Independent Media Investment Proposal

There were many great presentations and business ideas pitched within the past two weeks. However, after much consideration, I have finally made my suggestion for the board: I believe we should consider backing Elma Gonzalez’s project, Exchange Easy. It serves a highly specific audience in great need: people trying to cross the border between Baja, California and Tijuana, Mexico. There is a need to exchange money, and many different exchange stores with competing prices are lined along the long wait to cross the border.  This need to find the best exchange rate is never going to fade, and can be easily expanded to other borders and exchange rate areas nationally and globally.

I feel her  idea would translate into a great business model because it can be easily converted to many mediums with a relatively small staff and a simple marketing plan.  She can start with the website that would be updated with a constant live feed. Runners, teens, interns or young adults who are being paid minimum wage would send her updates on the prices.  She could then expand this to a mobile app after the business gets off the ground, but waiting to make the app would  not inhibit her because most people could check her website from the internet on their phones until the app is created. Marketing could be in the form of billboards that line the border crossing and the radio — a very under used form of marketing currently, but perfect for her target audience: people traveling in cars, stuck in traffic for long periods of time with nothing else to do but listen to the radio.

The only foreseeable problem I saw in Elma’s presentation was the want for individual businesses to update their own prices. I  could picture dishonesty or a lack of motivation to update the site frequently. However,  in conversations after the presentation the idea of paid runners was brought about that made the most sense. I think Elma is really on to something with her pitch. It serves a particular niche in a new, exciting and feasible way. Exchange Easy is my personal investment suggestion to the board.

Final Pitch Powerpoint

Not Ready To Make Nice

Some people say they really are not a fan of country music. Well, many radio stations took this to a new level after the Dixie Chicks’ lead singer Natalie Maines told an audience in London, England that they were not happy with President George W. Bush, saying, “Just so you know, we’re ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas.” This was just days before the Iraq invasion.

Even fans reacted poorly. Bossier City, outside Barksdale Air Force Base, a tractor sales company and radio station combined efforts to hold a “Chicks Bash” rally where they ran over the group’s CDs with a tractor.

It seemed the Chicks were getting no airtime and no fan support just because they had opposing views in a time of war. And that's exactly what happened. They were put on the list of anti-war songs not to be played on air because it did not reinforce the message of unity and allegiance the country was trying to portray.  And they are not the only musicians that suffered for being anti-patriotic. Every Rage Against the Machine song was on this list of music not to play. And that was just the horrifying start.

When the Dixie Chicks finally got back on their feet again and made their comeback, they produced the song "Not Ready To Make Nice" and a highly political music video to go along with it.

Check it out here.

Natalie Maines made about President George W. Bush during a recent performance in London.
Maines told the audience earlier this week, "Just so you know, we're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas."


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,81093,00.html#ixzz2DT9GL0IQ

Natalie Maines made about President George W. Bush during a recent performance in London.
Maines told the audience earlier this week, "Just so you know, we're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas."


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,81093,00.html#ixzz2DT9GL0IQ

Natalie Maines made about President George W. Bush during a recent performance in London.
Maines told the audience earlier this week, "Just so you know, we're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas."


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,81093,00.html#ixzz2DT9GL0IQ

Natalie Maines made about President George W. Bush during a recent performance in London.
Maines told the audience earlier this week, "Just so you know, we're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas."


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,81093,00.html#ixzz2DT9GL0IQ

Natalie Maines made about President George W. Bush during a recent performance in London.
Maines told the audience earlier this week, "Just so you know, we're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas."


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,81093,00.html#ixzz2DT97Ty1x

Natalie Maines made about President George W. Bush during a recent performance in London.
Maines told the audience earlier this week, "Just so you know, we're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas."


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,81093,00.html#ixzz2DT97Ty1x

Natalie Maines made about President George W. Bush during a recent performance in London.
Maines told the audience earlier this week, "Just so you know, we're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas."


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,81093,00.html#ixzz2DT97Ty1x

Silencing An African Voice: Part Two

 

Nollywood does not only face categorical challenges but also economic-- a similar challenge for many alternative and/or independent media outlets. It can be difficult for Nollywood and African films to earn a place in the global marketplace because the leading powers in film distribution are primarily from the west. According to Ukadike from the text Conversations With Filmmakers, “If you look at the African American experience, all of their music; their creative and intellectual property, is owned, patented, and copyrighted by white people.”

Africa does not have distribution policy or right in its own countries. In reality, the U.S. has a false distribution arrangement where African films can be checked out of libraries and watched for free, rather than paid for. African intellectual property is not given any value. For example, California Newsreel is a token organization that prevents African films for free. Most of the filmmakers are not rewarded with any distribution payment. Even worse, when looking at the types of films this organization acquires for distribution it is clear they interfere with the production process, selectively deciding the types of films that are to be made if the filmmaker wants to be distributed internationally. It is because of this process African filmmakers are torn between striving to accommodate their films to this discourse and the need to sell their films to paying audiences, and the quite different expectations of what a good film should be. African film is not given any value in the global market or disseminating process because any type of idea or voice from Africa is not valued in a world frozen in a colonial mindset.

  

Many independent media outlets face similar economic problems. Even some of the most successful outlets like Huffington Post have joined more mainstream outlets, like AOL, for the money. If they can't resist the temptation then how are smaller outlets? Many independent media outlets get funds through memberships and subscriptions, or donations. Many Nollywood films get funding through donations, however without distribution payment and with expensive and limited equipment needed, Nollywood films are not as numerous as they could be-- meaning the African voice is not as loud as it could be due to economic restrictions and limitations.

A Westernized African Voice

In the world of cinematography, the type of lens a filmmaker uses can change how the viewer visualizes the story being told. A lens can be colored, distorted, clarified, magnified. These visual perspectives then shape the way we look at the image and interpret it. But one does not need to be a filmmaker to use lenses as a way to visualize the world. Everyone has a perspective; everyone views the world through a different metaphorical lens. Every time we write an article, we must acknowledge it is from a particular lens, or point of view. As Roy Richard Grinker and Christopher B. Steiner point out, “when we look at something we always, necessarily, look from somewhere else.”

Unfortunately, the lens the west uses to view Africa has an effect on the country’s representation globally. Africa is seen by many through the distorting lens of colonialism. The concepts of family, kingship, tribes, civilization, culture, and savageness are all derived from this time of colonialism. This historic language is constantly reinforced today, especially in film and media, by western civilization. However, when we view film and Africa only through this colonial lens, we are undermining the emergence of the African film industry as a mode of self-retrieval and resistance, a mode of finding a voice and reclaiming history, as well its future. 

This issue of imposing a western perspective on an African voice was evaluated through a slightly sarcastic article from Granta magazine. The magazine was founded in 1889 by students at Cambridge University as The Granta, a periodical of student politics, student badinage and student literary enterprise. Since its rebirth in 1979, "Granta has published many of the world’s finest writers tackling some of the world’s most important subjects, from intimate human experiences to the large public and political events that have shaped our lives." 

The article, How To Write About Africa by Binyavanga Wainaina, actually acts as a guideline of what not to do, mentioning the most common offenses amongst most journalists and media outlets. For example he writes, "In your text, treat Africa as if it were one country. It is hot and dusty with rolling grasslands and huge herds of animals and tall, thin people who are starving. Or it is hot and steamy with very short people who eat primates. Don’t get bogged down with precise descriptions." The work ends with my favorite line, "Always end your book with Nelson Mandela saying something about rainbows or renaissances. Because you care." 

I was so shocked and horrified by the truth of this article. This descriptions can be found in almost every mainstream media western media outlet. Take for example, National Geographic's special issue on Africa. The site's main stories include an African safari live web cam, a story on AIDS, a look at the Congo's Mbuti Pygmies tribe and a story on oil-- with pictures of strong African men bare chested. Not one of these stories help to further or work against these stereotypes and misrepresentation mentioned by Wainaina. Where is the African voice in media?

Nollywood can be considered an alternative form of media to the western perceptions of Africa. This localized film does not carrying the ever-present narrative that Africa needs to be saved or spoken for. According to Mahir Saul and Ralph Austen, “That narrativization is speech fashioned out of its locality and defined in the hybrid mobilization of the technology of video.” And Nollywood is actually the third largest film industry in the world. 

Is the African film industry of Nollywood technically independent media? No. But it is alternative media to the predominant westernized voice on African issues that dominates the global understanding of the continent.  And for that, I think the growth of Nollywood and African media is important to the growth of all independent and alternative media because it means the growth of reclamation of all silenced voices on a global level.

A Call to Divest

We all chose to come to Ithaca College for one reason or another, whether that was academic programs, gorgeous gorges or the No.1 college town. For some, they chose to come here for one of the college’s five main values: commitment to sustainability.

Yet, what good are the degrees we are earning in college if the world in which we could use them no longer exists due to global warming? This is the question many IC students involved with the Divest Campaign are asking to try to stir action amongst students and the college’s board of trustees. The group is actually a coalition between many clubs on campus, modeled after the GA’s from the Occupy movement.

The Divest For Our Future Campaign is a partnership between Better Future Project, Students for a Just and Stable Future and 350.org. According to Divest For Our Future, their main goal is to “have all college and university presidents and boards to immediately freeze any new investment in fossil fuel companies and divest from direct or indirect ownership of fossil fuel stocks and bonds within 5 years.”

There are 22 campus campaigns nationally, including at the IC and Cornell campuses. The IC Divest campaign has been directly directed toward the college’s board of trustees, calling upon them to divest.

“One of the elements of that fiduciary responsibility is that trustees have oversight of investing the endowment in a way that promises the best possible monetary returns so as to help subsidize high quality educational programs, provide student financial aid, and so forth,” Ithaca College President Tom Rochon said. “However, it also means investing the endowment in a way that is in alignment with the mission and values of the college.”

There are 200 publically traded companies that hold a majority of the world’s coal, oil and gas reserves. These are the companies the project hopes colleges and universities will divest from, instead investing in clean energy to build a strong, local, green economy. In a statement from the national campaign, “The mission of higher education is to provide individuals with the tools, resources, and knowledge to have an influence on the world around them. Our schools invest in our future. Yet at the same time, they are supporting corporations that are actively threatening the future of all life on earth.”

Fossil fuel companies are polluting the earth without paying for the damages they are causing directly to ecosystems and indirectly through sever weather caused by increased global climate change.

“You don’t think about investing where the money is,” IC Divest student leader Allison Currier said. “We think about green building and using compostable material and recycling and that all is really good and important but to make real change you need to make it from the inside out and you need to move money because we live in a capitalist system where money drives everything.”

With a $200 million endowment at stake, you would think this movement would be getting more attention by the college media, as well as the national mainstream media. However, there are virtually no news stories on this campaign. This is because news stations have become directly tied to huge corporations, many in the oil industry. For example, Exxon Mobil sponsored CNN’s election night coverage. And they were being transparent; many national news stations do not disclose their ties to major corporations like GM, BP and more.

As students trying to preserve our future for our families, selves and world, we have a right to want the institutions we attend to divest from the companies that threaten that future, However, until the national media can also divest, there will be no fair coverage or pressure put on this institutions to want to make a change in this capitalistic system. And $200 million is a small endowment; imagine the change that could occur with divestment from larger colleges, universities and organizations.

I think the media has a responsibility to shed light on this campaign and the wants of the American youth, regardless of sponsorships or corporate affiliations.

Broadening Discussions (even after victory)

I was very excited to see President Tom Rochon rescinded the media policy this week. It was an unfair policy that seemed to be more for a corporation rather than a college. 

However, in our celebration I think we must also keep a skeptical eye on the top to bottom hierarchy this institution seems to be embracing in all areas of the college. Yes, we won the battle but not the war. We should not forget that the reason Rochon terminated the policy was because the Society of Professional Journalist’s panel members discussion with the president and the board. It was not because of faculty discontent. It was not because of student protests. 

We are in an institution that hears us but is not listening. Senior Rob Flaherty said it best in this week’s Ithacan article: “I don’t want the repeal to take away from broader discussions that need to happen on campus about the decision-making process here and the sort of perceived corporatization and centralization of campus.”