For more than 40 years, Public Media Network has served a simple but essential role: keeping local life visible. That means documenting how decisions are made, preserving a shared public record, and creating space for people to contribute their perspectives to the broader community conversation. This work helps ensure that information about our community is open, accessible, and available to everyone.
While the tools we use have changed from cable television to include streaming, podcasts, and on-demand video – the purpose has not. Community media exists to remain open: open to participation, open to local perspectives, and open to the everyday moments and decisions that shape life in our region.
Why open, community-powered media matters today
The media environment continues to shift. Ownership is increasingly consolidated, and many decisions about what information is seen or amplified are shaped by scale, algorithms, or centralized platforms far removed from the communities they affect. At the same time, long-standing public-interest media systems are being dismantled or defunded, raising real questions about how reliable local information and public visibility will continue.
When local information disappears or becomes fragmented, communities lose shared reference points – places where residents can access the same information, understand the same decisions, and participate from a common baseline. Without those shared spaces, it becomes harder to stay informed, engaged, and connected to one another.
Community-powered, not controlled
Community-powered media offers a different approach. Instead of deciding what matters from the top down, it creates the conditions for stories and information to emerge from the ground up. It allows residents, artists, students, organizers, and local leaders to take part in shaping what is seen and heard, alongside coverage of the public processes that affect everyone.
Public Media Network operates as open civic infrastructure – providing access to coverage, tools, and platforms that allow the community not just to consume media, but to participate in creating and preserving it.
By covering public meetings, supporting community storytellers, and providing access to media tools and training, open media helps ensure that no single institution or authority controls the narrative. It makes room for complexity, context, and lived experience, while maintaining a reliable source of local information for the entire community.
Looking ahead
As we move further into a new year, the relevance of community media is not about nostalgia or any single technology. It’s about continuity, access, and care. It’s about showing up consistently, adapting to new platforms, and remaining grounded in the belief that communities are strongest when people can see how decisions are made and recognize themselves in the stories around them.
Public Media Network’s history isn’t defined by cable or any one distribution method. It’s defined by more than four decades of keeping local information and storytelling open, accessible, and shaped by the community itself. That commitment continues because the need for open, community-powered civic media hasn’t gone away. It has grown.
An Invitation to Get involved
Community-powered media only works when the community participates. Whether you want to help document local decision-making, shars a story, learn new media skills, or support open access to local information, there’s a place for you at Public Media Network.
Watch. Learn. Create. Participate.
Explore how you can get involved and help sustain open, community-powered media for the collective good.
