In a recent radio interview I was asked about my optimism regarding the local media movement — an umbrella term covering vibrant local community TV and radio outlets and emerging nonprofit journalism websites, as well as blogs, media literacy projects, digital justice coalitions and media reform groups. The interviewer pressed me to offer concrete examples of the impact these outlets are having — how they are shaping the national debate, moving key issues forward and changing the lives of local people and communities.

I had a few examples to offer in the realm of investigative journalism, including ProPublica’s coverage of the environmentally destructive practice of fracking, California Watch’s work on school-building safety and Talking Points Memo’s examination of the Bush administration’s firing of seven U.S. attorneys. But I noted that in general we are seeing the seeds of change. Our current media system, which a few massive media giants dominate, did not emerge overnight. I like to say that we are climbing mountains, not turning corners. We have to be in it for the long haul, but it is better to create, participate and experiment now — rather than stand still as the media landscape shifts around us.

As I have mulled over these ideas, I’ve re-read a number of old articles by Rebecca Solnit. While Solnit almost always writes about environmental change and social justice, her work contains deeply important lessons for those thinking about the future of media.

In her article “Revolutions Per Minute,” Solnit writes:

“The fantasy of a revolution is that it will make everything different … but the making of differences in everyday practices is a more protracted and incremental and ultimately more revolutionary process … The process of changing imagination and culture is plodding, incremental, frustrating, comes complete with backlashes … and is wildly exciting if you slow down enough to see the broad spans of time across which change occurs. … So it is a revolution in perception and daily practice … It may never be finished, but the time to join it is now.”

The time to join is now. This spirit captures the energy and passion that animate many of the journalism and community media projects I’ve had the good fortune to work with.

In fact, it was just that spirit that made a certain commencement address go viral in journalism circles last spring. In NPR correspondent Robert Krulwich’s speech to Berkeley’s journalism school he said, “There are some people who don’t wait. I don’t know exactly what going on inside them, but they have this … hunger. It’s almost like an ache. Something inside you says I can’t wait to be asked, I just have to jump in and do it.”

When I hear people talking about finding a new business model for journalism, I think of it as transforming the system. But we cannot change policy or culture if we are not also prepared to make personal changes. We need to attend to issues like our dwindling trust in journalism and our shifting news-consumption habits.

Increasingly we are media creators, not just consumers. This is where the work of people like Dan Gillmor, director of the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship, is so vital. In an interview about his newest book, Mediactive, Gillmor says, “In a world with almost infinite choices, we all have amazing opportunities but also some responsibilities. We have to understand ourselves as participants in media, not just distant observers — and our participation at various levels, if we do it right, will help create an ecosystem of information we can trust. The alternatives aren’t pretty.”

I’m not blindly optimistic. I’m concerned that while technology has put more and more media in the hands of people, media policies are putting more and more media control in the hands of corporations. It’s a troubling paradox that while the tools to make media are growing more and more accessible, control over the media itself is narrowing further and further. 

My hope is not utopian; it’s pragmatic. It’s inspired not by fancy new experiments so much as the passion and hard work that amazing people have put into making those experiments possible. My optimism about the future of local media is inspired by the fact that it is being led by people who believe that we can change ourselves so we can change our media so we can change the world.