For DD’s birthday, I’m designing him a website. He already bought the URL (borrowed my screen name), we’ve got it hosted; now I’ve got to set up a CMS in drupal and integrate the flash photo gallery add-on, which is the hard part, since I can’t code. Anyway, stay tuned. He’s very anxious to have it up and running, so maybe after this weekend we’ll be done.
February, 2007 Monthly archive
BB has started volunteering with RFB&D, recording 2 hours of reading textbooks or novels or whatever for the blind. She says it’s great, and I think they need lots more volunteers, so do it!
Laura Washington’s article for In These Times magazine gave a valuable overview of last month’s Free Press National Conference for Media Reform, highlighting the cause of net neutrality and civil rights. Says Bill Moyers on 50 years of corporate media control:
“Something is wrong with this system. This is the moment freedom begins,†he went on, “the moment you realize someone else has been writing your story, and it’s time you took the pen from his hand and started writing it yourself.â€
The Rev. Jesse Jackson was there too:
Jackson’s inclusion was one of many concerted efforts the Free Press made to capture the black struggle under the banner. The media reform movement had been running at a diversity deficit, and had been rightly attacked as a bastion of displaced white male elites in search of a platform.
I think it’s great there’s finally some emphasis on demography in this media war — because, like so many other areas of the business world, the media moguls and corporate media CEOs and IT guys and high-ranking academics represent, in large part, the profile of skinny, insecure white guys (that’s me editorializing). Where are the women, the communities of color, the older or younger population? According to Washington, at this year’s meeting, there was improved (racial) representation, which is a milestone. Let’s just hope it grows.