Just wanted to let you know about this exciting event tonight in San Francisco.  Hope you can make it or help spread the word!

In less than a decade, a new breed of networked progressive media has engaged millions, harnessing a participatory online environment that has allowed our voices to influence political campaigns, public debates, and policymaking at unprecedented levels.

Please join us for this exciting panel--The Future of Journalism: Community-Building, Collaboration and Inclusion

^{Special thanks to our co-sponsors:}

Media Alliance, G.W. Williams Center for Independent Journalism, Bay Area Video Coalition, New America Media, Oakland Local

^{Jessica Clark is a writer, editor and researcher, with more than fifteen years of experience spanning commercial, educational, independent and public media production. A journalist and frequent media commentator, Clark is the former executive editor of In These Times, a national, award-winning monthly magazine of progressive news, analysis and cultural reporting. Her freelance articles have appeared in such outlets as the San Francisco Chronicle, the American Prospect online, The Ottawa Citizen and South Africa's Wireless. Clark is currently the Research Director for the Center for Social Media, Scholar-In-Residence for American University's School of Communication and a Knight Media Policy Fellow at the New America Foundation . She lives in Philadelphia.}

 ^{Tracy Van Slyke has dedicated her career as a journalist, communications professional and media producer to building a strong independent media infrastructure. She is currently the Director of The Media Consortium, a network of the nation's leading, independent, progressive media outlets. She is also on the board of National People's Action-a national community organizing group and Women, Action & Media, an organization dedicated to gender justice in media.  In 2009, she was a Progressive Women Voices member at the Women's Media Center. Van Slyke is the former publisher of In These Times magazine and has co-authored landmark articles on strengthening the progressive media landscape. She lives in Chicago.} 

^{Steve Katz is the Publisher of Mother Jones. He joined MoJo in 2003 after several years as Vice President for Development for Earthjustice, the nation's leading non-profit environmental law firm. He has more than 30 years experience in raising money for the arts, neighborhood-based organizing, environmental advocacy, and journalism. While at Mother Jones, Steve helped found and was the first project director for the Media Consortium, a network of more than 40 independent, progressive media organizations around the United States. Steve has a PhD in Sociology from the University of California at Santa Cruz (where his son, Noah, is also an undergraduate theater major), and lives in the Bay Area with his wife Rachelle, their dog Mingus, and two fish. Founded in 1975 to do independent investigative journalism rooted in progressive values, Mother Jones reaches an audience of 200,000 paid magazine subscribers and an online community averaging more than 800,000 viewers each month.}

^{Susan Mernit is the founder of Oakland Local (oaklandlocal.com) news & community hub for Oakland, CA focused on environmental, food, development and social justice issues, and the recipient of a 2009 New Voices grant from J-Lab at American University. She is also a consultant and trainer.}

^{A former VP at AOL and Netscape, and a former Yahoo Senior Director, Mernit was the consulting program manager for The Knight News Challenge (newschallenge.org) in 2008-09, as well as a consultant to organizations including Salon.com & TechSoup Global, where she led the re-design of their portal. She is the web & business strategist for The Center for Investigative Reporting and their new California Watch project (californiawatch.org). Mernit spent summer 2008 at TechStars, incubating a company that died; that experience has super-fueled her energy. She is a CE at BlogHer, a blogger, and a co-founder of Public Media Collaborative, a volunteer group focused on training nonprofits, ethnic media & community groups on using social media tools.}

^{A popular trainer and speaker, Mernit works regularly with The Knight Digital Media Center at USC's Annenberg School, and with The Maynard Institute, and was the Keynote program chair for the October 2009 Online News Association conference in San Francisco.}

^{Kevin Weston, writer, youth advocate and multi-media content producer is the director of new media and youth communications at New America Media (NAM). His essays and news reports have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Sacramento Bee, Oakland Tribune and the Boston Globe among others. Kevin was a founding editor at YO! Youth Outlook Multimedia and currently serves as the director and publisher of the youth media portal founded by Pacific News Service/New America Media in 1991. He has appeared on Al Jazeera English, NPR's 'News and Notes', 'Forum' on KQED Radio and is a frequent contributor to KQED TV's 'This Week in Northern California'. Kevin worked as a reporter, editor and graphic designer at The San Francisco Bayview and the Post Newspaper Group two of the premire African-American media in the Bay Area and he is the editor of African-America content at NAM. Kevin Has 15 years experience in the youth development and leadership field working as a case manager at the East Bay Asian Youth Center and Youth Together -- a multi racial violence prevention and youth leadership organization based in Oakland. Kevin founded the new media department at NAM in 2005.}

^{For more information about the book and the authors, please visit: www.beyondtheecho.net}

^{PRAISE for "Beyond the Echo Chamber"}

^{"Beyond The Echo Chamber tells one of the great untold stories of this decade: the evolution of an entirely new (and newly powerful) progressive media... It's a must-read for media practitioners, consumers, and progressives of all stripes."}

^{Christopher Hayes, Washington Editor of The Nation}

^{"From 'he-media' to 'we-media,'" Van Slyke and Clark document the shift from a media universe dominated by a few grim men to one in which progressive media can experiment, collaborate, report and have real impact."}

^{Laura Flanders, host of GRITtv and author of Blue Grit}

^{"[This book] takes us beyond the usual ideas about political media, message and movement building... empowering people to break out of conventional wisdom about politics and media and really start making their own change."}

^{Mike Lux, co-founder of OpenLeft.com}