judyrodgers's blog

 I love it when we start working on the Images & Voices of Hope World Summit. All of us who work on IVOH search the media landscape for the most interesting and worthy work being done in media today. This year's theme, Inspiring Media in an Open Source World, has led us into some interesting new places. We're reading the Nieman Report's current issue on What's Next for the News: the Digital Landscape.

One of the highlights of last years Images & Voices of Hope Summit was the stirring presentation by Mike Hughes, the brilliant and beloved CEO of the Martin Agency.  Right after the Summit, Mike found out that his lung cancer had returned.  He has spent the past six months fighting back with new rounds of treatments.  I ran into his son Jason yesterday who told me that Mike's recent diagnosis is that the tumers have shrunk again and that he is almost back to normal  Jason also told me that Mike has been inducted into advertisings "One Club Hall of Fame."  His people at the M

I am reflecting on the recent meeting convened by the Kalliopeia Foundation to bring together its various grantees:  native American grandmothers and elders, artists, film makers, actors, those experimenting with new science, community supported agriculture, and new ways of thinking about money.   Educational thinker, Parker Palmer, was there and economist Rianne Eisler.  Plus representatives of the late Thomas Berry, Rudolf Steiner, and many religions. Tables were piled high with DVD’s, books and brochures. 

I see that the Haiti earthquake is fading from the front pages and headlines, as of course it must do.  It reminds me of a presentation our friend Keith Woods (who is on his way to National Public Radio) made at an Images & Voices of Hope Summit one year.   His brother was a prison guard at a prison in the South of the US and was a victim in a prison take-over when prisoners overpowered prison guards imprisoning them and changing clothes with them.  When the outside world got wind of what had happened, police officers were afraid to shoot because they didn’t know who were the prisone

This year the world lost Thomas Berry, the cultural historian who, in his book Dreams of the Earth, first said, “the world needs a new story.”  I don’t think there are very many people in the world who would disagree with this – especially among the world’s media and arts community, which is constantly engaged in writing and disseminating the stories of the world.

Institutions commit to things, but at the end of the day it's often one determined person who makes it happen.  In a recent story in digital marketing magazine, Click Z, Zach Rodgers tells the backstory of the "Hopenhagen" campaign as the "Climate Change Ad Campaign That Almost Wasn't" [http://www.clickz.com/3635862].  We all have lived this kind of situation:  in the moment of excitement throngs of well intentioned institutions pledge their support.  This is what happened with "Hopenhagen":  a dozen agenc

I don’t think we can ever really understand a place until we move into its streets in the midst of its people and until we listen to what they talk about and what they remember.  Every place has experiences that have galvanized them as a people and moved things in a new direction.  Often the media plays a crucial role in framing these experiences in ways that crystallize a thousand thoughts and feelings into one clear understanding.

Next month a group of journalists will gather in Johannesburg to talk about the role of media in South Africa at this time.  South Africa seems to be at a turning point.  Those thrilling days of miracles and courage of the new South African democracy set the world's imagination on fire.  Virtually everyone when asked to name the world's greatest living leader said  then, and would still say today, "Nelson Mandela.  But the refusal by Pretoria in March to grant a visa to the Dalai Lama signalled a different era in South Africa.  The native culture of ubuntu, with its emphasis on reco

This week one of Germany's most popular women's magazines announced it was moving from professional models to "real women": [ http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33178280/ns/today-today_fashion_and_beauty ].  Who knows if this is an independent move or if it is a response to the Unilever / Ogilvy famous Real Beauty campaign.  I suppose it doesn't matter.  What does matter is that media plays a big role in accelerating important ideas -- in this case the idea that it isn't healthy for women or girls to be continuously to

Well – you just had to be here.  The Summit was fascinating, inspiring, warm, funny, and rejuvenating.  David Fanning reflected with us on the impact of the Web on television (“We’ve changed the contract.  We are creating films for the ages”) and shared a newly released FRONTLINE segment on the war in Afghanistan.  June Cohen told us how they prepare “TED stars” for their 18 minute “talk of a lifetime” and showed us some of her picks of TED talks.  Mike Hughes gave us a reprise of his deeply moving commencement address to the graduates of the class of 2006 at Virginia Comm