AIR Media Strategist

Jessica Clark is AIR’s Media Strategist, an independent consultant, and news futurist. Before coming to work on AIR’s Localore production in 2011 (localore.net), she directed the Future of Public Media project at American University’s Center for Social Media, and served as a Knight Media Policy Fellow at the New America Foundation. She’s a co-author of Beyond the Echo Chamber: Reshaping Politics Through Networked Progressive Media (Free Press, 2010), and her reporting has been published in PBS MediaShift, The American Prospect, In These Times and elsewhere.

Full Spectrum Documentary on the Climb

Since 2008, AIR has been cultivating an emerging documentary form: “full spectrum public media.”  Such creations extend beyond the ubiquitous screens surrounding us at work, home and in our pockets, out into the street—linking broadcast, digital and face-to-face platforms to enlist citizens as co-producers of their own narratives. As a network of 1,000 entrepreneurial audio and multimedia makers, AIR is uniquely situated to support bold experiments in blended media craft. At the top of my playlist, you’ll find a signature project from AIR’s 2008-2009 MQ2 initiative—Mapping Main Street. The team that produced it morphed into Zeega, and played a pivotal role in developing immersive storytelling projects for AIR’s national Localore production. Eight of the ten Localore projects are included below—find the whole shebang at Localore.net. We also keep an eye on the broader evolution of the field with our weekly Public Media Scan. I’ve flagged a handful of projects we’ve highlighted in the scan, genuinely transformative attempts to bridge the gap between mediated and immediate experience. These projects don’t just enfold and immerse users—they force them to act, to reposition themselves as subjects, and to share their own truths.