Community Media Center Alliance
Steward: Antoine Haywood
Facilitator: Kristen Clark
How can community media centers serve as laboratories for collaborative journalism? This group worked with community media center leaders nationwide, developing case studies and narratives showcasing these centers as collaborative journalism laboratories, emphasizing their role in coalition and trust building.
Cycle: 2023-2024
Community media centers (CMCs) are small but mighty forces essential to strengthening the civic health of communities nationwide.
CMCs are communication hubs primarily responsible for distributing civic news, governmental information, and public interest programs via local cable television channels. CMCs also digitally stream their community programs via locally controlled websites and third-party platforms.
In February 2024, News Futures Steward Dr. Antoine Haywood, assembled five community media center practitioners to create the Community Media Center Alliance Working Group - Heather Adams (Berks Community Television), Jason Daniels (Access Framingham), Autumn Labbe-Renault (Davis Media Access) and Matt Schuster (Public Media Network).
These practitioners were chosen for their professional expertise and standing in the CMC membership organization, the Alliance for Community Media (ACM).
This Working Group has helped form a productive working relationship between News Futures and the ACM. In doing so, they hope to strengthen the civic media movement by strengthening the bridge between the public access and civic media sectors.
The Community Media Assets Survey Report
The group has documented how CMCs operate, their role in our communities, and their contribution to a flourishing civic media movement. This study suggests there is a prime opportunity and increasing need to:
Develop state-level organizing strategies that foster local collaborations and individual growth for CMCs.
Forge partnerships between CMCs and adjacent, values-aligned civic media (such as community-guided newsrooms).
Collect more data about the breadth and depth of CMCs’ social impact.
Galvanize a nationwide civic media policy agenda that includes advocacy for CMCs
Read impactful case studies from each of the five Working Group Practitioners:
