The Media Show

Welcome to The Media Show. If you’re a teacher, professor, librarian, journalist, or other person currently wearing their serious-grown-up hat, this article will explain a little bit about what The Media Show is, and why we do what we do.

The Story So Far

Weena Jimenez, a sixteen-year-old punk puppet with an attitude problem, has decided that she learns way more while skipping school than being bored to death in a classroom. Her more responsible older sister, Erna, runs after her to try to keep her from catastrophically messing up her life.

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So, this happened:

During our last Kickstarter campaign, we offered funders the opportunity to sponsor a media literacy workshop at a school, community organization, scout troop, or other place which could use one. One backer generously stepped forward at this Participating Sponsor level.

In a note to me, he let me know that he didn’t want his name listed on the page. Can you list me under some other name? Maybe a funny one? he asked. Or wait — maybe as “Lulzsec” or “Mr. Assange from the Wikileaks Foundation.” Or just… Anonymous.

I thought this was absolutely brilliant. So The Media Show is going to run the first ever media literacy workshops for Anonymous. We’re currently working out the details with a Girl Scout troop in the Bronx.

Would you like to be an Anonymous donor, and help support critical thinking about the media? Just imagine a roomful of kids who’ve just had a great time playing with media and technology, remixing and digging deep into where media messages come from, calling out “Thanks, Anonymous!” as they head back out into the world better armed to think critically about ads, news, and Internet forwards. Everyone can be Anonymous — you don’t have to spend time with Sabu in IRC to play along!

Support our new Kickstarter campaign! For each additional $550 over our $1000 goal (with or without backers at the Participating Sponsor level), we will do one additional workshop for kids who are not likely to get media literacy instruction in school Help us ensure the next generation knows how to read between the lines!

We made it! Thanks to all of you who pledged to or spread the word about our Kickstarter fundraising campaign.

We’ve had a few requests to share what we’ve learned by running the campaign, including one from Mitch Altman, a friend of The Media Show and all-around cool guy who will soon be running a very interesting campaign of his own (so follow that Twitter feed!) I wrote up a good chunk for Mitch, then figured that it would be another good addition to the extensive documentation we’ve done of the show. So I’m posting my rough postmortem of the campaign here.

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We’ve had a couple of requests to describe the workshops and presentations that The Media Show could do for schools, colleges, afterschool programs, libraries, and pre-service teachers. So Gus has drafted a list — voila! Workshops are intended for junior-high or high-school audiences, except where otherwise indicated below. As a reminder, we are currently offering these workshops only through The Media Show’s Kickstarter fundraiser, an offer which lasts only through Thursday, March 15!

For videos of a previous workshop Gus ran using The Media Show, see the Media Show case study on Pressible.

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Someone recently asked me for a description of The Media Show that would be “less jokey” than the video we have running for Kickstarter. “Natch, we’ve got that up online someplace,” I thought — and then went looking, and couldn’t find it. We have a ton of documentation up on the Media Show Case Study on Pressible, but one thing that I curiously left out while making that was the original pitch document that described what the show would be about, and why.

So here, for your enjoyment, is the document that sold AfterEd.tv (rest its pixellated departed soul) on producing The Media Show.

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