Should you become a media entrepreneur?

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Welcome back to No Monopoly Media Week. Every day this week, I'm sending you a story about why we should read, back or become indie media.

I'm doing this to raise awareness for the mission behind my work this year and to raise audience funding to keep going. If you get inspired by what I'm doing and want to be part of it, join my Summer Reader Raise. Y'all contributed $335 yesterday (shout out Deborah, Pame, Will, Keren, Jo and my Mom and Pops) and I am so grateful. 🥳 Perks start at $20. Join us!

I will never forget my first news story.

I was in high school and I had just gotten my first car. My mom's friend, who wrote for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, wanted to do a story on it. Something like how to buy your kid a car or what makes parents most panicked about their teenage drivers. It's been so long I don't remember why this was even a story.

The AJC sent a photographer over to our house and a photo of my mom, me and the car appeared in the paper.

The next day, it was all over this local talk radio show. The co-hosts were pissed that my parents let me have a license plate with James Dean's face on it that read "Live Fast." You know...because James Dean died in a car accident.

Slow news day I guess.

I didn't listen to this guy's show so I found this out when an administrator stopped me before class and pulled me into their office. They wanted me or my mom to release a statement to counteract all the "bad press" since the school was mentioned in the article. I laughed out loud, ignored their request, and the whole thing faded away in 24 hours.

Back then, THE MEDIA was very different from THE PUBLIC. I didn't have a platform to respond to this (should I have wanted to). We would have had to issue a statement back to the AJC or to a local TV station. YouTube didn't exist. Neither did social media. I couldn't go on a friends podcast or join a livestream. I didn't have my own email list. Corporate media controlled the message on every level.

For better or worse, that line is completely gone. Everyone is the media now.

Or I should say everyone can be the media.

And sure, that comes with it's own fresh problems like ever-present surveillance and questionable fact checking practices and online harassment and major media literacy declines.

But, let's set aside those problems momentarily and look at the opportunity you have to grab the mic anytime and show us inside your world.

Why might you want to do that?