David Math­i­son on ‘the emerg­ing media model of abundance’

Since last spring, David Math­i­son has been barn­storm­ing the coun­try, bring­ing the mes­sage of grass­roots, acces­si­ble, citizen-based media to would-be jour­nal­ists, film­mak­ers, musi­cians, pod­cast­ers, inde­pen­dent busi­ness peo­ple — any­one with an inter­est in cre­at­ing media.

David’s book Be the Media: How to Cre­ate and Accel­er­ate Your Mes­sage … Your Way is the most author­i­ta­tive guide to the per­sonal media rev­o­lu­tion, which was just tak­ing off in a big way when my book Dark­net came out in 2005. Here, David offers a detailed guide for those with some­thing to share and a look at the bur­geon­ing com­mu­nity media land­scape, from local online pub­li­ca­tions and social net­works to per­sonal broad­cast­ing net­works. Down­load sam­ple chap­ters from the Be the Media web­site, then go out and buy the soft-cover edition.

I met David Math­i­son last sum­mer at the Open Video con­fer­ence in New York and fol­lowed up by attend­ing a webi­nar he gave on effec­tive use of cit­i­zen media. He took time out from his trav­els for this Q&A:

1 Tell us in gen­eral about Be the Media. Why did you write the book and what kind of recep­tion are you getting?

Be The Media taps into people’s desires to com­mu­ni­cate, con­nect, and col­lab­o­rate. The book has been suc­cess­ful because it shows how any­one can cre­ate a global prod­uct launch that can poten­tially change the world. The book teaches peo­ple how to build a global or local base and widely spread their mes­sages. It can also be seen as a detailed busi­ness plan for cre­at­ing one’s own diver­si­fied media com­pany. The book has been adopted at some of the country’s most respected schools, such as the Uni­ver­sity of Mis­souri School of Jour­nal­ism, which is using it for a course called “Eco­nom­ics and Finance of the Media.”

2 Your book smartly takes a broad view of what it means to “be the media.” Tell us how reg­u­lar peo­ple are now cre­at­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing their own music, radio shows, dig­i­tal films or peri­od­i­cals. Which of these is res­onat­ing with people?

Con­text is key. When we exhibit at a book con­fer­ence, writ­ers are ini­tially attracted to the chap­ters on

Self-publishing and Blog­ging. At a music con­fer­ence, musi­cians like the chap­ters on Radio, Pod­cast­ing, and Music. But they all quickly see the ben­e­fits of the other chap­ters — every­one needs to know about lever­ag­ing web sites, social media, licens­ing, syn­di­ca­tion, print, audio, and video, and so on. Artists need to match their fans’ media con­sump­tion habits and pock­et­books. This means get­ting the mes­sage out via print, audio, video, inter­ac­tive, and expe­ri­en­tial events.

Inclu­sive­ness was one of the main goals of the book — our audi­ence includes not only writ­ers, musi­cians, film­mak­ers, and jour­nal­ists, but also entre­pre­neurs, politi­cians, activists, and the gen­eral pub­lic. After all, democ­racy depends on engaged, active, and knowl­edge­able cit­i­zens, and media lit­er­acy is an impor­tant com­po­nent of that.

3What do you see as the most effec­tive rev­enue dri­vers for cit­i­zen media sites? Is online adver­tis­ing get­ting there? Ecom­merce? Affil­i­ate programs?

The most impor­tant les­son in the Intro to Be The Media [free down­load here] is that sites and indi­vid­u­als need to diver­sify their rev­enue streams and pro­vide increas­ingly higher-value prod­ucts and ser­vices. This would include rev­enues from a com­bi­na­tion of direct prod­uct sales (books, CDs, arti­cles), adver­tis­ing, affil­i­ate pro­grams (within the new FTC regs, of course), trans­ac­tions, events, sub­scrip­tions, mem­ber­ships, dona­tions, licens­ing, and syndication.

There are a few cit­i­zen media sites lever­ag­ing the spec­trum of rev­enue oppor­tu­ni­ties, but not many — yet. Amy Goodman’s non-profit Democ­racy Now! does a good job of putting all the pieces together, and I’m keep­ing a hope­ful eye on David Cohn’s Spot.us, Josh Marshall’s Talk­ing Points Memo, Pro Pub­lica, Politico, Huff­in­g­ton Post, Daily Kos, and Power Line, among others.

4You labeled the sec­ond part of your book “the Com­mu­nity Media Renais­sance.” Do you see pub­lic access TV or com­mu­nity radio as viable and rel­e­vant in the Inter­net age? Why haven’t com­mu­nity media groups used the Inter­net more effec­tively to put more pub­lic access TV footage online?

This com­mu­nity media renais­sance I describe is exem­pli­fied by peo­ple work­ing together — not nec­es­sar­ily for finan­cial reward but in com­mon pur­pose to build crit­i­cal, open source infra­struc­ture that helps us all become suc­cess­ful. Exam­ples include the Linux oper­at­ing sys­tem, the Fire­fox browser, Wikipedia and Cre­ative Com­mons. Or engaged com­mu­ni­ties of fans help­ing an artist go viral by shar­ing and link­ing to the artist’s work.

With regard to pub­lic access, sure, it is eas­ier than ever to cre­ate a video from one’s own bed­room, or start a radio sta­tion using Pan­dora or Blog Talk Radio. But it requires a team of ded­i­cated peo­ple to cover impor­tant com­mu­nity events, town hall meet­ings, cor­rupt politi­cians and busi­nesses, or even local high school sports and cul­tural activ­i­ties. Pub­lic access TV and com­mu­nity radio sta­tions pro­vide the facil­i­ties, resources, qual­ity equip­ment, con­tin­u­ing edu­ca­tion, ded­i­cated staff, and com­mit­ted vol­un­teers nec­es­sary for higher-value pro­duc­tions (skilled cam­era peo­ple, direc­tors, edi­tors, char­ac­ter gen­er­a­tors, etc).

Some pub­lic access facil­i­ties are effec­tively lever­ag­ing the Inter­net, such as Man­hat­tan Neigh­bor­hood Net­work, the Grand Rapids Com­mu­nity Media Cen­ter, and Den­ver Open Media, among oth­ers. I think the board mem­bers of the Alliance for Com­mu­nity Media under­stand the shift tak­ing place and are encour­ag­ing their mem­ber sta­tions to make appro­pri­ate adjust­ments to main­tain rel­e­vance in the future.

5What’s your take on how the dig­i­tal age is dis­rupt­ing the busi­ness mod­els of tra­di­tional media? How will the media land­scape look dif­fer­ently a few years from now?

We’re mov­ing from a model of scarcity to one of abun­dance. Media cre­ation and dis­tri­b­u­tion has increas­ingly been con­cen­trated in the hands of a few mega-corporations that encour­age scarcity as a way of con­trol­ling the num­ber of acts and mes­sages that are pro­moted and keep­ing the major­ity of the rev­enues that are extracted. In this trickle-down, captive-economics model, most of the money that should go to deserv­ing artists and com­mu­ni­ties goes instead to mid­dle­men — dis­trib­u­tors, resellers, retail­ers, pub­lish­ers, labels, accoun­tants, lawyers, etc. — who add mar­ginal value, yet earn unequal rewards.

The emerg­ing media model is one of abun­dance, dri­ven by a four­ish­ing of cre­ativ­ity unheard of in any other time in human his­tory. I believe this new model is not only more demo­c­ra­tic and egal­i­tar­ian, but fun­da­men­tally more sus­tain­able eco­nom­i­cally, with many media consumers/creators buy­ing, sell­ing, and trad­ing with each other. The main bene­fac­tors in this new era are the cre­ators and their fans.

For exam­ple, since I self-published Be The Media and keep a major­ity of the rev­enues, I can afford to give back to causes whose val­ues are in line with my own, such as Cre­ative Com­mons (more than half of the chap­ters in the book use CC licenses). We cur­rently have a pro­mo­tion with Com­mon Cause: for every pur­chase from their site at http://www.CommonCause.org/bethemedia, I give 20 per­cent of the pro­ceeds to Com­mon Cause. Every­one wins. It’s a nice model.

6What’s next for Be The Media?

We just launched our radio show on Blog Talk Radio (http://www.blogtalkradio.com/be-the-media). This is a great way for us to explore the strate­gies and tac­tics in the book more fully and allow for audi­ence par­tic­i­pa­tion. All for free. As an exam­ple, our pre­mier episode fea­tures Alan Levy, CEO of Blog Talk Radio, to dis­cuss the rev­o­lu­tion­ary impact of his new plat­form on free­dom of speech and expres­sion. Upcom­ing guests include author Seth Godin, singer-songwriters Michelle Shocked, Jill Sob­ule, Tegan and Sara, Jerry Har­ri­son of the Talk­ing Heads, iLike, and Garage­band, and Terry McBride, the CEO of the Net­twerk Music Group and co-founder of the Lilith Fair.

We want to get our mes­sage out in every way pos­si­ble to match our fans’ media con­sump­tion habits. Free radio is another one of those ways.

In the Author inter­view series

• 5 ques­tions for the author of Twit­ter­ville
• 7 ques­tions for the author of ‘Say Every­thing’
• 5 ques­tions for the author of ‘Trust Agents’

JD Lasica works with major com­pa­nies and non­prof­its on social media strate­gies. See his busi­ness pro­file, con­tact JD or leave a comment.

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