A conversation on community media

On February 26, I had the pleasure of participating in a thought-provoking conversation about community media and its history and current state in Philadelphia, with a focus on Black activist and producer Marion Stokes and her preservation of the 24/7 news cycle. The event, which was organized by the Friends of the Laurel Hill Cemetery in partnership with PhillyCAM, included also Antoine Haywood, a community media researcher at the University of Pennsylvania; John Pettit, who is Assistant Archivist at Temple University’s Special Collections Research Center; and Matt Wolf, the director of the documentary RECORDER, which we recommend as an introduction into the life of Stokes and her preservation project. What is community media exactly, who is it for, and what is its relationship to archiving and preservation? Please check out the video of our conversation below for an exploration some of these questions and more!