With a mission to advocate for and raise awareness around the importance and role of community media, CMFE uses our newsletter as a point of regular contact with members and others interested in press freedom, diversity and media pluralism. All CMFE newsletters will cover action and news within our three thematic goal areas: (i) Legal, enabling environment -advocacy; (ii) Communication and Visibility; and finally, (iii) Action for Cooperation and Change. Our final ‘Classifieds’ section covers information on relevant events, calls and publications from within and of importance to our sector.

With 10 issues a year, CMFE’s newsletters will have five annual thematic issues, giving CMFE experts, board members and others interested, an opportunity to go more in-depth with some of the ever-changing issues of importance for our sector.

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You can write to us here if you have an article, a change-story or if you should like to edit a thematic issue?

December 2020: Wishing you a powerful 2021!

While December in CMFE is a newsletter-free month, we want to take the opportunity to share our wishes for a healthy and happy new year to all. 2020 has been a different, a tough year. We have learnt a lot – also things we would have been happier without. But it is over, the year. And we share with you the warmest wishes for the new year for you and all around you, hoping that the sensation we, in the north of Europe, have every year when the light slowly but surely begins to return after winter solstice, could also for you mark the beginning of a lighter, healthier, happier new year. A new beginning – also for the important community media sector. Happy new year! Read on!

November 2020: (Community) Media and Migration

(Community) Media and Migration is November’s special theme prepared by Nadia Bellardi, who has worked with this issue for the past 20 years and finds that often the narratives of the past remain. The topics of migration and diversity are still mostly approached from the point of view of representation, rather than direct participation. Experts, role models and journalists rarely have a migrant or refugee background, regardless of whether they just arrived or have been living “elsewhere” for generations. Women from so-called “minority groups” are even less visible. When they are interviewed, it is often about this perceived “elsewhere”, (involuntarily) re-enforcing a narrative of otherness and attributing labels. Community media have been the places where, in the past sixteen years, Bellardi has found the most inspiring examples of radically different and inclusive practices, where CMFE for instance has given more visibility to these experiences. You will find inspiring references and useful resources in what continues to be a struggle against racism in and through the media. Read on!

October 2020: CMFE General Assembly and Media Pluralism Conference

With the general assembly as a good annual occasion to take stock of where we are, CMFE has renewed its commitment to work to advance the three core technical focus areas highlighted in our strategic plan: Strengthening an enabling environment for community media (CM) in Europe; securing visibility and understanding of CM; and advancing cooperation and change. CMFE will continue to advance our collaboration with the relevant European institutions and strive for access to structural funds, which could – again – further enhance our effectiveness and reach. Supporting ongoing media mapping work to also include community media along with CMFE’s own mapping of the situation around community media in the individual European countries, will put us in a better position to systematically and strategically address the challenges – and the opportunities brought forward by the Covid crisis. With four existing board members reconfirmed and two new elected at the GA, CMFE is ready to move forward for another year at the service of community media in Europe. Read on

September 2020: ‘Community Media and Languages’

September’s CMFE newsletter is guest-edited by Judith Purkarthofer, who works as a junior professor with multilingualism, and as an active member of the CMFE expert group. In the introductory editorial the guest editor stresses that “Community Media have, in many parts of the world, gained a reputation for being close to the people, representative of lived diversity and often times speaking of and with those with limited power. Among the many who have felt underrepresented in the media, are speakers of languages other than the national language. Minorities, migrants, multilinguals are drawn to Community Media as it offers space for local and regional languages and dialects, as well as transnational connections.” This newsletter aims to showcase some theoretical texts, projects and examples of multilingualism and languages in Community Media. We hope that this inspires thinking about one’s own language experiences, inside and outside media, but also about the goals of Community Media when it comes to access and representation of diverse speakers, listeners and viewers. The newsletter further highlights the recent launch of the ‘Media Pluralism Monitor 2020’, reflects on CMFE’s work to introduce voices and experiences from Continental Europe in a series of Global Dialogues on Community Media during the COVID – and beyond. Read on!

July 2020 ‘Community Media recognized: Providing social benefit & public value’

COVID-19 has given community media around the world an opportunity to document the special value of trusted community communication for behaviour change and transformation in a crisis situation – and quite a number of decision makers are step-by-step realising this. Documenting the change brought about by Community Media may be hard, but tools to carry out assessments of the value of community media have been developed in Austria and in Ireland, where research and documentation focus on their social benefit and public value. And we share a change-story from Luxembourg, where Radio ARA can tell about recent high level meetings for legal change. In Bosnia Herzegovina, we report how OSCE plans to increase support to community media, and you can read about recent changes in Switzerland’s national Community Media Association after their AGM. And inspired by the Irish and Austrian Annual community media days we ask whether we should consider An Annual European Community Media Day?”. We also share the dates of the next CMFE Annual General assembly to take place in Luxembourg October 9-10, and inform about CMFE’s recent joining GFMD (200 partners from 70 countries) to support and to benefit from a global press freedom platform, through which CMFE has joined hands in the #HoldTheLine coalition. July’s CMFE member portrait is Near FM from Ireland and then you find the usual stuff: highlighting CMFE’s strategic priority areas: (i) Enabling environment; (ii) Visibility and communication and (iii) Action and coordination. Enjoy!!!

June 2020 ‘New Neighbours / Countering racism’

In Europe we have for long known, tested and documented how community media counter racism and discrimination. The Corona crisis has propelled the community potential and impact of community media to the fore in many parts of Europe. We need this power more than ever! June’s newsletter has therefore a focus on one of CMFE’s priority projects in the field of countering racism, namely ‘New Neighbours’, sharing access to the documentaries sharing ways of bridging gaps. And as always, we share information about upcoming events, new publications for inspiration, and relevant calls. Enjoy!!!

May 2020 ‘Without press freedom, no community media’

Under the heading “Without Press Freedom, no community media” CMFE’s May newsletter addresses the intensifying “disinfodemic” where independent and community media are facing unprecedented existential challenges. CMFE therefore joined 150 other press freedom advocates in an urgent appeal to all those in a position to support journalism organisations and independent media. And we report from UK, Austria and Denmark, where community media are receiving state support to make it through the emergency. We also this month share information of relevance to community media in our three thematic, strategic goal areas: “Strengthening the enabling environment”, “Visibility of Community Media” and “Action and Cooperation for Change”. In our Classifieds section, we present new publications for inspiration, relevant calls and upcoming events. Enjoy!!!”

April 2020 ‘Community Media in the times of Corona’

The April 2020 issue of the CMFE newsletter provides resources in support of community media in the Era of the Coronavirus including advice on how to secure quality reporting – remembering the gender lens – and tools to secure filtering out disinformation. We share information about platforms where abuses by Governments under the cover of the Corona Virus can be reported. Furthermore, wonderful information on funding sources for media squeezed by the Corona realities collected by the GFMD, are shared, along with change stories from Bangladesh, Freiburg/Germany, Zurich/Switzerland and Olsztyn/Poland. Radio listening has increased dramatically during the past Corona-weeks, and the (multi-lingual) voices of community media are more important than ever! Read more!!!

March 2020 ‘Celebrating Women in CM’

Colored by the advent of Corona and the thousands of bigger and smaller cancelled Women’s International Day events, this March 2020 newsletter reflects the multitude of reports of the situation of women and media and tools for improving the unsatisfactory situation as among others reflected through the Beijing+25 review documents. With a focus on ensuring a better enabling environment in the (community) media for women, the issue furthermore covers events and publications, and it presents a new board member, a new member of our Experts group and our sector’s new EU commissioner, Věra Jourová.

February 2020 ‘Strategic plans ahead’

The February 2020 issue highlights the action carried out during and after the CMFE Annual General Assembly, and the new board’s work to become operational.

The issue reports on the activities carried out within the three CMFE thematic goal areas, and it reports from ongoing projects, training activities, conferences around Europe, including the New Neighbors project (see photo).

The new classifieds section at the end includes events, calls and recent publications on Community Media

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