National Media Reform Conference

My first live blogging experiment.

I'm at the National Media Reform Conference in Memphis, more on this generally later. Right now at I'm at a session on new media and citizen journalism with Chris Nolan, Chris Rabb, Jay Rosen and Dan Gilmore. The most interesting presentation was Chris Rabb of Afro-Netizen who discussed his accidental rise in the blogosphere that brought him to be one of the few bloggers of color at the DNC in 2004. One of his main points was that if we think of blogging as revolutionizing who's creating the news we've got to make sure that it's not the same sorts of elite who gain attention in the blogging world as in the MSM world. What made his speech particularly powerful was that he acknowledged his position as a black person speaking to a primarly white audience, yet he also discussed his own privileges (such as his ability to call up "a buddy" on Capital Hill, access to the latest computer, etc) that had made it possible for him to become a prominent blogger. His point was not blogging is too mired in privilege to ever have a value, only that enthusiasts needed to be conscious of the ongoing segregation, classism, racism, etc that carries over from land to the cyberspace. He urged us to not to have faith in blogging solving all these problems. The meaning I took from him was that bloggers shouldn't simple swagger forward against Big Media waving the name-tag of the underdog, but must attempt expand their social networks and strive for greater inclusion outside of their own privileged circles.