Happy 1st Birthday Open Media Boston!

On any other week we would have published an editorial on an important issue of the day for our viewers. This week probably would have been something skewering the court gag order on Councilor Chuck Turner but - surprisingly enough - the Boston Globe's Kevin Cullen pretty much wrote that piece for us (snarky comments about 1973-style anti-racist activism aside). And besides this week is special. Exactly a year ago today we released our first Open Media Boston editorial. Making today the first anniversary of the founding edition of this publication. For the last 52 weeks week-in and week-out 2 (then 3) barely-paid editors and growing cast of characters have built Open Media Boston into the online equivalent of a community newspaper or radio station. When we began this effort we had nothing more than what we hoped was a good idea access to some progressive email lists to start getting the word out about our launch and the desire to give our new project a shot. We set about covering the news in many communities and communities-of-interest that existing local news media tended to give short shrift to ... specifically communities of color immigrant communities working-class communities the arts community the labor and non-profit sectors and progressive movements for democracy and social justice in general. Today 1 year later we have dozens of contributors hundreds of site users thousands of regular viewers and recognition as an accepted (and hopefully trusted) news source from many quarters. While it's exciting and gratifying to have come so far we still have a long way to go to achieve our goal. And what is that goal? Simple. We want to become one of Boston's major news outlets. We want to grow a couple of orders of magnitude larger than we are today. We want to then leverage the resources that a larger circulation can produce to be able to pay all of our contributors and prove that a modern online news operation can (and should) allow writers photographers videographers and audio specialists to make a living doing what they love to do. And not just be expected to work for love alone as has become fashionable in corporate-dominated social media circles. On a political level as a publication with a progressive editorial commitment we want to bring left-wing ideas to an ever-larger audience. But we want to do what few other left publications do and focus our efforts on the Boston area. In our initial 2007 prospectus we pointed out what academic think-tanks have since caught on to that there is a metropolitan news vacuum in cities around the U.S. caused by the contraction of the traditional news media. We believed that it was possible to not just fill that vacuum but also to fill the longstanding vacuum of coverage of progressive perspectives in Boston media - both for the largest possible number of viewers. We thought if we could that service while running a credible news-gathering operation that insisted on professional journalistic editorial and production standards - and that was free for all to use but not a free-for-all - then we would create something very much like the forward-looking tenacious broad-minded left metropolitan publications of decades past. And like those publications we could become a publication that is very much of its moment in history but always tries to learn from what has gone before. A publication that has a positive outlook but isn't afraid to constructively criticize people and institutions that deserve such. A publication that wishes to see the left-wing resume a preeminent position in the political realm yes but also in the artistic and scientific realms where it once counted the world's brightest stars among its supporters. A publication that knows there is more to life than protests and picket-lines but goes to wall to cover even less significant demonstrations - viewing such direct political activity as much-needed stepping-stones to a city that meets the needs of all of its residents. We have kept to our founding plan as close as possible in our 1st year. And to fully follow through on that plan's logic we believe that Open Media Boston can and must grow. If the apocryphal "big city" has a million stories to cover then a city the size of Boston certainly has plenty of to cover every day of the week. We need to be able to cover those stories - even as the traditional news media is increasingly unable to (for a variety of reasons we don't have time to cover in this short article). On a daily not weekly basis. We need to do this in tandem with our broad editorial goals. We feel that the times we live in demand no less from us. We've published a lot of material in our first year on the bad effects of the economic depression on the Boston area and the world. We think that progressive movements will only have a chance of succeeding in alleviating the worst symptoms of the ongoing crisis and starting to build a better society with the help of a strong progressive media. We would like to carry the torch for that media here in Boston. And if we can take our effort to the next level here we would like to spread our model to other American cities. This is all a tall order we know. But with the help of all the communities we mentioned above and others we haven't yet worked with we believe we can get much bigger more relevant and more useful over the next couple of years. So as usual we encourage you all to click the donate button at the top left hand corner of every page on our website and give us whatever you afford on a regular basis. But it's just as important to participate in our online community every day or two. Check out the latest stuff. Write a comment. Maybe even submit your own work for publication with us (after reading our User's Guide of course). Then tell your friends about us. Circulate our articles on email lists social networks and blogs. Point us to resources and allies. Hook us up with new communities movements and organizations we haven't covered yet. Give us a few minutes a day and a few bucks now and then and we promise it will make a big difference in our ability to become the big city daily we aspire to become. If we can do it the payoff will be big. We can hire existing journalists - many floating around unemployed - and we can train new ones from the ranks of the legion of smart young kids in Boston's neighborhoods that have the heart for this work but just need some skills training that we'd like to provide to become their community's best defenders. We can cover all the news that's fit to print and all the news that fits in the virtually limitless medium of the web. We can become a standard bearer for progressive thinking and progressive movements in this region. And spread our model to other regions. We can do all this and more with your help. But for now for today you can celebrate with us. The Open Media Boston editors contributors and viewers have all done a great thing. We've created a new progressive media outlet and kept it going for a whole year. That's great. We're all thrilled here at Open Media Boston HQ and we look forward to a great year to come. Here's to all of us. 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