What's
a mediageek?
A medigeek is someone who, like a computer
geek, delves into the inner working of media both to understand it and
to hack it. A mediageek doesn't accept the rules and restrictions
of the mainstream media, circumventing and jamming them by doing it him
or herself.
This site will serve as a guide for mediageeks, looking at how the media works, both systemically--the political economy of the mainstream, indpendent and underground media--and practically--how you can put media making tools to work.
I also hope that the site can be inspiration and encouragement to become a mediageek, creating, hacking and jamming the media yourself.
Who's
responsible for mediageek.org?
Your host for this site is me, Paul Riismandel. I've spent
the last eleven years volunteering and working in college, public and
community radio--experiences which have honed my respect for the importance
of indpendent and accessible media to communities. I am also a graduate
student in communications, with a focus on the political economy of media
industry and the history of media, especially radio and the Internet.
I've volunteered at community radio WEFT here in Champaign-Urbana, IL for the last seven years, wearing hats as chair of our Programming Committee and as a pledge drive coordinator, amongst many things. While still involved at WEFT, I've taken that experience to help start the Urbana-Champaign Indpendent Media Center which I hope can become a broad civic information and media resource that complements community radio by doing some of the things it's difficult to do with a radio station.
To pay the bills I work in audio and video production in the Language Learning Lab at the University of Illinois. The great thing about this job is that it let's me get my hands on lot's of new production technology. But because we're a relatively small unit the equipment I'm using is typically consumer grade or 'prosumer' , which means it's more affordable and available than 'professional' grade equipment.
Where
it all started:
The seeds of mediageek.org begin with the website for
Radio Free Conscience (RFC), a radio program aired on community
radio WEFT since 1996, that focuses on grassroots and community media.
That site has grown from simply being a site about a radio show into being
it's own news and information resource that complements the program and
goes beyond the scope of a half-hour radio program. A frequently updated
news weblog ('blog') was added to RFC in late 1999 which signalled its
transition into being a resource on its own.
The entire RFC site has made the transition over to mediageek.org, including an audio archive, containing past programs and interesting features and interviews and articles on grassroots and community media.
The RFC news blog has become the mediageek.org news blog, which you can see on the right side of this page. The news blog will continue to have links to articles and items of interest, along with commentary on these items. The scope of the blog will grow, too, in concert with the broader scope of mediageek.org.