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The Fair Media Council is offering this exclusive opportunity for the winner
to perform at the 2012 Folio Awards on Friday, April 20, at 11 a.m. at the
Crest Hollow Country Club in Woodbury, N.Y.  

The largest media event on Long Island, FMC’s Folio Awards attracts about
600 community and business leaders, as well as the media from the tri-state
area.  Robbie Rosen from ‘American Idol’ sang the national anthem at last
year’s awards ceremony.  His performance was so inspiring that FMC wants to provide an opportunity to showcase the best of Long Island.  The event is
taped for broadcast by WVVH-TV, Hamptons Television and aired throughout the New York metropolitan area.

The Fair Media Council is a nonprofit organization that educates businesses
and nonprofits to become media savvy.  FMC also advocates for quality local
news coverage and has about 200 New York metro-area businesses and nonprofits as members.

Twitter: #FMCFolio

An amateur dance competitor, Clement is lending her support to Dancing Classrooms Long Island, as it strives to build the physical and social health of youths and adults through the art of dance. 

“This is a wonderful avenue for improving children’s education,” said Jaci Clement, executive director of FMC.  “And it ties in nicely FMC’s advocacy for improving children’s education onLong Island.”  In particular, FMC’s Media Savvy Teacher Award program encourages fourth-to-sixth grade teachers to use news in the classroom as a means of building an understanding of the news media, critical thinking and deductive reasoning skills in their students.

The Dancing Classrooms Long Island gala will honor Barney and Deborah Aquilino, former teachers of Clement, for their 25 years of service to the Long Island Ballroom Dance Community. Students from Dancing Classrooms will also perform.

The gala will take place on Wednesday, March 14, 2012, from 6 to 10 p.m. at the Crest Hollow Country Club in Woodbury, N.Y.

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This event, the Fair Media Council’s Media Fix Workshop: Meet & Pitch the Media on Friday, March 9, 2012, from 8:30 – 10:30 a.m. at Briarcliffe Collegein Bethpage,N.Y., is an exclusive opportunity and a hallmark of FMC programming that enables organizations to meet face-to-face with the local media and begin building meaningful relationships. 

The Fair Media Council (FMC) is a nonprofit organization that educates businesses and nonprofits to become media savvy.  FMC also advocates for quality local news coverage and has about 200 New York metro-area businesses and nonprofits as members.

Tickets are $40 for FMC members; $60 for nonmembers. Program, networking and continental breakfast is included in the ticket price. Walk-ins add $10 at the door. Tickets are nonrefundable. For more details, and to purchase tickets online click here.   

Twitter: #FMCFIX

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This event, the Fair Media Council’s Media Fix Workshop: Meet & Pitch the Media on Friday, March 23, 2012, from 8:30 a.m. – 10:30 a.m. at Bergen Community Collegeat the Meadowlands, Lyndhurst, N.J, is an exclusive opportunity and a hallmark of FMC programming that enables organizations to meet face-to-face with the local media and begin building meaningful relationships.

The Fair Media Council (FMC) is a nonprofit organization that educates businesses and nonprofits to become media savvy.  FMC also advocates for quality local news coverage and has about 200 New York metro-area businesses and nonprofits as members.

Tickets are $35 for FMC members; $50 for nonmembers. Program, networking and continental breakfast is included in the ticket price. Walk-ins add $10 at the door. Tickets are nonrefundable. For more details, and to purchase tickets online click here.

Twitter: #FMCFIX

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The Fair Media Council’s Folio Awards began decades ago, to honor excellence in local news coverage. The award-winning entries are chosen by community leaders to provide the news media with invaluable feedback: What the news consumer truly thinks of the local news media’s performance.

As the news media has changed, so have the Folio Award categories. In 2009, the Fair Media Council expanded the Folio Awards to reflect the important role social media plays in shaping the way people communicate news and information. It all goes back to FMC’s fundamental mission: To ensure the public gets the news they need to protect their quality of life and keep their communities vibrant.

Individual tickets for the awards ceremony and luncheon are available to FMC members for $275 and non-members for $375.  Ad packages and sponsorships are also available.  For more details, and to purchase tickets online go to www.fairmediacouncil.org.

Twitter: #FMCFOLIO

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Long Island kicks off 2012 with the most positive, long-fought-for development in its media history. As soon as CBS completes takeover of TV55 (transfer of the Federal Communications Commission license is expected within 90 days), this island of 2.7 million people emerges from the shadows cast by a higher-populated island to the west, diminished news sources and technological attempts to limit the flow of information.

The news broadcast on what will be a shiny new WLNY gives Long Islanders a voice that travels beyond our borders and escapes the shackles of firewalls.

With that, you’ll no longer need a subscription just to be talking amongst yourselves.

It’s a stunning development, to be sure, and it comes at an especially important time, what with Long Island struggling to figure what it wants to be when it grows up – and how to pay bills created from past promises that put limitations on tomorrow.

The need for more than one major voice in the Long Island market now needs little explanation: With one major source, you get less news, repeated more often. If that news is inaccurate, one-sided or simply unfair, you have no escape. Yet it’s the stories that don’t get covered – the ones a newsroom chooses to ignore for a variety of reasons, only some of which are legitimate – that often prove the most harmful to a community in the long run.

This new development gives Long Island a viable alternative and a much-needed fresh start. It’s a boon for business, politics and nonprofits. It all boils down to quite a simple concept: No change, big or small, can happen until people have been informed of the issues. Only then, can rescue or recovery begin. That’s the true power of media.

Another aspect of adding news outlets to an underserved media market like Long Island: News traveling faster and freer speeds up change. (It’s no accident early adopters tend to gravitate toward media-laden cities.) And that’s even better news for Long Island.

The challenge, as always, is convincing the public of the vital role you play in deciding what topics turn into the public conversation and how active participation by an engaged public, not the FCC, is the only true way to hold a media outlet accountable today. Because of that, we won’t just be watching CBS. There’s simply too much at stake.

Of all the news stories generated out of Long Island this year, it’s the SAT cheating scandal that damns us.
Unfortunately, it’s a story with great legs. FOX, ABC, CBS, NBC — and a myriad of local news outlets — all documented the continuously unfolding scandal.
From there, NPR mused at the rarity of SAT cheating, while CNN pondered the tyranny of standardized testing.
The New York Times acknowledged such cheating was hardly a secret, Gothamist claimed it was a highly-disciplined ring run like a business, The Examiner extended the scandal to pervade multiple schools like a contagion and CBS New York revealed the possibility of parental supervision at the heart of the crime.
But it was the International Business Times that succinctly identified the larger issue and utmost danger to Long Island. “No matter the outcome, the damage to the Island’s reputation is permanent: Nassau and Suffolk school systems, among the most expensive and well-regarded in the nation, are regarded as corrupt,” it reported back in November.

There you have it.

Just as our schools are grappling with spiraling costs and tax caps, public disenchantment with salaries and pensions and state government disenfranchisement over the volume of districts and staff, along comes the story that nails shut Long Island’s history as America’s mecca for quality education.

This is a completely different kind of beast, one that overshadows stories of Long Island born-and-bred freaks and serial killers. This story kills the only true industry left on the Island and the key reason to relocate here.

Spin control on the issue appears nil, as responsibility for Long Island’s image falls through the cracks. And of course, scandal is much more intriguing than anything tinged with damage control, making recovery all the harder. But what needs to be acknowledged here on the home front is that this story should not be left up to one industry to deal with, or to hide behind.

In the court of law, a couple dozen kids looking for an easy way out – or victimized by parents who prefer easy over proper – may be dealt with effectively. The court of public opinion has its own rules, and justice is meted out quite differently. Unless something changes, the story that once was about a few kids cheating on their SATs will turn into the one true reason why Long Island is no longer what it once was.

As appeared in Long Island Business News, Dec.23-29, 2010

Bethpage,N.Y.-   The Fair Media Council presents “Future of Marketing Workshop” from 8.30 a.m. – 10.30 a.m. atBergenCommunity Collegeat the Meadowlands on Friday, Jan. 27, 2012.

“Getting your message out -whether through the traditional news media or social media-is crucial when so many organizations are being forced to do more with less,” said Fair Media Council’s Executive Director, Jaci Clement, who will be the presenter at this interactive workshop. This workshop will teach organizations how to best market themselves in a world where news and social media keep evolving.

Tickets are $35 for FMC members; $50 for nonmembers. Program, networking and continental breakfast is included in the ticket price. Walk-ins add $10 at the door. Tickets are nonrefundable. For more details, and to purchase tickets online go to www.fairmediacouncil.org, or by phone at 1.855.432.4763, ext. 702. or 1.516.224.1860, ext. 702.

The Fair Media Council is a 501c3 not-for-profit organization. FMC’sNew Jerseyevents are held atBergenCommunity Collegeat the Meadowlands.

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TWITTER: #FMCNJ