FORWARDEVER MEDIA CENTER
Writer Alex
Haley writing The Autobiography of Malcolm X with Brother Malcolm.
"The
media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make
the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power.
Because they control the minds of the masses."
- Malcolm X
Mission
The Forwardever Media Center is 100% committed to providing unconventional writing workshops and media literacy training to "at-risk" Black youth, particularly males, ages 14 through 24. Working in partnership with The Mentoring Center in Oakland, CA., the Center's writing workshops, website internship, and film forums, help students develop critical thinking skills and discover their creative talents. We recruit youth for our programs from the California Youth Authority (the state's largest prison for youth) as well as from universities and high schools. This cross-pollination of young minds creates dynamic shared experiences.
Programs
Whatchusay Cinema–A monthly film forum hosted at schools or community centers in Northern California that explores issues such as race, class, gender, and society. Students are joined by a panel of activists, educators, athletes, entrepreneurs, etc. to rate the films and convene roundtable discussions about corresponding relevant issues in society. For info about film screenings and schedules contact: cheo@whatchusay.com
Writing Workshops–We offer intensive seminars in journalism, creative writing, cultural criticism, new media, film production, etc. These seminars are taught at the center, located at 1224 Preservation Park, Oakland, CA, 94612. They are also available on location, at schools, community and detention centers, churches, etc. For info about class schedules contact: cheo@whatchusay.com
Internships–Whatchusay.com offers competitive internships to young writers who have clearly demonstrated a passion for the craft of writing or media production. The 3-month internship covers news writing and reporting, feature writing, creative writing, media literacy and new media. Working in partnership with community based organizations, universities and international and national media outlets, we produce a pipeline of informed journalists of color who will go on to create their own independent media organizations or work for major media organizations.
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Myspace and Facebook losing Friends??
By James Morgan
According to a recent article on Wired Magazines website the two major social networking websites have finally found a weakness in there online empires. Myspace.com and Facebook.com are both websites that have taken the internet and our generation by storm. They allow for people from across the planet to meet and share stories, information, pictures and events with a variety of people on a variety of topics. However now as other networking sites are slowly popping up advertiser and investors are starting to ask are these two gigantic websites a little too general?
According to this article myspace alone boasts 225 million members. These people (including myself and probably you too) come from many different backgrounds. The fact that the creators of Myspace and Facebook found a way to get so many sets of eye balls to repeatedly come to there websites of course got audience hungry advertisers interested in these sites. However, now it seems they are asking themselves if these sites are truly able to connect them with the intended audiences. Just in a short visit to my own myspace page I found an ad to see the Jonas brothers perform live. Anyone who knows me or visits my page(www.myspace.com/jblack919) will clearly see that I and those who visit my page will not be going to see them.
This is what matters in the world of advertising. In recent weeks I have noticed an upsurge in niche social networking websites. Although these sites maybe small in membership advertisers are taking notice. Don't you think that the advertiser in charge of the Jonas Brothers event would be much more satisfied if they put that same ad on a website dedicated to there genre of music. Although the ad may not reach the millions of people it will reach on a Myspace or Facebook they would be able to rest easily knowing that a higher percentage of
people would come out and support the event.
Niche websites like Conscious Africans connected (http://consciousafricans.ning.com/), Linkedin (www.linkedin.com) and YSN.com are all connecting advertisers and audiences in a much more focused way than Myspace and Facebook are capable of. However do not think that the two networking behemoths are to be outdone. Facebook has tried to combat this with its decision to show users when their friends patronize a certain business or ad however this strategy has proven to be more of an annoyance to the average user like myself.
Ultimately I feel that the social networking site is here to stay as are its two flagships. However the days of there whole sale market dominance are numbered. What we are seeing now is that the floodgates have been opened. The concept of social networking is backfiring on the creators of these two sites but in reality they are not going anywhere anytime soon. What I foresee happening is that they both will eventually fall into the background as more niche sites begin to appear. In any case nobody can argue that Myspace and Facebook have
connected out generation like never before.
Posted on March 31, 2008 10:38 AM
