Tonight was the Independent Media symposium with Josh Marshall.  I like the quote he opened up with about “Going to where the silence is and saying something.” I think at the essence of journalism is exactly that; Giving a voice to the voiceless. I believe independent media is sometimes much more capable of doing this than main-stream media since there are far fewer gatekeepers (if any) blocking the flow of information.

 

I think it interesting that a relatively small organization could break the news on an important story, but once news is picked up by a major organization the smaller organization loses the story because they often don’t have the resources to put into further coverage of the subject. This is just one of the negative aspects about working for an independent media organization.  However, I would like to intern for an independent media outlet at least once before graduation.

 

I thought the Q&A was interesting, but of course this is Ithaca and I felt that some people went up there more or less to give their opinion than ask a real question. What was with the question about If his Blog could have changed the results of the last election if it had been as popular as it is now? How was he suppose to answer that? I also didn’t get why the women at the end asked about his demographic audience? Of course, the people who typically read TPM are going to be educated people like-minded to Marshall. People usually seek out the opinions of those who they believe are similar to themselves.

 

I think perhaps the most inspiring part of the presentation was the fact that the “blogger in pajamas” was able to make a decent living off the advertisements on his blog. I know making a decent living from a blog is much more difficult than he made it seem. Still it was inspiring entertaining the thought that it could happen.