Making Alternative Media

Texas Student Media offers a variety of opportunities to make media that reaches the campus community and beyond. If you’re interested in joining up with KVRX, KVR-TV, or one of their other media products, I encourage you to check out TSM’s open house tomorrow from 3-5pm. TSM is housed in CMC, that mysterious little building across the plaza from CMA. I may cut my office hours short to go over there and check out the recording booth that my friend Eric built over the summer.

In honor of KVRX’s new home, I’m embedding an image of the old KVRX building, mid-demolition:

In case anyone wants to check it out, you can download the first two issues of Boing Boing here.

The reading for next week’s class is a chapter from Dan Gillmor’s book We The Media, and it’s available free online under a Creative Commons license. (We’ll talk more about licenses later.) Read Chapter 3 “The Gates Come Down,” and I think I’ll assign Chapter 2 down the road. Yeah, I’m bucking the system by assigning chapters out of order.

As you know, today we’re working on ‘zine projects in our lab day. I told you to bring cardstock, markers, gluesticks, stuff to cut up, and scissors. I got a rather large package of cardstock last night, so if you’re freaking out about finding some cardstock, I’ve got plenty to share. See you at one!

I’ve been updating the blogroll on the left-hand side of this page with links to all y’all’s blogs. OK, I’ve only posted the blogs from whom I’ve received URIs. I really, really encourage you to read each other’s blogs and learn more about each other and what you care about. I may set up a shared RSS reader with Rojo or Bloglines to make it easier to see each other’s posts, and I will definitely be going over RSS readers later on in class.

In case anyone cares about the URI vs. URL issue – and I’m not sure anyone does – Wikipedia’s entry on the topic explains it in a very specific way.

I hope all of you have read the chapter from DIY Culture I passed out in class today. I’m still working on getting the eRes site put together.

A couple of students have emailed me with the URIs for their blogs. I’d like everyone to mail me a blog URI and nail down a topic by friday. See you at 1pm in Burdine!

Ahhh, so it’s the first class day of Making Alternative Media, and the first day of the school year as well. I’m looking forward to meeting all of you today, and the projects that you will develop over the semester. You’ll notice that I’ve put the syllabus in the sidebar, and I’ll get a schedule up over the weekend.

Fall of Autumn has an online guide to cut-and-paste page layout that may be helpful for thinking about your ‘zines. Their resources section isn’t vast, but it may have other tips you find useful.