Robert Paterson's Weblog

Murrow on Fear - What about now & us? #immigration

via youtube.com

Once again people in politics and the media are channeling our fears - Murrow's message is for us

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Euan Semple - How can you best create a conversation on the web?

I interviewed Euan last week and asked him how we at KETC - or any TV station for that matter - could do a better job at having real conversations with our community. Our concern is that the media mostly seems to inflame or leave us helpless - the larger context then is what could we do to help people who do have differences find a common pathway.

Here is a opening snip of my synthesized precis of his response. 

 

Engagement can only take place between equals. It can only take place between humans and never with an institution.

The media relies on a large power difference. The media is jealous of its power and allows no equals. The media see people as marketing segments to be manipulated.

Within the powerful institutions of the media, journalists see themselves as “professionals” who are above us as well. To fit into their profession, they deliberately obscure their own humanity. They are aloof, omniscient, even pompous.

They seek perfection in an imperfect world. In this context, things are right or they are wrong. People are good or bad. They make the judgment.

We, the public, respond to this use of power as children often do to over protective parents. We act out. We feel helpless. We get angry. We blame.

So long as they hold onto this power and there can be no conversation. Without a conversation, there can be no engagement. With no engagement, there can be no learning. With no learning there can be no progress. All there can be is anger and so more polarization.

This then is the context for our politics.

With anger and polarization, we are stuck. We cannot see a pathway to any solution. We can only widen the breach or deepen the wounds.

He then goes onto to talk about what would work better and what we or YOU can do in particular.

 

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What would a more personal and human media look like? #KETC

Maybe it would look a bit like what we put out yesterday on our site on Immigration

• It may be how we look at the news of the day - seeking the paradoxes rather than taking sides - offering up our own bewilderment rather than Olympian certainty 

• It may be how we can humanize a story such as Muntazar and his family who gave up everything to come to America - in watching and listening to him, we can find a glimpse of what this may be like if we had to leave home for America

• It is how we can put a human face on why people risk everything to come here from Mexico - why might you risk your life and separation from your family?

• It is how maybe we talk about fear and loss - what might our fear cause us to lose that makes America the great nation that it is

• Maybe it is also that we know how hard it is to become more human and we admit our frailty and seek the advice of people like Euan Semple - seek it and take it to heart.

How are we doing? I know we are making progress but we are not all the way there yet. If you care about having a better media - a media that can take us away from name calling and help us find a path to resolution - please drop by and offer us YOUR advice.

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KETC - A Revolution in the making

KETC/Channel 9 to become Nine Network of Public Media

CPB President Pat Harrison will be in St. Louis on Oct. 12 as KETC/Channel 9 unveils its new brand identity as the Nine Network of Public Media, the station announced today (Oct. 5). It's part of the celebration for the opening of its new digital facility, the Nine Center for Public Engagement. There'll be six interactive demonstration stations in the new building: nineVoices, a website where community members post videos with solutions to local problems; Homeland, an immigration initiative; nineAcademy, digital video storytelling; the Public Insight Network, a site where participants serve as resources for pubmedia news gatherers; and interactive experiences with Nine on Twitter and Facebook. The staff of KETC's news partner St. Louis Beacon, located in the new center, will also be there to discuss their work as a nonprofit online publication (Current, March 30, 2009).

 

via currentpublicmedia.blogspot.com

What you call yourself drives what you do - what you do drives who you are.

KETC has left the bondage of broadcasting, been through the Red Sea, across the desert and is in sight of the Promised Land of a new model based on being a Network that serves the wider needs of its community.

It is very special and such a privilege for me to be part of this.

It was about 4 years that Jack Galmiche arrived at the station which was then in deep crisis. All this has happened since then.

What a journey this has been for all of them there and for me - imagine what it is like to work with an organization that wants to do what they have done.

A special thank you to Amy Shaw who is Aaron to Jack's Moses.

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Creating a Conversation on Immigration – 3 Wise Men

People are getting tired of how the media polarizes society.

One of our goals here on Homeland is to discover how best to offer you a space where you and others can feel safe enough to have a real conversation about Immigration. It is such an emotional issue that in most other media, all we see is argument based on fixed emotional positions and that is on a good day. Often all we see is people yelling at each other.

Is there a better way? Is there a way that media can help us all see through our emotions and find a pathway to solutions that help?

We certainly hope so and this site and our work here is our first step in this voyage of discovery. But do we know how to do this? We have some good ideas. I think that we have made a good start. But you know too, that trying to change your own self is the hardest thing of all.

So we have reached out to three of the best thinkers on how media works. We asked them in the context of this project on Immigration

• Why is the media not helping us know more about our issues and know more about how to solve them?
• What would be a better way?
• What advice do they have for us at KETC?

In this post I will introduce you to them and give you some context for their advice. I will follow up with 3 posts that each contain each person’s full answers.

Euan Semple started life in the BBC World Service. He was instrumental in awakening the BBC to the potential of the web and to how social media works. Part of his own learning in that work was how to use influence rather than power for he was not the CEO but a quite junior person. Since leaving the BBC, Euan has become one of the “Go To” people that large organizations seek out. These kinds of organizations, such as the World Bank, Nato and Nokia, often have the greatest challenge in changing their culture to use social media well. Euan understands this aspect of the challenge so well.

Here is a short blog post from Euan that I think will give you a sense of the person he is: “Many moons ago, in the early days of blogging David Weinberger described it as “writing ourselves into existence”. I was reminded recently of just how transformative blogging has been in my life. How much more aware I am of my thoughts and feelings – and of the world around me. Once you have a blog you notice more, you start to think “I might write about this on my blog” “What do I want to say?” “What will people’s reaction be?”. Over time you get better at noticing and the better at noticing you get the more noticed you get! You end up in the wonderful collective web of “Oooh that’s interesting” which I now wouldn’t ever want to be without.”

Euan will bring the human and cultural aspects to the fore in his interview: starting with the great challenge for all organizations that “Conversations can only take place between individuals”

Doc Searls day job is Senior Editor of The Linux Journal, he is also a Fellow of the Berkman Centre for Internet and Society at Harvard University. He is a long standing fan and technical insider of public broadcasting. But for many of us who are interested in how social media might improve our lives, he is one of the 4 authors of arguably the most influential book on that all of this means – The Cluetrain Manifesto.

Here is how the Cluetrain Manifesto opens and this quote provides a context for Doc’s answers in the interview. “A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter—and getting smarter faster than most companies. These markets are conversations. Their members communicate in language that is natural, open, honest, direct, funny and often shocking. Whether explaining or complaining, joking or serious, the human voice is unmistakably genuine. It can’t be faked. Most corporations, on the other hand, only know how to talk in the soothing, humorless monotone of the mission statement, marketing brochure, and your-call-is-important-to-us busy signal. Same old tone, same old lies. No wonder networked markets have no respect for companies unable or unwilling to speak as they do.

But learning to speak in a human voice is not some trick, nor will corporations convince us they are human with lip service about “listening to customers.” They will only sound human when they empower real human beings to speak on their behalf.”

As we started to talk he added this key point – that when he says “Market” he does not mean marketing, segments etc but the old fashioned “Place” where people came together and using their name and real identity negotiated important things between each other. A place that was safe and where your name, your personal reputation, was your most important asset. Where trust was created by personal honor. This is his starting point for where we go.

Jay Rosen is a Professor of Journalism at the NYU Arthur L Carter Journalism Institute. He is the author of one of the most read blogs on Journalism Press Think.  At the heart of his work are his insights into the cultural issues at stake when the “One to Many Media” is confronted by the “Many to Many” alternative. Traditionalists who hope that the web and all it stands for would go away, see him as a heretic. Those who seek to find the new path, see him as a beacon of light.

This opening in a recent interview with the Economist will give you a sense of how he thinks about the crisis that confronts the media today:

Mr Rosen: “The cost of changing settled routines seems too high, but the cost of not changing is, in the long term, even higher. A good example is the predicament of the newspaper press: the print edition provides most of the revenues, but it cannot provide a future. I know of no evidence to show that young people are picking up the print habit. So if the cost of abandoning print is too high, the cost of sticking with it may be even higher, though slower to reveal itself. That’s a problem.

Another example is the decline of trust. In the mid-1970s over 70% of Americans told Gallup they had a great deal or fair amount of confidence in the press. Today: 47%. Clearly, something isn’t working. But revisions to the code of conduct that has led to this decline would be seen by most journalists as increasing the risk of mistrust. I’ve tried to argue that the View from Nowhere—also called objectivity—should be replaced by “here’s where we’re coming from.” That strikes most people in the American press as dangerous and unworkable. But the current course is unsustainable: trust continues to decline, with a big acceleration after 2003. When I mention this to journalists, they say: “Trust in all big institutions has declined, Jay.” Which is true (except for the military).  But is that really an answer? You’re supposed to be the watchdogs over dubious actors. Why aren’t you an exception?

I could go on, but I think you see the pattern. Change is too expensive; the status quo is unsustainable.”

In Jay’s interview the issue of Trust – how to get it and how to keep it will be the thread.

Tomorrow we begin with Euan – see you then.

via explorehomeland.org

I interviewed Euan, Doc and Jay separately for KETC last week. We need help and they kindly stepped up.

What is wrong with media today? What is a better way? What can we do?

Our goal? To find a way of talking about a topic like Immigration, that drives so much emotion, so that we can find a path that will help most people.

How to break the deadlock that seems to have gripped America on most issues that confront us.

What a gift they have given us.

Tomorrow Euan, Friday Doc - Monday Jay.

I hope you find them as stimulating as I have.

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KETC Works with Community on 'Homeland' Immigration Project | PBS

Fresh from their ambitious multi-city Facing the Mortgage Crisis project, KETC/Channel 9 in St. Louis has launched a new community-based news project on another hot topic: immigration.  

Homeland aims to "apply public media sensibilities, expertise and capacity to address a complicated and polarizing issue," said Amy Shaw, KETC's vice president of education and community engagement. The project includes a website that will feature original content created by community members and KETC staff, a series of facilitated community meetings in the St. Louis area and across Missouri, and a four-hour nationally broadcast television series. This combination, said Shaw, is designed to "push the boundaries of what public media can do."

According to the site:

The Homeland initiative is the embodiment of what public media can do well -- we generate awareness around the important and complex issues that need to be addressed in our communities, and then we create impact by mobilizing people to address these issues. In the process of talking to people throughout our region, we want to show, analyze and present what we learn. We're not going to tell people what we think about immigration or what is right or wrong, good or bad. We intend to help people embrace and understand the complexity of important issues to help communities address them in a more authentic, rational way.

NineAcademy Trains Community Members

Shaw said the project is "rooted in needs of the community," and it is clear that KETC takes community engagement seriously. Homeland is teaming up with KETC's NineAcademy, a free community media program that trains locals in shooting, editing, and storytelling. The best productions will be featured on the Homeland site and on KETC.

Although NineAcademy has already trained community members ranging from middle schoolers to senior citizens, KETC is intent on "meeting people where they are." Aware that some community members lack internet access, KETC staff has made sure that phone, face-to-face and snail-mailed correspondence is valued as much as online interaction. For example, KETC is experimenting with the idea of "conversations in a box" -- mobile storytelling kits, including inexpensive digital video recorders, that are mailed to community members. When they have finished recording their stories, they send the kits back to KETC for redistribution.

So far, according to Shaw, promotion for the project has been minimal, as the project website is still developing.

Five Sections of Site

At present, the site includes five sections that demonstrate the participatory and collaborative nature of Public Media 2.0, in varying degrees.

360 Degree Perspectives is a blog that explores multiple perspectives on immigration issues, based on KETC's meetings with community members from all spots on the political spectrum, including Tea Party members, far-left groups, and the very wide swath of Americans who don't currently identify with a particular political point of view.

Fact vs. Myth takes a nuanced look at some of the common information and misinformation surrounding the immigration debate. Check out this Fact vs. Myth video created by a NineAcademy graduate DeAnna Tipton:

Your Voice is a discussion forum for community members. Right now, the conversation is heavily populated by KETC staff, but Shaw is confident that the balance will shift over time to allow for more user-directed conversation.

Homeland Series is a behind-the-scene look at the making of the four-hour series that will air in 2011. The broadcast element of this project is, as Shaw explained, "a piece of puzzle," not the be-all end-all culmination of the project. In fact, no pieces related to the project have aired yet, although there has been much activity both online and face-to-face. Community meetings have shaped the entire direction of the project, including the decision to create the four-hour broadcast piece.

Finally, From the Beacon showcases related work from KETC's newspaper partner, the St. Louis Beacon. The Beacon was a partner in the Facing the Mortgage Crisis project as well, providing cross-platform news coverage to the benefit of both organizations.

Challenges

Although the project is developing smoothly, Shaw said that, "We were a bit naive in considering how challenging it would be to take on one of the most difficult and challenging issues of our time." As polarizing as this issue may be, the tone on Homeland remains congenial with only minimal moderation, indicating perhaps that people are tired of the sensationalized, black-and-white coverage of the issue that is often provided by traditional media.

In addition to the polarizing nature of the subject matter, KETC is also dealing with the fact that the station has not traditionally been a news organization. Now, as they experiment with community-based public affairs coverage, the team must constantly evaluate what works and what doesn't or, as Shaw put it, "go through a daily recalibration." The lessons that KETC's staff learn through this project could very well inform a powerful community engagement model for other stations around the country.

In the coming months, the Homeland team will continue to tweak the design and engagement aspects of the project in order to make the site more community-oriented. KETC is also working on some major internal shifting, and a rebranding effort to highlight the station's overall push toward public engagement. In the future, KETC will be taking on more than one in-depth community engagement project at a time. The subject matter for these future projects will come from -- where else? -- the community.

Katie Donnelly is Associate Research Director at the Center for Social Media at American University where she blogs about the future of public media. With a background in media literacy education, Katie previously worked as a Research Associate at Temple University's Media Education Lab in Philadelphia. When she's not researching media, Katie spends her time working in the environmental field and blogging about food.

via pbs.org

Reinventing ourselves - hard hard work!

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News & Media - The Technical/Social Connection = Trust = Success

NPR showed us that how you connect to content is key to audience growth - so far they and I have focused on the the connection as being web and social media based.

But there is an even more important "Connection". That is Trust.

Do we trust the source of the content? What is the Social Relationship between the News Source and the Public? What are the Power issues? What is the motivation of the new organization? Whom do they serve and why? All these relational issues affect Trust.

So what is the central connection between the news source and you?

Here is how Craig Newmark thinks that this issue will play out.

 

HT to John Bracken for the clip.

At KETC we have made this issue of the relationship with our members and the wider public in St Louis our central concern.

We keep asking ourselves the question of how can a local public TV station establish the Trust that we need to become vital to our community? While this is our own question - it is also the broder question that will affect all news sources.

We agree with Mr Newmark that we have a start based on our non-commercial model. But what do we have to do to make this more real?

No station on their own is smart enough to come up with the answers. For this demands a revolution in mindset.

Fortunately for us, 3 Wise Men turned up with gifts. Gifts of wisdom about this issue of Trust and Relationship. They showed up because they care deeply that the answers are found. 

Euan Semple, Doc Searls and Jay Rosen have kindly agreed to be interviewed and we start a series next week on their advice for

• Why the current model for news is not helping the nation solve our problems
• What would be a model that would
• What KETC - or in fact any public station can do to enact this better model

More soon

Why we need a new media model - Complexity!

Are you frustrated by how our politicians cannot seem to get anything done anymore? I am mad as hell! I hate how they just seem to score political points off each other? Don't you?

Does it worry you, as a consequence, that we cannot seem to make any progress on important issues such as energy, education, health, global conflict and now immigration? Does it seem to you as it does to me that each issue seems to about only competing slogans and yelling and name calling?

If you share my concerns, do you wonder why our political process is so polarized into conflict?

I suspect that the answer is that how our media works is big part of this.  They live by headlines and by circulation. This is their model. So fear making and conflict is how they make their money. Conflict sells papers and pulls in eyeballs and ears.  So they offer all of us - politicians and us - a view of what is going on that is binary - Us against them - Me against You. 

Maybe this worked better in a simpler world where our problems were in our community and we could all experience the context. Then a headline was OK because we we the local experts. We knew and experienced what was going on.

But now we live in a such a hyper connected world many of our problems are outside of our experience. How could you know that the noble idea of "Bringing democracy to Afghanistan" is an insane idea? What do you know of the place - you have no context. No we can have a furious debate about this with no one knowing anything real about the context. Such debates can never end.

What do you know about the pressures that have driven millions to risk their lives to cross the border to work in terrible conditions? You and I don't and we can't - so instead we can take sides in an artificial debate about legal or not - secure border or not - racist or not - and never come close to understanding enough to make a valid decision about what to do.

What do you and I really know about oil reserves and how much time we really have before there never will be cheap oil again. What do you and I really know about how our food supply depends utterly on cheap oil and how we might starve if this is not available? We cannot - so we engage instead in a furious and futile debate about whether there us global warming or not.

So if the media only gives us headlines - if it always drops a story when there is no "News" - if it never helps us find the context what then?

Don't we need to find a better way that can help us understand the complex issues?

What would this mean? What would better mean?

This is a "no-context" storm - this image shows us how it feels to be In the storm of "no-context". We just get tossed about. We are helpless. We get scared. 

But this is the Pattern - all hurricanes look like this if we can find the right perspective. As you can see from this POV there is structure, order and meaning. We can't stop them but we can work with them because we know how they work.  

We can also know the tracks that they take - not precisely - but we can mitigate the damage that they do.

No meteorologist will ever tell you that she can predict the precise actions of a complex system like a hurricane but we can learn how to live with them. We can do a lot to redice our risks because we do understand their pattern and their habits. 

Now imagine if your media could help you see the patterns in our complex challenges? Surely we would do better than we do now? Would that be a project that would excite you?

THIS is what we are trying to do at KETC in our project on the most binary topic of our time right now - Immigration. A topic that gets us all easily into name calling and so into a dead end where NO progress is possible.

Immigration is a topic that the media don't even pretend to offer us a pattern. Here is the Pattern of Patterns that will show you the nature of a problem and how you solve them.

Cynefin Dave Snowden

The curent media is stuck in the Simple. It pretends that we and they live in the "Known Realm" The Simple Realm (Laying Bricks or Stacking Wood) where cause and effect are directly linked. They don't even go to the "Knowable" or Complicated Realm (Designing a Jet Engine)

They operate in the Simple Realm when nearly all that confronts us is Complex or Chaotic. Using the rules of the Simple to deal with Complex and Chaotic leads to confusion and disaster. 

Nearly all our challenges are in the Complex or Chaotic realm. These are the realms nature herself. So for example this is how Hurricanes are structured. They are Complex. In the Complex Realm we have to get enough perspective to find the hidden and inevitable order in the patterns. These patterns are the same but different. They are predictable in how they operate but only in a general sense. For instance all turbulence of a certain type for instance looks like a hurricane. The water going down your plughole and a galaxy all share the same pattern. They have internal rules that are consistent that enables us at least to understand them. Whereas if you are in a storm, all you can do is hang on and hope. 

Chaos is even harder to "see" but it too has patterns and order that have structure but they are very hard to "see" as a lot of time has to pass before the pattern emerges.

In Chaotic Realms, small things have to iterate over time until a shape is settled. So, think of a seed becoming a small shoot, then a plant then a sapling then a tree and then a copse and then a wood and then the full ecosystem of a forest. At each stage the shape changes but you can only see the complete pattern at the end.

That is how Chaos evolves into a knowable pattern. All acorns have the potential to become not just a tree but a forest. 

If you only saw an acorn and did not know it could become a forest, you would have to wait for a thousand years to see the connection. You still might never see this. Most only see the obvious end state as a tree. But that is not the real end state. The Climax Forest is the end state.

But now we know the pattern, it will always do its best to reach its potential. We can help an acorn become a forest by helping it have the best environment for each stage of its development along its trajectory. So we cannot control it. We cannot be assured that it will reach its potential but we can give it a very good chance. It is like this with our children.

Seeing the patterns then is the way to understand Complex and Chaotic system.

So then how can a media organization do this? Well first of all it has to know that this is the work. Not itself a small thing when all the real media lives in a different mindset!

This is what we have decided to do at KETC. Call us mad! Most called Columbus mad. No one would finance his voyage to the west for decades. Everyone knew that the world was flat! It took a Queen to make the investment. Columbus also did not have a lot of fun along the way either. This is not fun being out there on a limb with everything at risk. But it is maybe our destiny. We sure can't turn back now.

So sorry about the lecture but I don't know how else to show you our context.

This is where we are at KETC.

I would like to show you an example of how we are using "pattern seeking" to make sense of immigration. If we can do this then maybe we can make sense of a lot of other things.

Mea Culpa - We have not cracked this.

We are very much still finding our way and do not claim to have solved this. We feel like Columbus must have felt weeks into his voyage as the supplies were running out and the crew getting scared. I think we have seen the odd gull and a few logs in the water. We sense we are close to land but not sure. And we still don't know what to do if we get to land.

You can help us by telling me more about how we might improve this process. You will see things that we can't - please pile in and help!

Here is the process that has emerged from our work - with no prior plan. It has just emerged into our own vision this week! It is offering us a pattern for rooting an issue into pattern of its own that has structure and so meaning.

1. We go out to the community in St Louis and ask people in the street what they know or think about an issue - In this case the Dream Act - we do this to find out where we are starting from - do people have a view, do they know much anyway, what is the local temperature? We start with our local reality and experience with the issue. We let them speak not us. 
2. We go out to an expert - who does know a lot about what ever is the issue - in this case an immigration lawyer in St Louis - she provides her professional opinion of what is the context. We find out the facts from a person who knows a lot more than we coud ever know. We let her speak not us. 
3. We go out to a person who is directly affected by the issue and get her experience. We find the impact of the issue not from a pundit but from a person who is affected. We let her speak and not us
4. We mine the web for the related national stories on the topic - This is where I am using Darwin to help me find patterns globally on the web related to Immigration This link will go deeply into the help that this tool is providing in seeing patterns in the chaos of the web - a whole new kind of search based on pattern emergence. We extract the larger patterns from the chaos of all the headlines. We let them speak and not us.

Please look at what we have done behind the links.

In part 2 of this post I will offer up the pattern that I have seen - but for now - what do you see if anything?

 

Why I am so concerned about Immigration & the Media

About Homeland

America has always been a nation of immigrants. Throughout our history, there have been times where immigration has been perceived as a national threat to our way of life—we live today in one of those times.

The purpose of Homeland initiative is to help people define how we as a country and a community should best deal with immigration.  We will explore the complexity of immigration issues faced by our society. The goals of Homeland:

• Create a safe place for America to talk about one of the most sensitive issues facing our country in the 21st century
• Connect people to the issues, resources and each other
• Give people a voice to confront the question, “are we as a country still a beacon to immigrants?”

The issues faced in Missouri are a microcosm of the larger national debate raging on immigration.  We’re exploring the issues that make up the complicated national narrative of immigration through a collaborative process that will live in a multi-platform environment designed to engage participation and action:

• Local and statewide facilitated conversations with community members
• Guided citizen media creation
• Purpose-driven, original digital media creationa national, prime-time, four-hour television series
• A robust online space for people to participate and connect to issues and to each other.

The bulk of our engagement will occur in 2010 with broadcast series delivery in mid-2011.

Why Immigration?

There is no savior coming on a white horse with all of the answers to our nation’s immigration woes.  Immigration remains a dominantly divisive issue in America and the issues faced in Missouri are a microcosm of the larger national debate on immigration. Confusion, fear, and uncertainty have reduced the issue of immigration to meaningless and repetitive sound bites hindering our ability to engage with the issues and find thoughtful positions and actions in keeping with our national identity and beliefs.

Why immigration? By 2050, the Census Bureau predicts, the United States will have a new minority: whites. Already, non-Hispanic whites are the minority in California, Texas, New Mexico and Hawaii, and about one in 10 U.S. counties.  Missouri currently has no county like that — but that’s likely to change in the next decade and the results of the 2010 Census may paint a different picture of who makes up American communities.

The Homeland initiative is really about the community and that’s where this idea started.  It started with dialogue with people across our community—attending countless meetings where people were looking for answers on the future of our region.  What we heard countless times was that in order for our region to prosper and thrive, we need population growth and in order to achieve population growth—we must embrace immigration.

The term immigration is innocuous enough—or so we thought.  What we we’re learning from talking to lots of people in our community is this: When you talk about immigration, most people are really talking about illegal immigration. “Legal immigration—that’s fine.  People who come here illegally—that’s not okay,” is what we’ve heard countless times as we’ve talked with over one thousand people across our community.

What we’ve learned is—it’s complicated. Immigration is a complex web of chicken and egg issues and we alone don’t have the answers. Most media paint a dichotomy of solutions—it’s black or white, this or that, one side or the other.  There is no in between—you must choose a side or you don’t fit.  All the important issues faced by communities across the country are complicated. But what if we connected lots of people with each other? What if people in our community found a way to reduce the complexity around the issues of immigration? What if they had more and better information to help them decide what’s right for them and for where they live? What if you didn’t have to choose a side?  Could this work on immigration help communities take on other complicated issues—issues that are stuck because of polarization? This is what public media can do better than anyone and this is why we’re taking on this work.

via explorehomeland.org

Here is a summary of what KETC - my client - is trying to do. I speak for myself here.

The challenges that America and most of the world face are complex and dangerous. If we cannot find a path, they have the power to weaken or even destroy us. But the way that the media works today that feeds into our political system makes it impossible to act responsibly.

Our current media system reduces everything to a binary shouting match - I'm right and you are not only wrong but evil! The result ever great polarization and gridlock. The result, we watch "Political Theatre" as millions face a future with no jobs - while the clock ticks on Peak Oil - while our education system and our infrastructure crumbles.

The impressive civic discourse and can do aspect of American life that de Tocqueville so admired has been replaced by arguments about dogma similar to the early Christian debates about how many angels could stand on the head of a pin.

As Markets do indeed shift to being Conversations - Politics and Media have become Gladiator Shows.

My wonderful client - KETC - has been on 4 year journey of discovery to find out if a local public TV station could find out how to bring back that great American tradition - the "Safe Town Hall" where citizens could be heard and get connected to solve the problems that faced them. Where the intention is to find a way of working with each other to do what is best for our community.

Are you tired of all the bullshit? Do you long for a place where good people can commit to each other to help make where they live a better place?

If you do then please have a look at what we are doing - we are at the baby steps now - and need your advice and support.

For what we are doing is so old that we have all but forgotten how to do this - but we have the wonder that is the web on our side. We are just a bunch of regular folk who are struggling up the Missouri River as Lewis and Clark did. We have an aim as you can see that is clear - we know some things but like all voyages of discovery - we cannot know that is around the next river bend or over the next range of mountains.

Like Lewis and Clark - we need the advice and the help of the natives along the way - for without this they and we could never complete the journey.

By helping us - you help yourselves and your children. For if we can find a way to create the environment for a discourse in a topic that is as messy as immigration, then we can do this for all the issues that currently confound us.

The real new media 2.0 are not the tools. The new politics 2.0 is not your senator on Facebook. America 2.0 is a nation that has got its mojo back - a nation of people from many places that can get together and work out how to get through the great challenges that confront us in the 21st century

Posted via email from Rob's posterous

Immigration - Gorilla #1 - Fear that "they" are taking our Jobs - Fact: Immigrant Entrepreneurs create a lot of jobs

This slide from last week's Harris Poll - shows what people in the US and several European countries fear about immigrants. Competition for jobs is a major concern - the fear is justified - jobs are more scarce than ever - but is the cause Immigration as most people believe or is Immigration a "Gorilla" - a belief only?

Here is just a snapshot of how some folks in St Louis see this:

Here is some research in the NYT today that shows that immigrant entrepreneurs are a major source of jobs:

FOREIGN-BORN entrepreneurs have long played a big role in American start-ups. A study that tracked technology and engineering start-ups from 1995 to 2005 found that one quarter of them had a foreign-born chief executive or head technologist; by 2005, the surviving companies generated $52 billion in sales and employed 450,000 workers.There are signs that policy makers are looking to accommodate highly skilled workers and entrepreneurs, says Robert Litan, an economist at the Kauffman Foundation. As one example, he points to legislation proposed this year by Senators John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Richard G. Lugar, Republican of Indiana. Called the Start-Up Visa Act, it would grant visas to immigrant entrepreneurs who create jobs in the United States.“In this economic environment, I think job-creating ideas that don’t cost money are going to get a fair hearing,” Mr. Litan says.