A Great Notion:

Citizen journalism is among the hot media topics that we at NCPR have been following with interest. While it may look on the surface like an attempt to get you all to do our job for us, it is, in fact, a new way of doing business--turning the one-way megaphone of broadcasting into a two-way and many-way conversation within a community. This is increasingly important as the twin forces of globalization and new media technologies both tend to reduce the importance of and the visibility of the distinct character of localities. It is our hope that we can use these new technologies in a way that acts as a counter to the homogenizing trend. By bringing our indigenous writers, artists and musicians to the fore, by providing a platform for the views and a forum for the debates that will shape our region's future, by remaining faithful to the voices that make this one particular place, and not another.

Toward that end, we ask you to help us gather together some of the people using the new technologies in this region--mountainside bloggers, garage-band podcasters, school media lab Flash animators, and people who are doing things that haven't got a name yet. Send in your candidates to radio@ncpr.org. Because every country needs a North Country, even so notional a nation as cyberspace.