the whole experience which you can listen to.
Unforunately, the three female reporters who were arrested have not yet been released. Volunteers are still staffing the IMC waiting for word of their release.