Blog

Welcome to the Free Press blog! We post several times a week on everything from Internet access to free speech to media mergers, so check back often to see what we’re up to.

All for One and One for All
Josh Stearns
May 8, 2013
Imagine for a moment if 50 percent of America’s media was noncommercial. How would that change whose stories got told and which issues got debated? How would it shape access to information or the role of arts and education in our homes and communities?
Brazilian Reformers Launch Campaign for Better Media
Ivan Moraes Filho
May 3, 2013
If you’ve ever watched television in Brazil, you would think that the country has no ethnic or cultural diversity. Most Brazilian TV announcers and actors look the same and speak with a similar accent. It’s not what you'd expect from a country with more than 190 million people.
Why Oct. 15, 2013 Will Change the Radio Dial Forever
Candace Clement
December 7, 2012

The FM dial is about to become an auditory playground that could make the days when Top 40 hits and shock jocks dominated the airwaves feel like a distant memory.
Twin Cities Community Radio Aims to Diversify the Dial
Danielle Mkali
May 21, 2012

When President Obama signed the Local Community Radio Act, we at the Main Street Project knew we wanted to be part of this new era in radio. The LCRA created the potential for thousands of stations to join the airwaves across the United States. A Low Power FM station has the strength of about a 100-watt light bulb and a signal that typically covers a range of three to five miles.
On the Verge of a Local Radio Renaissance
Candace Clement
May 7, 2012

One of the most common complaints about radio is that no matter where you go on the dial, it all sounds the same. You can take a small step today to change that — dramatically.
Making Community Radio a Reality
Candace Clement
March 21, 2012

This is the story of what happens after a bill becomes a law.

In this case it is the story of the Local Community Radio Act. Or as we like to call it, “The Little Bill That Could (Even When It Seemed Like It Couldn’t).”
Lessons Learned from the Fight for Low Power FM Radio
Hannah Sassaman
June 21, 2011

Free Press members fought for years to expand local, accountable, low power community radio to their cities and towns -- and as part of a huge coalition, won that fight in late 2010. Hannah Sassaman, a longtime organizer on media reform and justice issues and a veteran of the Prometheus Radio Project, wrote these thoughts on that victory, and what we need to do next. She and Free Press's Chance Williams will be discussing this at the Allied Media Conference this weekend -- Building a Movement with Media Policy Campaigns.

It was a dream that never died – thousands of groups across the United States fighting for their own community radio stations. Now, after 10 years of struggle, the movement to expand community radio can celebrate a big victory with the bipartisan passage of the Local Community Radio Act. And hundreds if not thousands of communities across America can get ready to own their own pieces of the FM dial; their own local radio stations.