HOW MANY DAYS DOES MEDIACHANNEL HAVE? IT'S UP TO YOU.
30 days has September, April, June and November?
So does MediaChannel - unless you act now.
New York, June 1, 2007: We now have one month to avoid writing and posting our own obituary:
"June 30, 2007: MediaChannel.org died today after seven and a half years as a leading not for profit online media issues site and global media monitoring network. The main reason cited was a lack of sustaining funding?."
"It is sad to have to shut down an important service in the public interest because our not-for-profit site can't attract sufficient resources to support a very small staff or to pay necessary bills including rent, server fees and utilities," said Danny Schechter, co-founder of the international web platform that launched February 1, 2000. "The ultimate irony is that MediaChannel has never been better -- its traffic is up and its impact strong, as is the quality of its timely and diverse offerings, which include original reports, blogs, videos, features and media news from across the world."
Despite a successful fundraising drive that kept MediaChannel online for several months, almost exclusively through reader and member support, we are now forced to face the inevitable: the site can only stay online for another thirty days unless we are able to attract a partner, an angel, a major funder or financial help from MediaChannel's global community of affiliates and individual users.
Can we find the support we need in the next thirty days? That's our challenge--but if you want to keep the site alive, it's your challenge too.
If we can get 1500 of our readers (that means you) to give $25, we can keep going for another quarter.
[PLEASE CLICK HERE TO MAKE A TAX-DEDUCTIBLE DONATION ONLINE]
MediaChannel is particularly open to an affiliation with an educational institution that could use the site as an educational tool or teaching platform in online journalism and media criticism.
WHY THIS IS HAPPENING
"Nothing lasts forever?particularly in the fast-changing media world," says co-founder Rory O'Connor, author of the popular "Media Is A Plural" blog, which often features breaking news, exposes, and original interviews with many leaders of the media industry. "Revenue models have been radically altered since MediaChannel was created, and the foundation world has largely turned away from support of independent media in recent years, with funders who made the site possible now supporting other priorities."
As a result, other independent, media-oriented not-for-profits have already had to close their doors. Now MediaChannel may have to follow suit.
MediaChannel has always had a multi-level funding approach. Grants to its tax-exempt fiscal sponsor The Global Center were supplemented by donations from readers, in-kind services and volunteer work by staff and trainees, sales of books and videos, and perpetual funding drives. Our for- profit company Globalvision has subsidized the site with donated footage, services, and cash infusions totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars. Our top executives have worked hard to keep the site up, often donating their time to work without salaries. We can no longer afford to subsidize the site.
A UNIQUE, INTERNATIONAL, NON-PARTISAN EFFORT
Unlike MediaChannel, many similar sites have pursued more parochial or partisan agendas and rarely focused on global trends and issues. In contrast, MediaChannel cares about the challenges of reporting in and on the developing world - and as a result is frequently invited to speak and moderate at global media conferences from Kazakhstan to Korea, and from South Africa to South America.
MediaChannel has also featured bloggers from all over the world (such as Iraq's award-winning "Riverbend,") along with in-depth coverage of how our mainstream media - and not just the Bush Administration -- led the country into the disastrous Iraq War. Danny Schechter's "News Dissector" blog has tracked the details of the deception behind the push for war on a daily basis. MediaChannel has also inspired many books and films, including "Embedded: Weapons of Mass Deception" and "When News Lies: Media Complicity and the Iraq War," and the documentary "WMD: Weapons of Mass Deception," which won awards worldwide and was broadcast in 39 countries. All of these initiatives have helped promote the uniqueness of Mediachannel.org.
WHAT IS TO BE DONE?
MediaChannel started with a staff of ten. We now have only one half-time paid staff member - who has done his best to keep the site up and timely. We have acquired videos and created many of our own, which have been carried regularly on "The Listening Post," Al-Jazeera English's media program, as well as widely distributed on such social networks as YouTube and Google Video. Such global visibility, coupled with the fact that our own original reporting and analysis is picked up widely by other websites, should be of interest to some funder. (If you are out there, please raise your hand!)
We have only thirty days left. Hopefully June will burst out all over us. But if not, we will have to bid you adieu with special thanks to the many readers who joined MediaChannel, donated so generously and sent emails to media outlets by the hundreds of thousands to urge better coverage, greater democracy, and better journalistic standards over the years.
We want to thank those funders who did stay with us, and appeal once again to the generosity and understanding of those of you in a position to help in the hopes that if we can keep going, we will find new sources of support.
THIRTY DAYS TO GO
This is the appeal we didn't want to write but have little choice. We have THIRTY DAYS to turn this around. Can you help? Will you help? As you know, the concept of 30 Days is well known -- as in the 30-day trial. It is often employed by the shareware industry, where you can download a trial version of a piece of software and try it out risk-free for 30 days before you're required to buy the full version. Says Steve Pavlina, "It's also a great way to develop new habits, and best of all, it's brain-dead simple."
It's simple. In 30 days, MediaChannel will be brain dead?unless you join with us to keep this important work of watching the media alive.
Make a tax-deductible donation today.
You can send a check made out to our fiscal sponsor:
THE GLOBAL CENTER
575 Eighth Avenue, Suite 2200
New York, New York 10018
or
[CLICK HERE TO DONATE ONLINE]
If you have ideas or suggestions, please write to Dissector@mediachannel.org
REMEMBER: THE SITE YOU SAVE MAY BE YOUR OWN.
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