Media Tank is excited to announce plans to begin an educational media monitoring project that will examine Philadelphia’s local news media! Planning for the project is still in its infancy and we are recruiting volunteers to help in this process. We are seeking as much input as possible from volunteers, like yourself, because this project is designed to benefit the community and highlight your concerns.

As a volunteer media monitor, you’ll play an integral role in the project development, monitoring process, and data collection, as well as shaping future work to improve local news media accountability.

The idea is to create a space where people who are concerned with the state of local news media and interested in working towards creating a more just, accountable, representative media system can share their ideas and collaborate with others who also care about media justice.

Why is it necessary to do local media monitoring? In order to begin creating a better media system, we have to analyze what we currently see in the news media and compare that to what we want to see! By having solid examples and quantitative statistics, we are in a better position to highlight what we believe is missing from local news media.

Some questions we to hope to answer: What stories do we see in local news and which are missing? Of the actual “hard news” stories, what types of issues are addressed and how are they framed? What sources are used in news stories and whose positions are covered and whose are left out? These are only a few of the ideas we have and we welcome volunteer participation in helping decide what issues we focus on.

There is much to be done before we actually begin monitoring and that is where Media Tank is first looking for input from volunteers. The first volunteer meeting will be held either Wednesday June 28th or Thursday June 29th at 6:30 pm in Center City Philadelphia (exact location TBA). This will be an informational meeting and if you’d like to join us, please let me know whether you are available to meet on either of those days.

We hope you will join us as we undertake this important educational project. Many voices from the community are necessary for successfully envisioning a better media system that meets the needs of our City.

For further information and to discuss the project in more detail, please call Amy Johnson at the Media Tank office, 215-563-1100.

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Student Organizing
Learn about Media Tank's pilot student group - Students for Media Education and Reform (SMEAR).