Archive for Media
Pay Wall
Posted by: | CommentsThis has been coming for a while. The Asheville Citizen-Times is erecting a pay wall.
Beginning the first of July, people who do not subscribe to the Citizen-Times will have limited access to our content on smartphones, tablet devices and website.
People who subscribe to the Citizen-Times, however, will continue to receive the print edition delivered to their homes or businesses and also will receive [apps, email version, and tablet version].
[...]
Nonsubscribers will be able to view 10 news items a month before they will be prompted to subscribe.Not all of our content, however, will be metered and count against the 10-per-month limit.
[...]
For the past 15 years, our print subscribers have subsidized the free digital content that people have been able to access on their computer screens. And for the past 15 years, a lot of our subscribers have said that wasn’t very smart and wasn’t very fair.
We’ll see how it works out. Will some other enterprising local news outlet expand their online local coverage to include a lot more daily news items? That would require investing in more reporters, and I don’t think any of the other news organizations are in a position to do big expansions in response to this move by the AC-T.
News is a business, and businesses have to pay their workers and their overhead. The question is whether people will eschew the AC-T in favor of free alternatives.
Supporting the WE DO campaign
Posted by: | CommentsThe Campaign for Southern Equality is participating in a 24-hour online fundraising contest called Twive and Receive and representing the city of Asheville. We’re competing with 200 other non-profits from around the country and, on top of that, we’re the only LGBT organization in this contest.
Here’s the deal: If we win the contest Razoo will donate $15,000 to CSE. Second place is $10,000 and third is $5,000. This funding will go toward the WE DO Campaign and our free legal workshops for LGBT people in the South.
Here are a few ways you can help us get there:
- Give $10 or more right now.
- Email or call your friends and family and ask them to do the same.
- Update your status on Facebook and send a tweet urging your friends to help us finish in the top 3!
A little bit of background about CSE in case you’re not familiar with our work.
On May 9th, the Campaign for Southern Equality (CSE) launched the third stage of our WE DO campaign in Wilson, N.C. It was not a coincidence that we began our campaign the day after the Amendment One vote. Regardless of the outcome, we knew that LGBT individuals would still be second-class citizens in the state of North Carolina – unable to marry or complete second-parent adoptions, subject to employment and housing discrimination and lacking many other basic legal rights.
From May 9th to May 15th, 38 courageous LGBT couples applied for – and were denied – marriage licenses in their home towns, from small towns such as Wilson and Bakersville to population centers like Winston-Salem and Charlotte. Because these couples stood up to affirm their rights as fully equal citizens and to show what happens when a discriminatory law is enforced, the nation is beginning to hear a new story coming out of the South. The BBC and MSNBC interviewed us twice during the course of the campaign and CSE was quoted on the front page of the NY Times. WE DO was also covered by the Raleigh News and Observer, Charlotte Observer, Winston-Salem Journal, Asheville Citizen-Times and The Guardian (UK) among many other publications and blogs.
Please stand with these brave LGBT couples by giving a tax-deductible donation to the Campaign for Southern Equality and help us win an additional $15,000. That money will go towards the next stage of the WE DO campaign and towards offering legal workshops across NC to help people how to best protect their rights now that Amendment One has passed.
Happy Blogiversary
Posted by: | CommentsEight years ago this blog began. Thanks, everyone, for helping to make it a place that’s fun, informative, relevant, irreverent, and homey.
[audio 01 Shout Out]
Saturday Morning (Pledge) Drive
Posted by: | Comments
Asheville Free Media is ready to take the next steps in becoming a model for community-based Internet radio that focuses locally but has worldly appeal. We want to program even more high-quality, curated music shows, more simulcasts, more local and hyperlocal news, and in general better serve both our local and world-wide audiences. And to do all of this, we really need your help. Kickstarter link
Who Wants To Be a Hero?
Posted by: | CommentsIt’s really quite simple. All you have to do is kick in a little cash to Asheville Free Media’s Kickstarter campaign
Contribute here: Kickstarter link
A little about AFM:
Asheville Free Media Is Ready to Take the Next Steps…
in becoming a model for community-based Internet radio that focuses locally but has worldly appeal. We want to program even more high-quality, curated music shows, more simulcasts, more local and hyperlocal news, and in general better serve both our local and world-wide audiences. And to do all of this, we really need your help.
Serving Our Community and Enhancing Our Capabilities
Asheville FM, a 501(c)(3) organization, was founded a little over two years ago by a dedicated group of volunteers, with equipment donated by Tufts University and private donors. Funded completely by underwriting, fundraising efforts, and volunteer contributions, we are now seeking to upgrade our existing studio and remote broadcast equipment, and generate funds to pay for an engineering consultant and associated expenses of applying for a low-power FM (LPFM) license in 2012. And, we would also love to be in a situation where paying our fees to the royalty organizations (BMI, ASCAP, SESAC, and SoundExchange) doesn’t completely wipe out the checking account.
Unique Content Curated By An All Volunteer Staff
Many of our shows such as “The AFM News Hour”, free-form music show “Tenor to Tabla”, poetry/spoken word show “Word Play”, and formless/new classical show “From Melody to Mayhem” have no parallels on local commercial radio nor NPR-affiliates here in Western North Carolina. All of our shows are curated by people who care about the content.
Watch this inspirational video to learn more!:
Thank you Asheville (and beyond)!
Lessons From The Komen Affair
Posted by: | Comments“No sane board has put an avowed Communist on its board since McCarthy. Everybody knows … someone who’s an open Communist would likely have an ideological bent that was hostile to the long-term health of the enterprise, and might be inclined to put their political agenda over the health of the corporation.”
Ask the Susan G. Komen Foundation how putting a right-wing ideologue on their board worked out.
Sara Robinson (Orcinus, Campaign for America’s Future) is a bona fide futurist and AlterNet’s new Visions page editor. Her introductory piece, “New Rules for Radicals: 10 Ways To Spark Change in a Post-Occupy World” is here. But with the Susan G. Komen blow-up still fresh, she offers longer-term lessons we should drive home to win the aftermath. So often, once some outfit like this backs off some controversial position, it is back to business as usual both for the business and for liberal critics. Fox News and conservative talkers, on the other hand, would be harping on the story for weeks.
The important lesson here is not to keep focusing on Komen’s behavior, but to drive home the larger lesson to more and more mainstream businesses. For too long, the fringe right has worked the refs with impunity, gaining position and power, advancing the center-right nation meme while marginalizing us and branding the left as communists or worse. It’s about time we turned the tables. This is a teaching moment our adversaries would not miss.
The problem with hiring wingnuts, Robinson observes, is
… they also come with a built-in ideological agenda that they won’t hesitate to put before the best interests of the firm. You never know when they’ll try to grab hold of the enterprise and drive it off into the weeds for their own causes, without a moment’s concern about the potential damage to your company’s assets.
It’s not about their religious beliefs. It’s about how fundamentalists of any stripe are more interested in their causes than than your company’s profit margins. That’s the takeaway we need to help business take away.
The amazing Spocko has more.
We Act Radio now on the air
Posted by: | CommentsInaugural show with David Shuster on now, bringing progressive radio to Washington, DC.
1480 AM WPWC
WeActRadio.com
We Act Radio
202 889 9792
855 889 9792
We Act Radio is bloggers Cliff Schecter and Alex Lawson. Give ‘em a listen.
Tweet of the Day
Posted by: | Comments@rationalists: The luckiest man in America might be the 3rd person Rick Perry has to execute today.
Fox News Launches Proxy War Against Occupy Wall Street
Posted by: | CommentsFox News has launched a proxy war on Occupy Wall Street (#OWS) on the taxpayers’ dime by instigating a federal investigation of New York Communities for Change, part of the team behind the successful Occupy the Boardroom. Politico’s Ben Smith reports tonight on an effort by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-1%; net worth $156 million) “to link the defunct community organizing group ACORN to the Occupy Wall Street movement.”
From NewsCorp (home of ‘Hacking on an industrial scale’) and Fox News comes this:
In a letter dated Monday, Issa, R-Calif., called for U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch of the Eastern District of New York to launch a probe into allegations first reported by FoxNews.com that NYCC may have “solicited donations from union members under false pretenses and misappropriated those funds to support the protesters.”
Fox and Fiends’ business model relies on boogie men. So this is the next wave in Fox’s Zombie ACORN narrative that cranked up two weeks ago. They will be, as usual, relentless. NYCC rattled some cages, so Zombie ACORN must die … again.
Michael McAuliff from HuffPost: Read More→
