Voter Media

So a little secret something is in the works for November 15th, which just happens to be municipal election day, as a result of your generous votes, dear reader, on the Vancouver Election Blog Awards. We'll announce that part later, lets just say Women will have their voices heard. So today I got a chance to sit down with Mark Latham of VoterMedia.org, and came to understand that this contest is part of a much larger plan for democratically funded new media. To me, this is bolder than anything that Adbusters has come up with in the last 5 years. His idea is a socially funded model that might just permanently alter the information landscape. Imagine if every blogger could focus on content rather than whoring themselves out to advertisers. Its like a living wage for freelance journalists. We're sick of the Rupert Murdochs, Conrad Blacks, and Izzy Aspers of the world and we'd much rather get our news from a local blogger who isn't in the pocket of big corporations.

I'll admit that when Beyond Robson was entered in the contest I wanted to win, after all I needed to eat. But after meeting with Mark, I realize that its not so much a popularity contest, but as an incentive to keep Vancouver's blogosphere diverse and healthy. I mean where would Morning Brew be without the likes of Bill Tielemen, Jonathan Narvey, and David Berner? Then there are the transit blogs like Price Tags and Stephen Rees. David Eby is easily the best source for issues regarding the DTES, while Frances Bula seems to have the back rooms and rumour mills covered. Then there is the exhaustive coverage of Public Eye, who's probably the most likely to break a major scandal. I'm sure the list will grow, indeed just go to the blog and make some suggestions, but for now thanks for all your votes, and thank you to Dr. Latham for this very ambitious experiment in social media.