Grassroots: Sudbury's Media Collective Membership Drive -- Support Original Grassroots Journalism in the North!

Jan 14, 2013

Grassroots: Sudbury's Media Collective Membership Drive -- Support Original Grassroots Journalism in the North!

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Grassroots: Sudbury's Media Collective Membership Drive –

Support Original Grassroots Journalism in the North!

Grassroots: Sudbury's Media Collective is working hard to increase the amount of grassroots journalism and other independent media in northern Ontario, and we need your help to do it.

We have been around for almost two years, producing content, maintaining media infrastructure, building awareness, and sharing skills. Our site (http://www.mediacoop.ca/group/sudbury) is a place where local people and local groups – particularly, we hope, people whose voices and stories are often marginalized – can publish media releases, event notices, musings about important questions, rants about issues of local concern, video clips, photo essays, interviews with interesting Sudburians, and diverse forms of grassroots journalism. As a working group of The Media Co-op, we link Sudbury with local collectives supporting and producing grassroots journalism across the country.

In addition to publishing those kinds of content on our site, our top priority is getting more people interested and able to create grassroots journalistic pieces that will give a voice to people and stories that you won't find in the mainstream media. Many people want to write, but they aren't quite sure how, or they don't feel able to take the time that it requires. To help people overcome some of those barriers, we want to be able to pay local writers for local, original, journalistic content, and to fund events and training sessions that will continue our efforts to support emerging writers. We hope to raise $2000 per year to allow us to reach these goals.

To raise that money, we are asking people in Sudbury (and beyond!) who value independent media to buy memberships in Grassroots: Sudbury's Media Collective. A one-year membership can be obtained for $25 or $15, and we encourage those who are able to do so to include an additional donation as well. We have a big event in the works to formally launch our membership drive in a couple of months, but in the meantime buying a membership is as easy as downloading the PDF membership form here, filling it out, and sending it in.

Becoming a member can mean what you want it to mean – it does not commit you to any other activity. Of course, you are more than welcome to participate in meetings, to come to events, to get involved in curating the site, and to help with promotions. If you are on Facebook, you can go to our page and 'like' it to keep track of what we're up to and to easily share material that we publish. We would also be happy to notify you by email about upcoming events and featured content on the site. And if you are thinking of getting involved in writing or producing multimedia content for the site, the membership form linked above has the basics of how to do that, or you can also email us at grassrootssudburymedia@gmail.com and we will answer any questions you have.

Most importantly, though, your membership itself is an important form of support for the mission of creating independent media in the North that speaks to issues and outlooks of concern to our communities and provides an avenue for people to gain critical perspectives on important issues.

Join today and help us grow the capacity for grassroots journalism in Sudbury!