PURPOSE:

Due to media consolidation and disintegrating business models, traditional local journalism is on the decline. As a result, mainstream media is failing the needs of American towns and cities for a local discourse that articulates common identities and informs the democratic process. Citizen journalism could fill this void, but citizen journalists constantly struggle for audience, reach, and relevance.

The rapidly growing online video medium can help, but critical infrastructure is missing. Local journalism can reach more people by embracing online video, and citizen video journalists can engage a larger audience by going local. But no infrastructure exists to connect local video producers to a local audience. Large corporate video hosts arenʼt interested in meeting the needs of specific local communities, creating a chicken and egg problem: creators lack the motivation a potential audience provides, and would-be viewers cannot find enough interesting video to make it worth looking. The need is clear: try searching for videos from your local community and you will quickly be drowned in false results and dead ends.

IMPACT:

Pittsburgh on Video is a community-based video hub connecting local creators, public access stations, and the community of viewers. With this new hub and the relationships that it forms, a vibrant local community of video can flourish. Quite simply, we can create an active, citizen-driven, online television world for Pittsburgh.