A number of Chicago Media Action members are in Boston this weekend for the 2011 National Conference for Media Reform -- the first NCMR since 2008 in Minneapolis.

With the kind assistance of folks at Free Press who are staffing the conference, we're going to be convening a Chicago caucus to be held during the caucus sessions on Friday at 1pm. If you're at the conference and attending, please be sure to stop by.

More updates to come as they become available. Thanks.

Okay, in batch form, here are some highlights from the conference:

* The Chicago caucus at NCMR '11 wound up morphing into the let's-take-everyone-who's-not-from-Boston-and-interested-in-local-media-issues-and-put-them-in-one-room caucus. We had representation from Galesburg, IL; Madison, WI; Minneapolis, MN; Saratoga Springs, NY, and even a few Chicagoans (not as many as we had hoped, but given the geography of the conference, it's understandable). This gave the caucus a consulative flavor, and less a collaborative flavor, since there wasn't a critical mass to plan or map out local activism. But there were some good connections made.

* The best session of the whole conference, in your humble correspondent's opinion, was the session on community access television. It was a travesty than only twelve people showed up, but the session was as informative and inspiring as any I've attended in quite a long time. If you didn't attend, you missed a real treat.

* Thanks to the session on corporate media and K Street, we may soon have a potent new weapon in the neverending fight against corporate power. Details to come, maybe. ;-)

* Free Speech TV is awesome. Courtesy their live internet stream of conference proceedings, we were able to watch the conference even at time when we couldn't be at the conference. Bravo to Don Rojas and the staff at FSTV. By the way, Free Speech TV is in the middle of a funding campaign; if you want to take a stand against corporate media, be sure to sign up and pledge.

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