Why We Switched to a Pay Per Story Model

Today we launched two new MediaStorm stories. We worked on these projects for almost a year and everyone on the staff contributed to them. Over the past seven years, we’ve done this countless times: used our resources to produce something we believed in, then distributed the final product freely on the Web. As an early producer of online documentary multimedia, our primary mission has been to raise awareness about important issues through a robust social media network. We’ve also tried to create a model that others could use so that more storytellers could harness the medium to effect change. By distributing our stories for free, we’ve been able to reach millions of viewers and bring attention to important causes ranging from climate change to conflict resolution. But the reality is, no company or industry can sustain itself for long without producing a product for which people are willing to pay. At MediaStorm…

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Bring it to the table

Support ‘Bring it to the Table’ on Kickstarter

Talking Eyes Media (TEM), a non-profit organization with a long history of producing powerful media for pressing issues, needs your support for their Bring it to the Table Kickstarter campaign. What is Bring it to the Table? It's a video and web project that brings citizens together around issues that normally tear us apart. The Problem Somewhere along the line, politics replaced sex as the one thing in America we don't discuss in mixed company – even amongst friends and family. Democracy is founded on robust dialogue, and if we can't have conversations across party lines, democracy doesn't work. The Solution Bring it to the Table is a participatory online platform, community engagement campaign, and a series of webisodes aimed at bridging political divides and elevating the national conversation. The project is for those who are tired of hyper-partisanship and want to steer political discourse back into the hands of the American…

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Alexia home screen

Alexia Foundation Launches New Site

The Alexia Foundation has launched a new website and a new grant competition. These developments demonstrate the foundation’s continued commitment to its mission of promoting stories that drive change and to remaining at the forefront of documentary journalism. The newly redesigned AlexiaFoundation.org showcases the foundation’s expansive archive of in-depth stories. The more than 90 stories featured on the site provide a critical perspective on social injustices spanning 21 years. It is a rich resource that will inform and inspire for years to come with stories by photographers such as Walter Astrada, Bharat Choudhary, Ami Vitale, Louie Palu, Marcus Bleasdale and many more. The Global Women’s Initiative will support visual journalists documenting the abuse of women worldwide. The initiative will kick off by awarding the Alexia Women’s Rights Prize this summer, and culminate in the Global Women’s Initiative symposium and exhibition in New York City, in the fall of 2013. Explore the site.…

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pov-hackathon-500

POV Hackathon

POV (Point of View), the award-winning independent documentary series celebrating its 25th anniversary on PBS this year, is reaching out to documentary filmmakers who have projects at any stage of production for the first POV Hackathon, taking place Saturday-Sunday, Aug. 11-12, 2012, in New York City. The weekend is an opportunity for filmmakers with a digital vision to work with developers and designers to create a finished prototype — be it a mobile site, web app, widget, game or something we've never seen before — for the web. Entry deadline: June 29 To apply or find out more, visit pbs.org/pov/hackathon.

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