Home |  Maillist 

Alliance for Community Media National Conference

Who Knew, Who Went, Who Didn't

In a staff meeting in late June 2005, Marc Smolowitz announced that the week after July 4th, he, Zane Blaney, Aaron Vinck, and the interns were going to the week-long Alliance for Community Media National Conference in Monterey. You should have seen the eyes of the rest of the staff, since most of us had no idea that this conference was being held this year so close to home. I know that I would have loved to go to the conference, and I would have taken the week off to do so, if I had only known. I can't afford to go cross-country and stay in hotels for conferences, but driven down and stayed in town with friends. Of course, by the time any of us (rest of the staff) heard about the conference, it was too late to request the time-off.

What also bugged me to no end, was that Zane, Aaron, and Marc were taking all of the interns (I think we had six of them last summer) down with them, and picking up the expenses. Interested staff members could have benefited from that conference, but we were not given the opportunity to attend, even on our own time and at our own expense.

Interns at Access SF:

Interns get school credit for working in industry. We seemed to have more interns than staff (at least the number of staff devoted to serving the public). What were these interns working on? Marc's special projects:

• The San Franciscans series
• The League of Women Voters debates
• Youth Video Festival
• Booking non-profits for "Open Mic" to the exclusion of the public
• Marketing for commercial underwriting
• Marketing to sell commercial use of the Access SF facilities and staff time
• Outreach to non-profits and commercial alliances

What weren't interns working on? Day-to-day business of serving the public:

• Facilitating productions
• Dubbing tapes for playback
• Timing tapes for playback
• Processing Public Service Announcements
• Filing lighting gels

I support the need for an intern program to help give students a chance to get some industry experience, but in 2005 at Access SF, the intern's were made into a private army to support Marc's special projects.

Questions/Comments?