Mediageek is a radio show by Paul Riismandel covering grassroots and independent media, as well as the policy, laws and economics that affect our ability to communicate freely and accurately. Airs at midnight late Tuesday/early Wednesday ET.

For more information see http://radio.mediageek.net/.

The program is hosted and produced by Paul Riismandel at WNUR 89.3 FM on the campus of Northwestern University in Evanston, IL, which is heard throughout Chicago and the northern suburbs. Mediageek is heard on over a dozen other community radio stations across North America. The program started in 2002 on community radio WEFT 90.1 FM in Champaign-Urbana, IL, where it was produced until March 2008. It grew out of a biweekly program called “Radio Free Conscience” which covered similar issues, but with a stronger emphasis on community and micropower radio. On Mediageek we attempt to both highlight the efforts of people making and creating interesting and vital independent media while also critically examining the legal, regulatory and economic environment of our media. The purpose is to celebrate the independent spirit as we also stand on guard to protect and enhance our ability to use media–broadcast, internet, print–to accurately communicate everyday life, experience, news and culture. Understanding the forces that affect our ability to use media for these purposes is therefore important to protect our rights to continue using it, and perhaps be able to expand that ability into the future. Therefore we regularly report on and examine issues like internet freedom and network neutrality, low-power FM and unlicensed broadcasting, media ownership and consolidation, public access TV, community radio, copyright and fair use. Too often these issues receive minimal coverage in the mainstream press, and when they are covered they’re treated like business stories, on the business pages, rather than what they are: political stories of direct import to our ability to take informed action in our daily lives.