This is from our "beta" site at KETC where we are getting ready for a real launch of our work on Immigration next week.
This short clip says a lot about what we are trying to do. The main focus of this clip is a conversation about how the media is handling Immigration. As you will see, the people at the dinner table are not impressed!
They remind us that Immigration has become not only a "Hot" issue but is also very polarizing. How the media handles issues like this is seen by them as being a major part of the problem
They fear that if the media does not change this practice that we will never get to the place we need to to deal with this issue or in fact with any complex issue.
So what to do? KETC is not a traditional news organization but it is a public TV station in St Louis. What are some of the things that we hope to do over the next months?
Firstly it is to create spaces where real conversation can take place.
This clip shows a tiny aspect of this intention. In this case we had been involved in a conversation on Linkedin about immigration that had surprised us with how civic the tone was. There were people with many different and strongly held views - but they were polite and respectful. So we asked some of them if they would like to continue the conversation over a dinner that we would host and film.
This is the first clip of what will be many and what we hope will become a series where particular topics will be raised. Here you see what they think of the media today - not much!
We will be doing much more of this - making it safe for people to have a conversation - both on film and online.
We are also helping the public have their voice. Until now the public's voice is very filtered. We are creating a space where people can talk directly to people.
To help pull this off, we have set up a school to teach the public in St Louis how to make their own films. We can all point and shoot video today - but telling a good story and editing well is hard. Every week we are training new classes of the public in how to tell a story on Video.
So we are we are putting the "Public" into the Production of Public TV.
You will see a lot of films made by people just like you about immigration. We are using the web and this space to offer the public their own voice.
We are also putting the public in the driver's seat in how we conceive of a traditional show as well.
Traditionally TV producers think deep thoughts and then go out and find the stories that they hope the public will like. We have reversed this process as well. Over the last 8 months, we have gone out into the immigrant and refugee communities in St Louis and asked them what was going on. We have talked to more than 300 groups and to more than 1,000 people.
Before this we knew as little as most people do about immigration. Now we know a lot. You will meet many of these people on our site. You will discover them as we did - no longer as labels but as people. Not as "the other" but as flesh and blood people like you.
Based on all of this interaction - we are also making a 4 hour documentary about immigration. Months of engagement in the community has given this work the kind of roots that are unusual.
Starting soon we will share with you - long before the work is finished - parts of the stories, people in the stories, issues raised by the stories - so that we can use your feedback and interaction with you to refine our work further.
Finally we will share with you what we have learned from this work. Even if we are partly successful, we hope that we may help others go further.
I wish I could say to you that this has been easy or even fun. It has been the hardest and most painful work that I and many involved have been through.
Why? Because it is all about Culture. We have had to give up all our expertise and become novices. Novices who have no master to make it all safe. For this path has not been travelled before. I now know how Columbus' crew must have felt before they hit landfall.
As I said KETC is not a news organization. Nor are we a social media organization. We all know the words about how to use social media and how to have conversations. But it is another thing to act upon them. All our norms about who were are and how we do things have been challenged. We have all felt stupid and we have all experienced personal failure and stress.
But we have hope now - we can see that we are making progress. We are not there yet but we can hear the birds and smell the shore.
Our hope is to establish in our actions, the new habits for how a TV station can serve the community in which it lives. In effect to open the doors to the public and have the public come into the station that after all is theirs.
Our hope is to show that public TV can create a place where Americans can talk about hard things and find a way forward together.
We launch formally next week. We have not got all of this worked out yet. So we start with only a landfall. This is only the beginning. In 4 months, much will have changed from where we are are. In fact we find that every week that goes by is different.
If you are interested in immigration. If you are interested in how to get the public into public media. Then please join us and please help us by well "helping us" - please get involved.
We need your views of how we can make what we do better. We need you to work with us to make Public TV - Public. We are not smart enough on our own to do this.
There is a lot at stake - if we can use a new model that promotes a true discourse - then some good may come out of the immigration debate. Isn't that important?
If we can find a way to blend in as a station with our local community, then we might have found the connection that we need to take public TV to a new level of relevancy. Isn't this the holy grail of the new media?
If we can help cope with a complex problem like immigration then we might also know how to help with other complex issues such as energy, food, the war, our education system, health and the economy. Isn't this the way forward for the nation?
Someone has to start somewhere. Why not us and you?
