Hail Asgardia!

I'd like to open up the topic of independent media in our nation. As you know, there have been a number of starts that were abandoned, so I wanted to open up some discussion here.

Asgardia like any free nation needs a media that has the ability to express the needs and wants of their patrons without censorship. This is in fact a keystone to a fair and balanced reporting system.

One of the proposals that I currently have submitted is called the Asgardian News Network. What this initiative does is gives a communal pool where articles and media can be submitted without editing or changing topics. What this does is gives asgardia media , both independent and state-sponsored a chance to have a pool of community-based Articles to pull from. While the proposal is being reviewed, I would like to propose to the community that you take initiative to develop Independent Media sources.

Running a newspaper or any kind of journalistic media is not an easy job. It is very time consuming. While I can't tell you how much time you need to put into it, I do want to encourage Independent Media to begin developing.

I'm aware of at least one citizen already ahead of you on this one. It's something I certainly think to be a good idea, generally.

Whilst I am in favour of "choices" I equally recognise the time and effort that should be placed into journalistic endeavours. With this in mind, it might be possible for "independant writers" to share a platform. It would allow a single place to gain more content, over a wider range of topics.

Who if I may ask? No point in reinventing the wheel if it's already being done.

I believe it may possibly be "Phicksur" -=- I assume they do not mind me talking of them in such a fashion.

For reference, https://asgardia.space/en/forum/forum/general-discussion-14/topic/phicksur-here-with-this-weeks-headlines-march-13th-edition-3917/ Which should also contain the link(s) to the "independant" hosted media.

As for "re-inventing" the sensible side of me says choice is a good thing - but that said I'm not aware of any other reason why people interested in writing journalistic articles couldn't submit such for his "publishing".

I have actually spoken to him about this. In fact we are in constant communication. He has expressively stated that he does not wish to go full time in a journalistic manner, but his articles will be shared in the pool as well.

The difference here would be the Ann would be officially sanctioned but not controlled.

Yeah, I am not a full-time reporter. I am a Fixer: I see a gap and I fill it.

In the case of the media and journalism, I have witnessed, since my arrival, that information from administration wasn't getting to the people that needed it. Thus, I began to accumulate the data, parse it for consumption by 'normal people' in a manner they would best understand: casual speech, and then publish it in a place and format that couldn't be edited or censored by the Asgardian 'government', as it is. This provides the closest thing we have to an independent, uncensored and (I hope) unbiased journalistic resource until someone who actually knows what they are doing can step in and provide something better.

Down here on Earth, I am the guy who gets called in when shit stops working right. I take in the whole situation, then design and implement processes to change the way things are, to the way things should be to work effectively, with the minimum amount of impact to both operations, staff, and management. I am not a reporter, but I am a researcher. Needless to say, right now I am working in government because politicians are predominately idiots who can't design effective processes.

Ryan has my total permission to take any of the articles I have written on asgardia.fixerlaw.com and publish them on whatever ANN news site he has with appropriate attribution. Pretty soon I will be changing my hosting services, so fixerlaw.com will be going bye bye anyway, but I will set up a new site somewhere else and forward things for a bit.

Changing hosting services shouldn't loose your domain... That can literally point anywhere you'd want it to. Unless for some reason this isn't yours to change. IF this is the case, you've possibly just learned a (releatively cheap) lesson concerning giving other people rights to your things(PhicksurLaw.com).

My suggestion wasn't so much that you become a full time reporter, as much as also take on an "editorial" role and also accept input from "other journalists", independant operators. People who want to play reporter. About all it'd cost you is publication of acceptable guidelines for content etc and reading through submissions. The gain is the potential for additional content. After a while I suspect there would be a few with consistent quality you'd deem suitable with regular enough input for you to consider tasking them with specific things. Basically expand the operation using other part-timers.

Something I feel requires pointing out is most "media initatives" I've been able to locate seem to be centric on English(Maybe I've just not seen the others). Although this is possibly expected for one reason or another I personally feel individuals, especially those with a poor grasp of English, would appreciate an option for news that is in their native tongue. Quite how would be the most sensible way to attribute for this I am less sure of.

Honestly the hard part would be editing gramatically. That would involve translators and dedicated journalists in that language. I'm all for it if we can find the volunteers to do it.

I think a lot of time is being spent in developing media directions rather than just doing it. Some things just need to grow naturally from humble starts. No need to design a top level news department when someone in a living room is all most of the public are happy to see. Get a camera, sit in front of it and tell people what's happening, heck read it from the screen while filming, no one will mind. Besides, view Asgardia as a nation, there should be encouragement to have lots of independent streams of media, not a unified collective.

I do a weekly live radio show (15% Extra) on my local station every Friday nights from 10:30pm (GMT/UTC) with a friend. We could maybe do a similar show for Asgardia.

We mostly focus on the technology and science stories of the week, and pull them apart or try to explain them in terms that make sense to to non-geeks. The news items often deal with serious issues, but we tend to kick them around, and tear into them with the style of "Bar-room Philosophers".

We play a very broad mix of music, ranging from Jazz and Classical to Death Metal and pumping Dance-floor mashups while visiting Mongolian throat music along the way (our coffee and smoke break time).

Because we are live, we let listeners contribute via chat and direct messages that are read aloud by "the robot" (my phone). This is often amusing, and a fun way to have listeners make requests, add details to a story, or correct me if I am wrong. The idea is borrowed from Twit.tv who rely on their IRC chat for immediate feedback and verification of stories or details.

Join us in a few hours from now and see if you like our style and content. http://www.thesourcefm.co.uk/radioplayer/console/index.html Use this direct link if the flash player does not work http://live.canstream.co.uk:8000/sourcefm.mp3 Join the chat room to talk via the [droid] and join-in, and complain about our style and content. https://cgiirc.synirc.net/?chan=%215PercentExtra irc.synirc.net #15PercentExtra SSL 6697

Our show has a very nerdy opening section, so you know when it has started. The radio station cuts the site podcasts wrong so I started putting the shows on Mixcloud, but people complain that it uses flash, or does not work for them, so I may go back to using google drive. Try it and see if it works for you. https://mixcloud.com/drflay/

EDIT Sorry but the stupid forum software is trying to be clever and fix my text by removing any underscores, so the links to the chat are broken.

Sounds interesting. Has anyone hosted an Asgardia Live Chat feed on Youtube?

I'm not 100% sure on how that's done but would be more than happy to dedicate 2 sessions a week to it. depending on what hours.

Honestly the hard part would be editing gramatically. That would involve translators and dedicated journalists in that language. I'm all for it if we can find the volunteers to do it.

English grammar comes second nature to me (at least grammar in the manner that most people speak and reasonably understand).

I can do editing. Just need to know where to go to edit.

Personal life has taken over so my projects are on hold for a bit. I need a vacation from my wife's vacations, seriously.

Doc.Flay, would you be interested in sharing your radio show on Voices of Asgardia?

I believe that currently as we have no adverts in our show there is no problem re-using the show as-is, but if we do get a show sponsor it may or may not be a problem depending on where the advert is.

If you want to use our show I will just make a point of covering more Astronomy related stories. Generally we try to cover topics and raise issues that the main media ignore/hide. Some feedback on the show will be useful, so we can gauge how much more International we need to be. We already fly the show aimed at a world of people who share common problems and worries.

If you want the files to use via something other than Mixcloud I can upload to a remote drive again (funny I had a feeling I may go back to cloud storage).

...Oh and yes, the profile picture is really me dressed for my weekend job as Imperial Galactic Overlord. I just do it part time because the current lack of arch-rivals and super-heroes took all the fun out of it. I miss the good old days of setting up an overly elaborate trap or diabolical death device, only to have the uncommonly handsome hero escape my evil clutches once more. And since my Hench-persons started having health and safety meetings I am struggling to get anything done.

Don't worry I have no crazy theories about Martians or hollow earth. .... Hollow eggs made of chocolate however is another thing entirely ! "They" won't let us see the freakish genetic experiments that have lead to this delicious disfigurement of nature. Some of those eggs are massive, so somewhere "they" have giant chocolate birds ! Huge things like an Ostrich, with huge chocolate drumsticks....huge and chocolatey and...mmmmmmm.

Sorry I sort of drifted off there :D

We will need a news channel, but not right away but when it die let's be honest with our people please in like advancements, issues, subjects brought up for people, events happening or that happened people didn't know happened, and most importantly they give us what most countries put and hide as secrets. Like maybe a discovery that could help us but cream some out. Example we find out there was non sol system device entering our system, we tell the people and it could be alien or a long lost earth satellite, you would be surprised how many are up there we dont know about. But still report the truth and information that real. Also educational means.