I went to a presentation on June 14 by Paul Jay, of the CBC Newsworld program counterSpin. Paul's current project is Independent World Television, and I think it's an excellent idea.
IWT News would be a cable channel (with streaming video available here on the internet) that would be similar in a lot of respects to CNN, MSNBC, or CBC Newsworld. The big difference is that there will be no commercial advertising whatsoever. Instead, it would be funded by individual donations, foundations, and some fund-raising events. The basic idea is, IWT News needs $25 million for its first year of operation, and this can be raised by a half million people contributing $50.
To make this happen, he's hired Paul Maslin, who engineered the grass-roots internet fundraising effort for the Howard Dean campaign in 2004. Paul has also signed up an impressive list of media heavyweights, including Gore Vidal, Naomi Klein, and Janeane Garofalo; the list can be found on the IWT News Site, which launched on June 15. Check it out: http://www.iwtnews.com/.
