The voice you’ll hear is that of Carroll McKenney Public Media’s founder, Stephen McKenney Steck, commenting on the issue of “media matters…particularly public media.”
Feature length: 3:43

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Transcript

I was born in Orlando, Florida 66 years ago.

Central Florida matters to me. And the issues of and voices from Central Florida matter.

This December, I will celebrate a 50-year career in media…all of it spent in this one community, rare in the media business.

Media matters to me, too, particularly my career-roots in public broadcasting previously serving almost 40-years as President at WMFE, the local PBS and NPR stations.

That’s why – with the participation and encouragement from a handful of like-minded media advocates, each of whom like me, serve voluntarily and without financial compensation –we have launched Carroll McKenney Foundation for Public Media to be a platform to reflect those issues and voices in a small, local and earnest way, and as a non-profit, tax exempt, publicly supported charity.

On the CMF Web site, you’ll find many documents to review, each offering you information for you to better understand CMF and what we think its public media role could be.

We believe an informed community should have access to many information platforms and delivery devices. CMF Public Media is such a platform.

CMF does not place its mission above that of our local mainstream electronic media sources. To the contrary, I am a product of local media. The people in local media are my friends and my family.

I watch and listen to their content. I appreciate the challenges they face. And maybe because of that appreciation, CMF instead places its mission along side those media institutions.

They successfully address and inform you about many issues and voices, often in a broad manner that serves a wide geographic area. To be more geographically narrow, though, in their content selection, may put their business model at risk.

Thus, unintentionally, the more narrow issue oft times gets less attention.

However, maximizing that attention right down to a zip-code level works just fine for Carroll McKenney Public Media’s business model.

As a result, CMF believes you win – because our community is better served with variously focused electronic media sources.

CMF’s aim is to become useful to you as an additional source of local information, delivered via on-line and new media digital devices.

CMF’s limited budget and all-volunteer participation necessitates its geographic focus be in the East Seminole County area.

CMF is mindful of the tendency for many new ventures to over promise and then under deliver. Thus, CMF will take small steps. We ask you to give CMF time to perfect its delivery technology, style and voice.

We are committed to the future of public media in Central Florida. Why? Well, because your issues, your voices and public media matter!

This is Stephen McKenney Steck.

Additional Feature Information

• Stephen McKenney Steck’s e-mail address steck@cmfmedia.org

You listen to Central Florida Matters on a digital device like your desktop or laptop computer.

Perhaps you downloaded this program direct to a more mobile device like an I-Phone or an I-Pod or, from her Blackberry; maybe a friend emailed you an Internet link guiding you to this program. What ever the manner, the pipe that sent this program to you is the Internet. As we’ve all become accustomed, the Internet is sort of a new media version of the old media’s broadcast transmitter.

Some have told us that this program and Carroll McKenney Public Media take advantage of the Internet in what pejoratively labeled “geeks” call a “mashup”. Summarizing liberally from Wikipedia – itself spawned from this new media world — a “mashup” combines forms from many technologies and many communication practices blending together or “mashing up” to create a new service.

And while Central Florida Matters on the Web may be new to us, we’re only just beginning to realize that it comes to you as a result of many media trends and devices now furiously emerging in our culture. In this, our first program, we thought it appropriate to examine such “beyond broadcasting” mashups and their applications.

And when were done with the examination, were ‘going to ask our neighbors’ voices to give their own perspective of “mashups” — and the new and oh so social media in which they find themselves living.

The mashup begins with two practitioners of old media techniques, eagerly learning to use these new ways.

First, is Shawn Bartelt, at WFTV-Channel 9 where she serves as Vice President and General Manager, and Bob Jordan, the news director there. We also spoke to an academic trained to explain and span both worlds of new and old media Dr. Tim Brown, assistant professor of radio and television at the Nicholson School of Communication at the University of Central Florida. One of his primary teaching areas include the effects of new media on communication in society, Brown’s the academic we turned-to to try to understand the mashup and what the keys to the future may hold.

Pictures & Extended interviews

		Tim Brown and Stephen McKenney Steck Extended interview (13:53) Recorded Monday, August 17, 2009
		Shawn Bartelt, Bob Jordan and Steck Extended interview (09:29) Recorded Monday, August 17, 2009

Additional feature information

• WFTV-Channel 9
• Dr. Tim Brown, Assistant Professor, Nicholson School of Communications, University of Central Florida

OTTER brings local senior citizens into the classrooms of the voluntary pre-kindergarten programs of Central Florida. Developed by the Foster Grandparents Program of Central Florida.

Jane Watkins, the director of Foster Grandparents Program, led the taskforce that created Otter. Megan Duesterhaus is the coordinator who established the program and recruited and trained the 25 current volunteers.

We probably can’t remember when we started reading for ourselves but we probably have a memory of being read to by others. For some children in Central Florida that memory will include an introduction to books from some dedicated volunteers who come into their school to unlock the joys of reading.

The Otter program brings books and senior citizens to the classrooms of the voluntary pre-K programs in Central Florida schools. Stories of Brown Bear, Silly Sally and a Baby Beluga captivate 4 year old listeners as Otter volunteers bring the magic of reading to the classroom each week.

Eleanor Salmanowitz Jean Dolan and Rita Tepfor are three volunteers who share their experiences using the books and curriculum of the Otter program to introduce young pre-schoolers to literacy.

Each Otter volunteer is supplied with more than 20 books and a special curriculum developed by the University of North Florida’s Institute for Education. The first three years the OTTER program were funded by the Winter Park Health Foundation and the past 2 years by a Walt Disney “Helping Kids Shine” grant.

Pictures from the Interviews

Additional feature information

• Stacy Nemhbard at the OTTER office is eager to add to the corps. They may be contacted at (407) 298-4180 or the website: Foster Grandparent Program
• The curriculum used in the OTTER program is called the Early Literacy and Learning Model (ELLM). Information on ELLM may be found at Florida Instutite of Education
• Seminole County Public Library

The economy preys on our mind, our wallet and, seemingly, in every thing we read and in what we see on TV news or listen to on the radio. And you’ll hear it here, too…though framed with a bit more narrow and local edge on those economic aspects not always in our top of mind awareness.

On a recurring feature on Central Florida Matters — entitled “Coping with the Economy in Seminole County” — we set out to learn how two black owner-operators of local business are coping with the recession.

Through the voices of a Winter Springs patent agent, Paul Royal, and an Oviedo insurance agency owner, Lincoln Salmon, you’ll hear from each how they are coping with the recession’s impact on their business and the role ethnicity does or does not play in their success.

Royal is the 46 year-old president of The Patent Guild, located in Winter Springs, Florida – a city in southeast Seminole County. For inventors seeking patents on their inventions, Royal’s company provides patent services for clients from Tallahassee to Central Florida.

At age 45, Lincoln Salmon is a native born Jamaican who describes himself as black or African-American. Salmon’s two insurance agency offices are located in the Seminole County City of Oviedo, Florida, immediately east of Paul Royal’s City of Winter Springs. Salmon offers individual and business clients a range of insurance products for homes, boats, casualty as well as financial services. Since 2000, Salmon has been the owner of his own agency. In 1994 he moved from south Florida to Central Florida, living and working in West Orange County.

Pictures & Extended interviews

		Paul Royal and Stephen McKenney Steck Extended interview (49:42) Recorded Monday, August 17, 2009
		Lincoln Salmon and Stephen McKenney Steck Extended interview (28:10) Recorded Monday, August 17, 2009

Additional feature information

• Paul Royal’s Website: The Patent Guild
• Lincoln Salmon’s Website
• The United States Patent and Trademark Office
• Oviedo-Winter Springs Regional Chamber of Commerce
• Seminole County Government Economic Development
• African American Chamber of Commerce of Central Florida
• The Black Business Investment Fund of Central Florida
• Metro Orlando Economic Development Commission

Central Florida Matters addresses these local issues and voices that matter…Coping with the Economy in Seminole County: The Recession’s Impact on Local Black-Owned Businesses…, OTTER: Older Teachers Teaching Early Readers…, Beyond Broadcast – A Media Mashup… and a Commentary on why public media matters.

Full program length: 49:02

Note: On Thursday, September 17, 2009, a new edition of Central Florida Matters will be posted as a complete program. Then on Tuesday, September 22, 2009, each of the features making up the complete program will be posted as individual segments. Additional pages will provide more information about each feature as well as on-line links to content related sites.

Hear all this and a bit more because issues and voices matter… on Central Florida Matters.