Ep 9, S3 - 50 Years of Community Media: The Mission That Still Matters - Mike Wassenaar

Michelle - Intro: This podcast is for city communications teams and video professionals in government. We talk about expanding service delivery with video and streaming, media accessibility, gear, broadcast and streaming workflows and more. It's all right here on the Government Video Podcast. Episode Sponsor: The Government Video Podcast is brought to you by MediaScribe from Tightrope Media Systems. Tightrope believes accessibility should never be an afterthought. It should be built in from the start. MediaScribe's award-winning captioning and audio descriptions is your end-to-end solution for accessible government video. Visit mediascribe.ai to start your free trial today. Michelle: Hello, and welcome back to the Government Video Podcast. This is the show for local government and community media teams producing video and working to serve their communities through digital media. I'm Michelle Alimoradi, and I'm your host again this week. This year, the Alliance for Community Media turns 50. That's five decades of advocating for the organizations that put cameras in community hands, kept government meetings on the record, and built the infrastructure for civic media across the United States. And ACM members are gathering this year to mark that milestone at their annual conference this year, June twenty-third through twenty-fifth in Madison, Wisconsin. Now, if you've been with the podcast for a while, you know we have a lot of conversations about what it actually means to serve your community through video. You know, not just on the technical side, the gear, the workflows, but the harder question of who you're reaching, how you're building trust, and what role local media plays in keeping democracy functioning at the neighborhood level. So we've talked a lot in recent episodes about accessibility, about compliance, and about what it takes to run a lean video operation inside of a government communications team. Today's conversation sits at the center of all of that because the organizations that make up the Alliance for Community Media, which have traditionally been public, educational, and government access channels, it also includes community radio stations and other nonprofit media organizations. They've been doing that work for longer than a lot of us have been in the field, and the lessons that they've learned are directly applicable to anyone making video for a city, a county, or another public institution. So joining us today is someone who's been in this space for thirty years and who is now one of its leading voices at the national level. Mike Wassenaar is the president and CEO of the Alliance for Community Media and its foundation. He advocates on behalf of community media organizations before the FCC, Congress, and state legislatures. And Mike is often supporting the educational and professional development of community media organizations across the country. Before the Alliance, Mike served as executive director at SPNN in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where he led work in digital literacy, youth development, media empowerment, and community voice. And Mike got his start in youth radio, which as many of our longtime listeners know, Mike and I have that in common. And, Mike was our very-- one of our very first guests on the podcast, and we're happy to have him back today to talk about what fifty years of community media advocacy looks like and what this anniversary means for the field and what's ahead as the Alliance gathers in June. So, Mike, always happy to have you. Welcome back. Mike: It's great to be here. Thanks for the opportunity Michelle: So 50 is a, is a big milestone. Um Mike: You know, it, it is. I think the thing that I think is sort of fascinating is if you dial back to 1976, so I mean, my recollection of 1976 was the 200th anniversary of the founding of the United States. Now we're here 50 years later for the 250th, in July. This June we're doing the 50th for ACM, which didn't start out as ACM and really only became an organization in the 1976, because Michelle: Under a different name at that time. Mike: Under a different name. It was, we were originally the National Federation of Local Community Programmers. So it was specifically set up for localism and cable, and was based on the, you know, the activism of advocates in the field in the early 1970s, that sprang up from the Alternative Media Center at NYU run by George Stoney and, and Red Burns. They actually set up a, an internship program, which kind of worked as sort of a Johnny Appleseed type project to be able to start organizations and, and to, promote the idea of civic media access, to be able to use media to actually help people and to help people's engagement with their lives, help people with self-expression, help people with connection and building understanding. And it's interesting, you know, it, there are other community television stations that existed before ACM, the NFLCP. There are experiments that occurred with local, local channels in the 1960s with sort of the innovations that were happening in the cable field then. Just like there were also innovations happening in the community radio space, which directly parallels what was happening in the community television space in the 1970s, where you basically had sort of institutions being built to help communities understand themselves and to represent themselves. Primarily because you, you had, the broadcasting industry, failing to do that. I think this is the sort of like back to the future moment that we're seeing accross the United States, and I think it's just a thing to remind people of, is when, corporations don't fulfill the needs of a market, people have to step up. And very often those people are either local governments or nonprofit institutions, public libraries, public health centers, you know, neighborhood organizations, to basically find ways to be able to sustain the health of local communities. We see this in housing, we see this in food education, public health, civic understanding, local voting rights, all sorts of, all sorts of efforts across the United States. And we're really part of this, this br- sort of broader civic movement to basically ensure that democracy works. And you do that by ensuring that you have local institutions providing information that meet local needs. And that's, that's kind of the through line that we see, from the 1970s to today, and the needs haven't changed. Michelle: Yeah. And I liked the juxtaposition of, you know, remembering the anniversaries of the United States, right? We had the, the second centennial at the founding, and now we're looking, at fifty years later having the same alignment of major milestones. Because we should be thinking about community media as a part of democracy, as a part of First Amendment exercise. And I don't think that people who weren't around in that era, in the, in the '70s when that came about, understand the significance of that, right? There was a recognition of the power of digital media to reach people and noticing this gap in, the ability to serve hyper-local communities, right? And hyper-local needs. Mike: Well, Michelle: Because you only had so many, like, large organizations disseminating information mostly nationally at that point, right? Mike: In, in some ways, I mean, we're here to talk about community media and our anniversary, but if you're talking about sort of media policy, it is also a very much sort of back to the future moment. The act- the, the actors have changed to a certain extent. Back in the 1970s, you had three broadcast entities in television dominating, dominating the marketplace. Localism was defined typically by a television station and by radio, local radio. Michelle: Mm-hmm. Mike: Commercial ownership over the course of the last 50 years have hollowed out those stations so that, you know, th- there, th- there had been sort of a theory that if you had diversity of ownership, you could have diversity of information. It actually turns-- And, and what ends up happening is that we've got lots of information sources now, but, we're kind of like in the position where you're, you're in a lifeboat in the middle of the ocean and you're, you're dying of thirst. We have, we have lots of data, but we don't have much information. So, uh, a- and, and, and from a communications standpoint, folks need information to be able to succeed. They don't need data. We don't need just more and more inputs. And actually, you know, like a lot of the sort of s-stressors that people feel today are this ide- the idea that, you know, you have all this media coming at you and you have no control over what's coming at you. Or alternatively, you have lots of media that's about things that you don't necessarily care about. Or it's all entertainment and it's, there's not much usefulness. You know, so, it's really kind of interesting that, those concerns were all very much at the heart of folks in the '60s and '70s that kind of led a lot of the policy debates that kind of led to some of the technology innovations. Michelle: Mm-hmm. Mike: But even when you look at, you know, the work of George Stoney, who was a documentary filmmaker, his sort of impetus, his, his guiding ethos wasn't about sort of like technology. It was about using media to help better people's lives. Michelle: Right. Mike: right? Michelle: And I think, I think that's the important, that's the important thing to focus on when you try to distinguish community media from other forms of, we'll say democrat- democratized, platforms, right? 'Cause people often want to say, like, "What, what is community media's role in, in the YouTube era, in the social media era, where anybody can pick up a phone?" And I think it is that motivation, right? To, to make people's lives better and not to participate in the attention economy, Mike: Well, I'd even go a, a step farther. I mean, for example, a public access channel is a certain form of community media. It's not all community media. A government access channel is a certain form of community and civic-based media. It's not, it's not everything. And I think that we've often misidentified, the mechanism with the field because it's easy. It's easy to, you know, put a, put a tag on your practice and say, "Oh, I do this type of work." Michelle: Mm-hmm. Mike: but there have been folks in the field for many, many years who I, I consider to be sort of visionaries, who think about how we are using technology and information systems to be able to help people, to be able to better people's lives, to be able to build better connections and, and build understanding, rather than building misconceptions or deceiving people or using technology to tear people down. And I think this is, this is-- I think this gets to the sort of the ethos of what we see, like, in the field now 50 years on. That impetus, that impetus to reflect people's lives, to tell people's stories, to help people tell their own story, but then also to provide an avenue for people to be able to know what's going on in their, in local government, local business, local culture, that still continues. That thread has never gone away. The other thing I'd, I'd say that I, I'm, I'm thinking a lot about now in 2026 that is kind of eerily s- familiar to folks who kind of look back at, like, transcripts of speeches from the 1970s, is the idea of resilience being a super strength. You know, when a lot of these, a lot of sort of the, the Johnny Appleseed people, a lot of the interns from the Alternative Media Center were going out into the field as evangelists, for the idea of, community media practice being something that was useful in people's lives and could be, helpful for the local economy. They didn't have tricked out studios and multimillion-dollar operations. They were pretty poor. Most of them were students, or recently graduated students. A lot of them, were, on the CETA program, which was a, a federal work study program that was eliminated in the, in the early 1980s under the Michelle: Are similar to AmeriCorps, if you will? Mike: Kind of similar to AmeriCorps, but it was basically a way to be able to give people work experience, in technical fields, particularly. And actually, you know, my first radio jobs were CETA employment jobs. And so it's not like people were, well paid. It's not like the studio environments they were in were, state-of-the-art. And yet people were able to create meaning with other communities. They were able to help nonprofits tell their story, and raise money for their causes. Help local governments engage communities to, you know, help build voting, to help, you know, sort of civic understanding to, to help talk about important projects that are, you know, face the lives of residents in a community. And that still is true today. The idea that, you know, in a time of limited resources, we've got the ability to be able to use technical tools to do things that other people may not be able to imagine. That's kind of the continuing story of community media work. Um Michelle: I think just to, just to like bring it in a little bit for folks that may not be familiar with projects that fall under the community media scope as opposed to something more like a government access channel where we are, you know, very clearly just documenting a public meeting that's happening. I know in my experience in community media, we spent a lot of time hosting community forums around issues that would concern a wide range of people in the community that would not normally be in the same room together, right? So conversations around, public transit projects or, building the state healthcare exchange and what, what that would look like. Immigration policy at the state level. And again, like that's, that's bringing together people that share the same community, that are-- it's place-based media that's bringing together people that wouldn't normally, be in the, in the same physical space. And then again, highlighting that even further by capturing that out, live streaming it, or at least capturing it for posterity, for people to be able to go back and see what conversations happened around that. And I think that's the thing that if you, if you aren't familiar with this space, people need to be aware that like these are the types of things that we're talking about that you wouldn't see someone just organically… Like you wouldn't see a YouTuber, for instance, just organically planning something like that very often, you know, unless you're already deeply in the political space. so it's preserving those types of things and, and also just presenting the idea that that's something that you can do, right? Mike: Well, I, I think the idea that an audience can do something more than watch and listen Michelle: Mm-hmm Mike: It's super important. So, you know, I think the way a lot of media is structured is that you're looking for, you're looking for, likes, eyeballs, impressions, you know, average listeners, things like that. And to be thinking about other forms of engagement so that audiences are more active is a hallmark of a lot of the community media projects that have happened over the course of the last 50 years. Michelle: Mm-hmm. Mike: projects that care about housing, health, the environment, climate crisis, any of a n- any of a number of issues, you know, even economic development and, you know, the impacts on local businesses. One of the things that I think is super curious is that this, the field is not sort of a left-right field. And a lot of sort of the politics that have surrounded, you know, public media that have been sort of sucked into the, sort of the polarized environment of the national discussion haven't existed in community media in the same way because we end up representing left, right, center, everybody. And having that ability to be able to meet people where they are, talk about the things that are important in people's lives, is actually, a secret recipe that a lot of larger media organizations just don't understand how to do Michelle: It's sort of the antithesis of what larger media organizations are doing. Mike: correct. And even, and even, even a lot of public media organizations, PBS, NPR, have a hard time of, like, doing things like letting people touch equipment, right? I mean, and actually there are typically, there are, like, a lot of work rules against that. Whereas I think the, the impetus of, like, teaching people how to do things, there's been a strong DIY culture and ethic within the field throughout the entire, you know, the entire 50 years of its, of its professional existence. But even beyond that, when you look at sort of, you know, neighborhood-based, printing and zine culture, they kinda come from the same, they come from the same sort of set of movements and local empowerment. Michelle: That's very hands-on. Mike: very hands-on. Very much, very much about sort of like having people tell their own story to themselves and for others. Michelle: Now I want to-- So I could talk about this stuff all day, but I wanna make sure that we also talk about the event itself, right? So this, this conference is coming up. You have so many folks that have been in the industry for a wide range of years, right? So you've got folks that have been around since the start. You've also got folks that are new and wanting to learn and, you know, perpetuate this culture into this new digital age. What is your goal for this gathering? What have you all been talking about that you want to commemorate at this event? Mike: You know, we want to be dual-visioned. We want to be looking at the past, but then looking to the future. And we want to be joining those visions. Because I think only as you think about the lessons learned and activities that have, like, helped to grow practice over time can you, you know, re-react to the future as it unfolds. 'Cause we won't, we don't know what the future looks like, but we can look back at how we've reacted to the past and how we've built things or, how we've kind of forgotten things in some respects. So, um, we're trying to bring people together who have been a part of the field over the course of the last 50 years. We're trying to have some discussions about the future of the of various types of practices around the country. You know, a lot of folks in the field are doing things like workforce development, community education practice, documentary programming, you know, still doing a lot of community-based, sports programming, entertainment, helping to reflect sort of the diversity of communities across the United States. So we're trying to bring those threads together to kind of to have everyone join in, in sort of the tapestry of what we've seen over the course of the last 50 years. We're trying to document some of the sort of important work that's happened. So for example, we're, we're working with, some historians who are kind of looking at, you know, publications in the field, trying to re-share some of those publications and kind of reflect upon the lives of folks who dedicated a lot of their work over the course of period of time. And Michelle: Yeah, you guys are putting together like a, like a history book Mike: There's like a little, uh, it's like a c- there's a commemorative booklet that'll, that'll be coming out, that will actually document, sort of the journey of many different people, across 50 years and, and the different entry points as well. Because not everyone had the same entry point, into the community media space. And, and I think the, the other thing I think is super useful for us to keep reflecting on is that this is an evolving space. It's not, you know… And so I think that's part of, part of the mission of what we're doing here, over the course of the three days. There'll be other opportunities for people to learn, about what's happening across the country, in different community media settings. And then kind of sharing, sharing their stories of their practice. So we'll actually be doing some documentation work, during the course of the three days where people are talking about their journey within community media. So we can share that out for folks around the country. 'Cause I think that's the other thing that's, I think, super important for us to realize is that, there have been a lot of people who've really have helped to grow the field, have ensured its resilience over time, and who, you know, who have derived a lot of meaning from helping other people tell their story, or from helping people understand how local government works, or from, you know, helping children, get involved into technical fields and grow as professionals and creators. It's kind of, it's kind of interesting, you know, at various points in time, you know, community media has been involved in sort of, the sort of self-representation movements of who we saw in the late 20th century. We've been involved in you know, early internet development. I mean, I, it's kind of odd for me to say this, but I remember when the, when the World Wide Web came to town, and, in Minneapolis-Saint Paul. Michelle: in the mail, right? Mike: Well, e- and even better, even better, in, my experience was in Minneapolis, you know, the, all of the first internet, email accounts that were publicly available, in Minneapolis were available through MTN Michelle: Oh, wow Mike: Through, through the public access station. Now, why was that? Michelle: Mini- Minneapolis Television Network for folks who are not familiar. Mike: Tony Riddle, who's been a leading activist in the field, he's now retired, semi-retired. He won't like me saying that, but Tony Riddle had the, had the sort of the crazy notion that you could have the ability to provide information services to the public, and a National Science Foundation grant partnered Twin Cities Public Television, Minnesota Public Radio, KFAI, where I was at the time, and MTN to help build the World Wide Web in the Twin Cities and to provide internet access to Minnesotans. A crazy radical thing in 1993, '94. Something we all take for granted now some, you know, 30 years later, 35 years later. And yet, you know, we're sort of innovators in the space to help ensure that technology and information is in the hands of all of the residents within a community to help it understand itself, to help Michelle: I think, Mike: local commerce, you know? I mean, and I think that's, that's the spirit that we wanna, we wanna support at the national conference, that spirit of innovation, using technology to be able to empower people's lives, and then also to look back about all the creativity and all of the things that, that have been enabled, over the course of the last 50 years. Michelle: And I think what you were just describing, the coalition building, is a huge part of the strategy and success of community media over the years. And for anyone who's not familiar with the Alliance for Community Media or its conference, I feel like that's one of the most valuable parts of the content. The education is to come and hear about the successful coalition building or, like, crisis communication where there was, you know, a lot of sudden collaboration that paid off. Because a lot of our audience comes more directly from the government space, and I hear this all the time, right? That's the main thing that they're trying to do, is like building trust, building real authentic relationships with residents, and sharpening things like crisis communication or readiness, letting people know about public service. And I think community media has, like, always been good at that because they're, they're a little less regulated in certain areas, have a little bit more freedom to be creative, and that helps in terms of coalition building, right? If a, if a city knows about, if a city knows about these organizations and collaborates, Mike: Well, I think, I Michelle: can fast-track a lot of those goals. Mike: what we see right now in, in many communities is that the nonprofit organizations that are, partners with local government for the provision, sometimes even for the provision of government channels themselves, um, are trusted intermediaries. They're trusted partners, because, you know, trust isn't sort of built in a crisis. Trust is built over time through effort, and demonstration, right? And this is, I think, one of the things I think is very, very difficult to get, get through to folks, is that the time to have the trust is not in the crisis. That, that the time you've built is like all of the political capital before the crisis occurs, Michelle: Right Mike: right? So that means that you have to be consistently walking the walk with your community. You have to consistently be thinking about the needs of your community. You have to consistently be delivering information that's useful, right? And you can't just sort of show up when, when the community's in trauma. You can't show up after a disaster. This is the sort of the central lesson, that a, a lot of folks have about, about journalism generally, but also about media. They'll parachute reporters in when a when a fire occurs or, there's a school bus crash, a horrible disaster that upends people's lives. It's super important for our organizations to be there for our residents in good times and times. And unfortunately, because of the way major media is structured, that's not, that's not how most people experience media. Even today in 2026, 50 years on from when we were founded, that idea, like the reporter comes into your community and, you know, asks you about your trauma, that's terrible. That's like a terrible, terrible thing. And there's a reason why most Americans hate the media, right? It's because they don't think it's theirs, and they think it's exploitative, and by and large, they're right. The place where we can remedy that is by building institutions and having community-based practices that reflect the needs of residents. And I think local government can do that as well. It, it's not-- doesn't have to be just a government's voice. If a government is responsive to the needs of the people it serves, you could be building practices that are deeply reflective of your community. And that's the reason why, you know, it's a very curious space, to me, is that it's nonprofits, community colleges, educational institutions, school districts, and local government all kind of interested in the civic welfare, of the place they live. And that's sort of the higher goal we have to continually be thinking about. It's not nec- you know, and I think, that's, just something to keep, keep thinking about here as we're, we're moving beyond 2026. Michelle: Right. And, and just to throw in one more thing about, about the conference. Mike: Mm-hmm. Michelle: I think the Alliance for Community Media conference is a great cross-pollinator, because you have a lot of like education-specific conferences, you have a lot of government-specific conferences, and even like government communicators. but you, have fewer spaces where they're all coming together and they all talk to each other. You know, I've, I've been to a lot of these government conferences, and they're great. and I'll-- Although, like I, you know, I always learn something, but I'm just… Like a difference that I notice is, if I bring up, you know, a, community media station, a, full like PEG station that does public education and government, there might be a person on the government communication staff that knows like, "Oh yeah, those people exist. I know we have them, but I don't know, I don't have any relationship with anybody over there." And I'm like, "Do, do you understand, you know, what you could leverage in a relationship like that if you guys had, you know, solid connection and worked together?" Mike: Well, that, I mean, so, okay, but that's, that's the human side of, how things work or don't work, right? I mean, it's great to be a visionary, but if you don't talk to people and convince other people that your ideas are solid, they don't really exist. They don't live. I-- and I think this ends up being sort of one of the, one of the sort of, I think one of the object lessons of professionalization that's happened in our field in the last 50 years, is there's been a sort of sorting out, "Oh, you're just a, you're just Michelle: A siloing. Mike: A siloing, if you will, of, "Oh, you just do g- government communication. Oh, you just do, you know, e-educational work. You just do work in public." And, something is lost, I think, with that siloing. and, the only way you regain that, I think, is by building, connections and accepting people for the, worth of their practice, right? 'Cause everybody needs to feel that their, professional practice is worthwhile. Everybody's a hero of their own story, I say. you can't be dumping on other people because they're doing something different than you. That's not how you build solidarity, amongst professions. and I, I just do think that there is a common cause generally between, the different areas of the field, all interested in civic health. And, and it's curious, there's now a, new generation of, folks doing, nonprofit communication work And some for-profit communication workers, be clear about this, that care about civic health generally, and they see that building better media systems is a way to be able to, remedy the ills of, of having like a, a civic system that's not healthy. And it's, it's very curious. They're all a younger generation of, practitioners, theoreticians, activists, mostly in their 30s right now. It's really kind of interesting for me now in my 60s. I feel like I'm a, I'm an old-timer in some ways. And yet, and yet, Michelle: a position to be a mentor, Mike. Mike: I'm, I'm happy to be a connector Michelle: You're a steward. Yeah Mike: a happy, a happy little, a happy little connector. I appreciate what you're saying about the, stewardship and the, mentorship. the thing that I-- gives me a lot of hope about what we're seeing right now in 2026 is that people realize that there's a local news crisis. People realize that our information systems aren't particularly healthy. People understand that there's a, crisis in civic trust and a cri- and a crisis in, sort of trusting institutions. And so we, we need kind of like an all-hands-on-deck approach to be building trust, better information systems and, media systems that reflect people's needs. that's where we've been for the last 50 years, and I don't think that's gonna go away in some respects. the work is gonna change. The people we work with, I think, will change over time. But, you know, the goal of making sure that our media systems are reflective of, people's needs, I think that's gonna endure because, really that's, built on the, that's built on relationships. It's not built on sort of a system that comes from someplace else. and that means that we need to be connecting with, folks in the, in the government spaces. We need to be working with civic educators. We need to be working with people who, care about, residents making good decisions based upon, you know, real information. Michelle: Right? Mike: right? Not, not people who are getting propaganda. And I think, you know, so that gives me a lot of hope in the space. and it also kind of, gives me a, kind of a, wry chuckle because, I still kind of feel like a newcomer, even though I've been, I've been active in the space for so long. Michelle: Well, if you've been listening along today and you feel like this is a space that you wanna check out, that you wanna join, you can do so by joining the Alliance for Community Media's 50th anniversary annual conference this year. It's June 23rd through 25th in Madison, Wisconsin. And Mike, there's still plenty of time to, to sign up, right? Mike: Yeah. If people wanna go to our website at allcommunitymedia.org, you can find out information about the event. Come to Madison, join us to be a part of, the celebration and, learn something about the, past and the future at the same time. we'd love to have you join us. and for folks that don't have the ability to join us that are interested in sort of like being involved, we, we're happy to tell you more. go to the website. We actually hold regional events around the country, throughout the course of the year, as well as online events, that people can take a part of. And, we're, always interested in trying to, develop new partnerships, make new friends, and, and support great work across the country Michelle: Can- and connect you with like-minded people in your area. Mike: Correct. mean, and, or even people, people who've got, other practices around the country. I, We've got members in Maine, we have mem-members, in Maui, and they talk to each other regularly. So, I mean, we, we can be that kind of intermediary for, folks around the country to find out about, like, what's happening, in the field and, the innovations that they could be taking advantage of to build better practices locally. Michelle: That's great. And I know you also gave us this email, info@allcommunitymedia.org. We'll have that and the information about the conference and Alliance for Community Media's website in our show notes for this episode. We've been speaking with Mike Wassenaar, who's the president and CEO of the Alliance for Community Media and its foundation ahead of their 50th anniversary conference this summer. If you are doing community media work or want to find a community partner near you, this is the place to start. You've been listening to the Government Video podcast. If you found this episode useful, please like it. Follow us on your favorite podcast platform and share it with a colleague who you think might get something out of it. Join us again next week. I'm Michelle Alimoradi. Thank you so much.