I’m a little bummed that I didn’t know about this project that happened in my Chicago neighborhood this past weekend – People’s Radio at Mess Hall:

People’s Radio will be a fully functioning radio station aimed at promoting alternative and local points of view, non-mainstream music, creating a dialogue about the “Commons”, and to demystify radio.

We will be webstreaming at

http://giss.tv:8001/messhall.ogg

or, if you are in the vicinity, during the festival you can tune in at 104.7 FM

This is the culmination of two weekends of workshops conducted by members of Radios Populares. (www.radiospopulares.org) where people learned how radio works, how to build antennas, and how to set up a webstream.

I intended to get over to the Glenwood Arts Fest, but as many intentions go, it didn’t happen.

The webstream is down already and I’ll check out 104.7 FM when I get home, though I’d guess it’s no longer on the air either. I don’t know what kind of power they were using, if it was Part 15 (and therefore legal to use without a license) or higher. In any event, using a radio broadcast for short durations at events is a very effective use of the technology that mitigates many of the complications (and risks, if you’re using more than Part -15 power) associated with running regular or constant broadcasts, while also concentrating energies to demonstrate the power of broadcasting, especially when made accessible.

I hope the event was successful and might see a repeat.

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I meant to comment on the Town Hall earlier, but then all of a sudden already a week passed. First, I want to say that I was glad to be able to attend, and thanks go to organizer Ken Davis who was nice enough to squeeze me in after it looked like their RSVP list was full.

It’s tough to organize such an event and try to be balanced and fair with regard to representation. To begin with, the task of discussing local journalism in Chicago while the two major daily papers are on the ropes is not so simple. If you’re looking to get out of the echo chamber you want to be sure to include voices critical of the mainstream journalism status quo, but at the same time you risk alienating a lot of receptive participants if you don’t also include folks from inside that mainstream. Of course, since many observers pin responsibility for the newspaper’s decline on the internet, you need to have some new media newsies there, too.

Faced with that challenge I think the organizers did a fine job, including both current newspaper reporters and columnists along with bloggers and critical voices. Somebody with an axe to grind can certainly complain about a particular person or institution not being included. But I’d challenge anyone to come up with better representation across the local journalism spectrum in Chicago… nevermind actualy getting them to show up.

Lasting some three hours, it would be difficult for me to effectively summarize the Town Hall in a readable way. Instead I’ll reflect on what stands out to me most one week later.

Without a doubt the friction between new media and old media was present and palpable throughout the event. I wouldn’t say that it ever got hostile, but a level of mutual suspicion could be sensed. The beef of the mainstream, primarily print, journalists echoed a frequent complaint which was summed in one word by Chicago news veteran John Callaway: “theft.” That was his answer to a question of how newspapers might achieve a level of success, audience and revenue online similar to that achieved by the Huffington Post.

At many times the contention that news websites and blogs still rely heavily on the work of the traditional press was brought up. Sometimes it was during a discussion of the negative effects of major newspapers going out of business, noting that such an occurrence would leave bloggers without something to comment on (and, presumably, steal). Other times it was expressed with more bitterness, accusing web-only enterprises of failing to produce much original content, therefore not showing promise as the new guard.

The feelings weren’t much warmer from the other side, as those running web-only news sites, like ChiTown Daily’s Geoff Dougherty cited how profiteering by big newspaper owners began squeezing the papers to death before online was serious competition. Dougherty also forced the issue of original content, given that ChiTown Daily pays both experienced professional journalists and new citizen journalists to do original reporting for the site.

Another strong current was the issue of making money online, with traditional journalists questioning if online ads, in particular, would ever be sufficient to sustain a fully online newspaper. That question met with two different answers. Some panelists, like Community Media Workshop’s Thom Clark and In These Times’ Salim Muwakkil, pointed out that making a profit at reporting news isn’t guaranteed by the first amendment and has contributed significantly to the current crisis. Other commenters from the audience argued that there’s plenty of money to be made with online ads. Sachin Agarwal, CEO of Dawdle.com, was there as an advertiser who buys ads on many Chicago-based websites. Brad Flora of the social news site Windy Citizen invited Agarwal and also spoke up in defense of the vitality of online advertising.

In the end my conclusion is that the tension isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In fact, if there’s a silver lining to the cloud of the current crisis it’s that it is forcing people to have the conversation not just about what the future of local journalism will be, but why it’s important in the first place, and what it should look like. Without rejecting the model of the daily commercial newspaper, at this moment it’s important to reflect critically on what features we wish to retain and what, perhaps, we can do without.

I forget who made the remark, but this line of thinking causes us to question why we have to stories about local government bundled with sudoku puzzles. Just because that’s the way the daily newspaper ended up doesn’t mean that’s the way it has to be.

Of course there are bigger questions at stake, regarding the place of objectivity and so-called advocacy journalism; about who gets to be a reporter, and whether future reporters will be able to make a living wage doing journalism. And of course, we still have the issue of who determines what gets reported and how.

I can’t say that I’m ready to dance on the graves of the Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times. For all of my criticism for how their owners have done business, and for the gaps present in their coverage of social and economic issues, they nevertheless contribute a great deal of valuable original reportage that would be immediately missed if they went out of business. Yet, these two papers cannot and should not be the only game in town. One of the major underlying problems is the extent to which we all are over reliant upon too few sources of news. And, yes, we probably would not be here if consolidation across media, encouraged by regulation and legislation, had not occurred on such a grand scale in the last quarter century.

The revolution in online news gathering really got off the ground almost ten years ago with the first Indymedia center covering the Battle in Seattle. The notion of uncensored user-contributed news, including photos, sound and video, was radical, forward-thinking and utterly pragmatic. So much so, that a decade on we take it for granted. I’d guess that most folks working online news sites and blogs are largely unaware of this lineage.

The same struggles that catalyzed independent and community media will continue to spur change in online journalism. Money is always an issue, but profit doesn’t have to be.

I left the Town Hall feeling unexpectedly stimulated and hopeful. Despite the overemphasis on making a profit online and the tensions between old media and new, I was heartened that such an open and frank discussion was happening in the first place. I doubt that the same broad mix of folks could have been brought together in the same way five or ten years ago. It’s a sign of both how severe the economic environment is, how much owners like Tribune have run their papers into the ground, and also how traditional journalism can ignore or minimize online efforts only at its own peril.

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Then we’ll hear some excerpts from the Chicago Journalism Town Hall that brought together a diverse panel and audience to discuss the future of local journalism.

The mediageek radioshow airs live Thursday night at 9 PM CST on WNUR 89.3 FM in Chicago, IL, and streaimng live online at wnur.org. The podcast will be posted this weekend.

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Micro radio, micro power broadcasting, part 15 radio, community radio, neighborhood station, experimental broadcasting, hobby broadcasting – I love it all!

It’s primarily a pretty good compendium of annotated links that’s been going with a few posts a month since February. Indeed, I found info about many more part-15 low-power transmitters for both AM and FM than I knew were available. There’s been a community of so-called “legal” low-power broadcasters in the US for a very long time. Many enthusiasts and broadcasters have been congregating for years at a message board called “Community Radio USA”. One of the denizens of that board has his own site called HobbyBroadcasting.net HobbyBroadcaster.net, which I found while reading through the Low Power Radio Blog.

While here at the ‘geek the focus is often on unlicensed broadcasters operating with power above the part-15 limit (roughly 100 milliwatts or so), there’s much utility to be found with part-15 stations, especially in dense urban areas or similar circumstances. Since FM part-15 limits are based on field-strength it’s relatively difficult to build a station with much reach that remains truly legal — even if you pump only 10 milliwatts into a very efficient antenna several hundred feet off the ground you’ll likely be reaching further than part-15 regs allow.

However, AM limits are specified in antenna length and power (100 milliwatts), allowing much more room for creative engineering and getting more broadcast range without breaking the law. Kyle Drake’s excellent LPAM handbook is a great reference for anyone wanting to try out legal part-15 broadcasting on the AM dial.

Much of the info that the Low Power Radio blog has dug up is more historical in nature, culled from both internet and print sources, like this 1991 handbook for starting a station. While the references to equipment manufacturers and sellers may be outdated, there’s still some decent tech and historical info to glean. I’m glad that someone is compiling and sharing this stuff and I hope that the blog sticks around a while.

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Lasar also notes the gathering steam in support for setting aside some of the merged company’s channel capacity for noncommercial programming, similar to what has been required for direct-broadcast satellite TV. Apparently even Clear Channel wants 5% of capacity set aside for “public interest” programming, whatever Cheap Channel means by that.

I oppose the merger on the principled basis of the fact that such a merger was specifically prohibited as a provision of the original authorization of the service. Nevertheless, I recognize that principle rarely rules the day in DC. Therefore I very much support setting aside channel capacity for non-commercial broadcasters as a necessary condition if the FCC chooses to approve the merger.

Obtaining a non-commercial channel on Dish Network was vitally important for Free Speech TV and has allowed that organization to distribute its radically critical grassroots programming in a way that it simply could not before, feeding public access TV stations around the country.

Although internet distribution is still more practical for radio programming than for TV programming, having several nation-wide progressive and grassroots radio channels nonetheless would be a great opportunity, and could be of great service to community radio stations.

A channel I’d love to see is one built on an Indymedia type of model, mixed with Current TV. It would be fed by programming from independent producers and community stations, like the programs you find at the A-Info Radio Project and Radio Indymedia. But, like Current, it should be edited and curated. That is, I’d like to see things selected and knit together into a coherent program flow. Maybe a whole show would be carried, or just a particularly good segment. And then combine these shows and segments with regular hosts and other original content related to particular themes and topics.

In a way, this idea is a lot like what a lot of people over the years have hoped would come of NPR or Pacifica, that they would function truly more like networks connecting up stations than as program syndicators. But I do understand how the overhead of the kind of operations they need to run make playing that networking role more difficult.

That’s the beauty of having new channels on satellite radio — the overhead is comparatively low because you don’t have to worry about physical broadcast stations, licenses or signing up affiliates. Like an internet station, but with a different kind of reach, the low overhead allows more opportunity for experimentation.

Of course the kind of channel I’m envisioning is not necessarily well suited to distributing programming in the same way that Free Speech distributes Democracy Now to stations. That’s why we need to have multiple channels set aside, so there is room for multiple models. Compared even to satellite TV channels, satellite radio channel capacity is cheap. I don’t see any reason why the FCC can’t or shouldn’t make this a condition of approving the merger. It could be like creating LPFM for the nation.

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• FCC Proceeding on localism: http://www.fcc.gov/localism
• Public Knowledge’s Orphan Works Act page: http://www.publicknowledge.org/issues/ow
• Matthew Lasar’s Ars Technica article: NPR’s war on Low Power FM: the laws of physics vs. politics

You can read the full test of the show’s news headlines after the jump.

mediageek 2008-05-02

The House Energy and Commerce Committee might be turning up the heat on FCC Chairman Kevin Martin. Staff members are recommending that the committee hold public hearings in June on Martin’s management practices. In a memo to committee chairman John Dingell and Rep. Bart Stupak who chairs the subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, the staff write, “The bottom line is that the (FCC) process appears broken and most of the blame appears to rest with chairman Martin.”

One of the major complaints lodged against Martin is that he has been excessively secretive, keeping even his fellow commissioners in the dark about proposed decisions and meeting agendas until the very last moment. The most infamous example of this tactic happened last December when Martin revealed his plan to do away with the newspaper-TV cross-ownership ban in an Op-Ed published in the New York Times before he had even revealed his intentions to the other four commissioners.

In their memo the House Energy and Commerce Committee staff said that their investigation into the Martin’s management is ongoing and said that their recommendation for a public hearing is based on ““more than 30 interviews with current and former [FCC] employees as well as industry representatives and private citizens.”

Speaking of the FCC’s near-total revocation of the cross-ownership ban, on April 24 the Senate Commerce Committee unanimously approved a joint resolution disapproving the Commission’s December party-line vote on that issue. Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye said, “It is clear to me that the Commission rushed its process. The agency rolled back its rules preventing media concentration, despite getting a cautionary light from the Congress that more public comment and more attention to localism and minority ownership was needed before barreling ahead.” A similar resolution is being floated in the House. The resolution has a total of 25 co-sponsors in the full Senate, including both Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton. Senator Obama urged swift passage of the bill, although it’s prospects of rmaking it past President Bush look pretty slim.

At the same time, it looks like FCC Chairman Martin is wasting no time in trying to polish his public image. He held a press conference on April 24 where he announced that topics for open meeting agendas will now be made public on the FCC website at least three weeks prior to each monthly meeting. Until now the practice has been to issue a public notice of the agenda one week ahead. At the same press conference Martin then announced the agenda for the upcoming May 14 meeting. Noticeably absent from the agenda was any consideration of the proposed Xm/Sirius satellite radio merger, which has already been approved by the Justice Dept. That means a decision isn’t likely to happen until late May or June, keeping XM and Sirius execs, as well as some investors, sweating it out, waiting by the phone.

Amateur radio enthusiasts won a victory over the Federal Communications Commission’s plan to encourage deployment of a so-called third pipe in the form of broadband internet over power lines, also known as BPL. The American Radio Relay League, which represents the interests of ham radio operators, sued the FCC contending that the commission’s plans are insufficient to protect against interference with amateur radio, in addition to being inconsistent with existing rules.

On April 25 the DC Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling questioning the FCC’s BPL rulemaking process, sending the rule back to the FCC to do over. The Court was critical of the Commission redacting portions of five scientific studies that the FCC commissioned to measure BPL’s interference risks. The Court also said that the FCC had provided no reasoned explanation for why it rejected data submitted by the ARRL that might otherwise have influenced its rulemaking.

Although finding fault with the FCC’s rulemaking process the Court did not agree with the ARRL’s contention that the FCC should require BPL operators to shut down immediately if found to be causing harmful interference. The Court said that the FCC had adequately explained that there isn’t sufficient evidence that harmful interference is a imminent threat.

There are approximately 35 broadband over power line systems in the US, with about 5000 subscribers. The FCC will now have to take another look at this issue, taking into account more critical information provided by the amateur radio community.

Two weeks ago I played you a portion of a scathing keynote criticizing the broadcast industry that was delivered by Tim Robbins to the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas. Although NAB spokesman Dennis Wharton laughed off Robbins’ biting critique to the press, it looks like the decision to hire Robbins for the keynote contributed to the ouster of Pam Magnani, formerly senior vice president for meetings and conferences.

April 28 was the deadline to file comments on the FCC’s proposed rules aimed at promoting localism in broadcasting. Many of these rules are unpopular with broadcasters because they call for having staff present during all hours of operation, more record keeping and the establishment of local advisory boards. A coalition of medium size broadcast groups filed joint comments calling the proposed rules “blunt and burdensome,” while the National Association of Broadcasters claimed the rules would have the opposite effect making broadcasters less able to serve the public interest.

Joining the chorus of dissent are 23 Senators and Republican FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell.

Religious radio networks, like K-Love and the Calvary Chapel Satellite Network, urged their listeners to file comments opposing the proposed rules, and hundreds complied. The opposition primarily focused on the requirement to have stations staffed, since most of these stations are satellite-fed for a good portion of their broadcast day, and therefore automated.

At least one community radio broadcaster also filed comments opposing the staffing requirement as burdensome.

One the other side of the spectrum are public interest groups which filed comments in support of the proposed rules, and then suggested some additional ones. Joint comments were filed by The Public Interest Public Airwaves Coalition, Center for Creative Voices in Media, Free Press, and National Hispanic Media Coalition, asking the fcc to require broadcasters that want expedited license renewals to set aside 1% of their airtime for unpaid public service announcements, have no more than 30% of their airtime be infomercials or home shopping, and air a “reasonable amount” of independently produced programming. Moreover, they asked the Commission to reduce broadcast license terms from eight to three years and to commit to acting on petition to deny renewals within 180 days.

The FCC is now accepting reply comments addressing the issues raised in the first round of comments. You can learn more about the localism proceeding and file comments at www.fcc.gov/localism, or go to the mediageek website at mediageek.net

Say a little about intellectual property.

Let’s say that you’re working on a documentary about an historical subject–say the underground press of the 1960s–and you find some archival footage, along with photos and other images that you’d like to use. But you can’t track down the original authors or publishers who own the copyright. Under current law you can’t use these materials in your film without risking legal liability if the copyright owner should surface and object to your using them without permission.

These sorts of materials–where the original copyright holder can’t be identified or located–are known as orphan works. Now two bills have been entered into Congress to try and address orphan works by specifying provisions for finding copyright owners and also terms for using orphaned works when legitimate effort has been made to find copyright holders.

Senate Bill 2913, the Shawn Bentley Orphan Works Act of 2008 and House Resolution 5889, The Orphan Works Act of 2008, are both based on recommendations coming from the Copyright Office. These bills would allow someone to use a copyrighted work without permission only after conducting a “diligent effort” into specified “qualifying searches.” The Copyright Office would maintain and make available search guidelines. In turn if someone who used an orphan work is later challenged, a court would consider whether or not these best practices were followed.

One of the problems that arise when trying to track down the copyright holder of visual works–like paintings or photographs–is that the copyright office’s registry is text based, making it difficult to find a copyright registration unless you know the registered name of the work or the copyright holder. If passed these bills would require the Copyright OFFICE TO CERTIFY private registry services for visual works–a number of which already exist.

If a copyright owner does indeed come forward to claim rights on a work thought to be orphaned, the bills provide for the owner to be reasonably compensated by the author who used their work. Under current law the user of that work would also be subject to punitive civil and criminal penalties.

But, under these bills, if it turns out that the user did not make diligent effort to find the copyright holder, then that user will be subject to the penalties associated with copyright infringement.

Although a lot of consideration was given to protect copyright owners from users who might try to use these bills to cover up what is essentially infringing use, many visual artists, like photographers and illustrators, are still concerned. They worry that the costs and overhead associated with making sure they are findable, such as registering their works with a private registry, will be onerous. Defenders of orphaned works legislation counter that copyright holders do not lose their rights and can still be compensated even if they do not register — the function of registries is to make them easier to find, and therefore more easily able to obtain royalties should they be willing to license their works.

The Internet Archive, Association of Public Television Stations, the Association of Research Libraries and the public interest group Public Knowledge joined together to support the orphaned works legislation, noting that they would bring balance to copyright law if passed. Now the bills need to be taken up by the Senate Judiciary Committee and the House Intellectual Property Subcommittee. To learn more go to publicknowledge.org

On April 30 the House Judiciary Committee took a step to crack down further on piracy and conterfeiting by stiffening penalties and enforcement. It passed the Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act, also known as the Pro-IP act, whose chief sponsor is chairman John Conyers. Missing from the recently revised bill is a measure that would have dramatically increased fines for copyright infringement. Still in the bill is a measure allowing federal officials to seize property from convicted copyright infringers who made unauthorized copies of music, movies or live performances.

However, some consideration has been given to the risk that an innocent person’s property might be seized, such as if a person’s wi-fi network were used by a convicted infringer without the owner’s notice. The bill was amended to make clear that there must be a “substantial connection” between the property seized and the violation in question. However it remains unclear how shielded Jane Q Public would be from having her computers confiscated if a convicted pirate used her wifi access point to distribute his wares.

The legislation would also create a new executive-appointed position called the US Intellectual Property Enforcement Representative, modeld on the US Trade Representative.

Nevertheless, the bill is still pretty unpopular in a lot of circles, especially in tech. Surprisingly, it also isn’t popular with the Justice Department, which believes that establishing the IP enforcement representative would undermine its independence.

The original unammended Pro-IP bill was called the “most outrageously gluttonous IP bill ever introduced in the US” by William Patry, former law professor, copyright counsel to the US House of Representatives, author of a new 7 volume treatise on copyright and the current senior copyright counsel to Google. In a blog post dated Dec. 10 Patry wrote, “The question is not whether copyright is a good thing: properly calibrated copyright is very good, indeed essential for certain classes of works. But an excessive amount of something that is beneficial in measured doses can become fatal in overdoses, and copyright is already at fatal strength.”

He goes on to say, “The idea that criminal forfeiture provisions, drafted to reach major drug traffickers like the Columbian cartels, should be inserted into civil copyright tort provisions with a preponderance of the evidence burden, is mind-blowing. The capacity – if not intent – of these provisions for profound mischievousness is obvious: in addition to the gluttonous statutory damages that would be available, content owners now want to defendants to forfeit their computers, their cars, and their homes: all of these can be said to have been used in the commission of infringement.”

As a side note, getting the House to move on the Pro-IP bill doesn’t come cheap. The Recording Industry Association of American spent $2 million in 2007 lobbying Congress for tougher intellectual property laws just like the Pro-IP bill. How many CDs or iTunes purchases does that add up to?

Do you have an opinion on the Pro-IP bill? Communicate it to your House Representative — one phone call can mean a lot.

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I covered this on Friday’s radioshow, too, and the more I think about it, the more disappointed I am in NPR. Despite many of the criticisms of NPR’s establishment-oriented news coverage and upper-middle-class demographic focus, there’s much to like about NPR and its programming. I am a daily listener because NPR’s news programming is better than anything on the commercial radio dial, and better than commercial TV news. That said, I don’t get all my news from NPR, and think it’s also vitally important to have community radio and great international programs like Democracy Now and Free Speech Radio News, both of which merit wider distribution and better funding.

Back in 2001 when I had a little Q&A with then NPR president Kevin Klose he maintained that the network was hewing to the interference concerns of the Western NPR affiliates, using translator stations to reach mountainous and isolated regions. He tried to express sympathy for the goals of LPFM, while also criticizing the FCC for how he believed it rushed LPFM through.

But we all learned the interference concerns were unfounded when the Congressionally mandated Mitre report was released. So why does NPR insist on opposing LPFM still?

The only answer that makes sense is that the network is behaving in a very Clear Channel/NAB way, opposing any competition, regardless of the potential competitor’s merits. This is nothing new, NPR joined up with the CPB back in the 70s to kill low-power Class D radio the first time around (see my chapter in the Radio Reader). NPR’s competition anxiety is a little different than Clear Channel’s in that now, as in the 1970s, it has a lot to do with CPB grants, which are still the lifesblood of most NPR affiliate stations. These grants have been shrinking, and increasingly are based on listener ratings. Especially in medium size markets, LPFMs can pose a real threat of listener erosion.

The bigger fear, I reckon, is that beyond just posing competition, NPR fears that some stations might actually have to give way to or assist LPFMs if they want to move tower locations or increase power.

Nevertheless, I remain unconvinced of NPR’s apparent fears and critical of their opposition to LPFM. I believe that public radio as a whole has more to gain from having additional noncommercial, community stations on the dial than it has to lose. In any event, NPR’s continued opposition of LPFM is short-sighted and unnecesary.

I am definitely considering halting my contributions to NPR-affiliated stations in protest of NPR’s stupid LPFM stance. I wish there were a way to make pledges to stations to continue support local programming without any of that money going to the network (maybe there is?). What do you think?

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