Thank-you Media Co-op for an Exciting Happy Hour

The last "5 à 7" was yet another inspiring and exciting event for all involved. We got to meet members of the Media Co-op, an innovative and alternative model to the flagging, advertising-funded mass media that has lost relevance for so many of us. Koumbit was born from the Indymedia movement and so it was especially exciting for us to explore potential partnerships with an organisation that many of us see as the next generation in participatory and independent journalism.

The Media Co-op is incorporated as a solidarity cooperative, with multiple levels of membership, in order to reflect the diverse groups' stakes and investment in the collective project. This model, which incorporates notions of Participatory Economics that Koumbit itself is based on, allows the Co-op to benefit from the participation of a substantual sustainer/reader base and over a hundred contributors in the media production process.

We also dug a little deeper into the resistance to the 2010 Olympic Games and shared stories of our experiences dealing with surveillance and police control. We learned that several independant journalists from the United States have been stopped at the border on their way to the 2010 Olympics. The Media Co-op is keeping tabs on this disturbing trend.

What will ultimately come out of this latest happy hour remains to be seen, but we are glad to have hosted it, and look forward to seeing the participants again at future events.