Today we are beginning to notice that the new media are not just mechanical gimmicks for creating worlds of illusion, but new languages with new and unique powers of expression– Marshall McLuhan

The Western New York Media Network is an online micronews outlet which enables regional, political and cultural progress by providing a platform for you to:

• Advocate for causes you believe in
• Entertain the reader with fun and viral content
• Inform people about news, events and organizations that are shaping the region in which they live
• Opinionate on the news and issues of the day
• Unite people with a common cause

Our mission is simple, to make our city and region a better place to live by making positive contributions which affect real and significant change.

We don’t want to simply advertise the good works of others, we want to join them and to inspire others to join us!

We serve as a means to build a bridge between what Buffalo is today and what it can be in the future.

We don’t believe in “Old Buffalo” or “New Buffalo”…we believe in “Our Buffalo”, a city and region with a brilliant history and a limitless future.

Who We Are?

WNYMedia.net has been online since 2004 and has grown into the leading online multimedia news outlet in WNY

WNYMedia.net consists of citizen and professional journalists who report on the news that traditional media leaves behind

A network of passionate and motivated individuals who wish to make their region a better place to live, work, and play

On demand media with a social conscience that provides a unique and customizable user experience

The WNYMedia.net editorial staff consists of Emmy award winning broadcast journalists, activists, teachers, politicians, attorneys, as well as business and community leaders

Who Are Our Readers?

The average WNYMedia.net visitor spends more than 20 hours each week online and 71% of them do not read local newspapers

Our readers spend an average of 3 hours per day on our network of sites

The average household income of a regular WNYMedia.net visitor is $78,000

The average age of a WNYMedia.net visitor is 27

Our audience is 62% male and 38% female

83% of our readers have purchased products or utilized services advertised on our sites

Not only is WNYmedia.net Buffalo’s most visited independent news website, but WNY Media Network offers a variety of video and media services at a fraction of the cost of our competition. For Your next video project, please visit www.wnym.tv

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Release Date: October 2007

Feature length “docudrama” telling the story of Italian Americans migration to Western New York over the past 100 years. Produced by the Federation of Italian American Societies of Western New York as part of their “Cen Ani” Celebration. The movie also aired on WGRZ-TV in Buffalo.

About a year ago, the Federation of Italian-American Societies of Western New York set out to mark its 2007 centennial by producing a documentary film on the area’s rich Italian heritage.

“We wanted to make the best, most fitting tribute to our ancestors and our history,” said President Donald A. Alessi. The group approached Alleyway Theatre impresario Neal Radice, but he was already working on a musical on the same subject. So the federation, which formed in 1907, not long after the first tide of Italian immigrants reached Lake Erie’s shore, turned to veteran actor, restaurateur and former Buffalo police detective Joseph “Joey” Giambra. “I’ve been carrying this film around in my head for 40 years. I can finally get started,” an eager Giambra said. At 7:30 p.m. Friday, the curtain will rise in Shea’s Performing Arts Center for the world premiere of “La Terra Promessa [The Promised Land].” The glittering compendium of videotaped interviews, decades-old home movies, still photographs and film sequences scripted and acted by local residents details the 200-year story of Buffalo’s Italian community in its own compelling words. The screening will launch a weekend of federation-sponsored activities, including: * The Christopher Columbus Italian Heritage Parade at 1 p.m. Saturday on Hertel Avenue in North Buffalo. * The world premiere of Radice’s “Italian Serenade” at 8 p.m. Saturday in Rockwell Hall at Buffalo State College and a matinee performance at 3 p.m. Sunday. * An 11:15 a.m. Sunday Mass in St. Anthony Catholic Church, mother church of the Italian community, at 160 Court St. * A 12:30 p.m. Sunday wreath-laying at the Columbus Monument on Porter Avenue. * The federation’s 100th anniversary gala at 6 p.m. Sunday in Salvatore’s Italian Gardens, 6461 Transit Road, Lancaster. “Hello, America. We’ve come to shine your shoes, pick your beans and dig your ditches — for now,” Giambra narrates as “La Terra Promessa” unfolds with the arrival of a handful of Italians in the early 1800s. Among them: Paolo Busti, who helped lay out Joseph Ellicott’s celebrated Buffalo street plan. The 91-minute film details the grim struggle faced by Italian families who arrived long after the Irish and German immigrant communities had been established and as a result started on the bottom rung of the cultural and employment ladders. They had come from desperately poor provinces and villages on the promise that Buffalo’s streets were “paved with gold” and that jobs were plentiful.
“What they found was more exploitation and bigotry,” a narrator remarks, citing a newspaper article that derided the newcomers as “beggars — creatures Italy is afflicting us with.” After first gaining a foothold in the hardscrabble waterfront district known as the Hooks, the Italian community expanded to the Lower West Side, then the Upper West Side and other enclaves, “but always beneath the mainstream,” the film notes. Through the voices of contemporary Italian-Americans, including judges, business leaders, politicians, journalists, entertainers, educators, restaurant owners and craftsmen, “La Terra Promessa” explores how faith and family forged bonds that sustained the community — which now numbers more than 200,000 — until its members achieved professional success and social acceptance in the latter half of the 1900s. Mary Capozzi, whose son, Anthony, was imprisoned for 22 years for crimes he did not commit, tells an interviewer how she prayed daily to St. Anthony of Padua for his release. In the end, the patron saint of lost causes “brought my son Anthony home,” she says. The producers confront organized crime, which ran counter to the values of the majority but which retired Erie County Surrogate Joseph Mattina says exists only as “folklore” in modern Buffalo. Making the documentary “was an incredible journey of love,” said Giambra, who wrote and directed “La Terra Promessa.” Among more than 200 contributors were Peter Lojacono and Terry Caci, who conducted 400 interviews (those not in the film will be available on the DVD); Joe DiLeo, who collected archival film and photographs; and Marc Odien, whose camera work and editing, Giambra said, “brought the story to life.” “The desire of Italian-Americans to identify with our heritage has grown immensely,” Alessi said. Though documenting the story was a monumental task, “I hope we don’t leave it there,” he said. Scheduling the debut in Shea’s, the restored 3,000-seat Main Street showplace, was an easy call, Alessi said. “In the old days, Italians were discouraged from going to Main Street,” he said. For that reason, “We decided it had to be shown at Shea’s; it was important to us.” Individual tickets and ticket packages for centennial events are available at Ticketmaster locations and the Shea’s box office or may be ordered by phone at 852-5000 and online at www.ticketmaster.com.

Release Date – June 2007

Focused around the Canalside controversy in Buffalo, NY Bass Pros and cons was part of a three day event that brought both sides of the project together in a forum at Canisius College. The Documentary and Forum event lead to officials from both sides of the project to the table for the first time in more than 4 years.

WNYMedia.net:
Building an independent voice

By Christopher Schobert

(l-r) Marc Odien, Chris Smith, and Christopher Byrd of WNYmedia.net. Photo by Jim Bush.

There was a moment last year when Marc Odien and Chris Smith of WNYMedia.net had a clear sense that they were onto something special. What began as a way to simply provide links to news stories of local and national interest had already expanded to a site that featured news and links to some of Western New York’s most popular and provocative bloggers. But it was a press conference video of Republican Congressman Thomas Reynolds that really kicked WNYMedia into a new stratosphere of impact and controversy.

“Tom Reynolds kind of threw us into the forefront. Chris and I went over to his press conference on the Mark Foley scandal where he kind of shielded himself [with kids],” says Odien, a former Channel 2 photographer. Smartly, Odien shot Reynolds in a wide shot, allowing the camera to capture the awkward and creepy image of the red-faced, sweaty Congressman surrounded by children. “I think we were just about the only media outlet that had a wide shot of the whole scene. Everyone else was tight on Reynolds’s face. So we posted the video on our site. We woke up in the morning and it had gone regional. By two in the afternoon it had gone national—the New York Times. By mid-afternoon the Daily Show was calling us wanting the video.” That is the advantage of web-based journalism, and that’s why WNYMedia.net is so vital. It is a bold, new form of capturing news and opinion that is already changing how Western New Yorkers read, watch, and hear what’s happening.

Most exciting of all are the changes that have taken place on the site. Frequent visitors have surely noticed that along with links to the group’s popular blogs—Buffalo Pundit, Buffalo Geek, All Things Jennifer—there is an increased emphasis on providing news coverage, video, and podcasts. “Everything’s changing,” says Odien, who might be considered the site’s managing editor, as well as its creative and technical expert. “We’re building content around the blogs. We’ve been around for about two years now, and we’ve built a pretty good base of Buffalo bloggers. Now we’re building multimedia content around them. We’re trying to build an independent media network for Buffalo.” In a city with one major newspaper and where weekly local papers are finding it harder and harder to stay financially solvent, this might be the most sensible and logical way to start up a news outlet. “We’re almost like the Courier Express of the new century. That’s our hope. Our bloggers are basically columnists,” says Odien. “We hope to offer raw news unedited. It’s a different way of covering news, a more personal way. People take news reporters as experts on everything, and they’re not. Here we have lawyers who are experts at law, politicians who have studied policies, so they can give you a totally different perspective on things as opposed to a news reporter straight out of college.”

Odien, a Western New York native, moved to the South after college. He returned in 2002 and worked at Channel 2 until 2005. He now devotes his time to the site, and he’s also a founding partner of Convergence Media Networks, which encompasses WNYMedia.net. When the site began, Odien says it was one page with links to various news stories. “From there,” says Odien, “we started adding some of our own comments and content, and after the 2004 election, I came up with WNYMedia Network to merge some of these bloggers into one site. We started off with about three of them, and in the past year and a half, we’ve built it up to about thirty-five different sites, with more waiting in the wings.” Convergence and WNYMedia have a new headquarters, 67 Elmwood Avenue in Buffalo. The Allentown location features space for online radio and video, as well as a proper meeting place for the folks who encompass the network. “We’re still a virtual company, but what we wanted to do here was put a more visible face on it. We needed space, a radio studio, sets—someplace where we could centralize everything,” says Odien. “I consider this corner the heart of the community.”

Chris Smith was a frequent poster on SpeakUpWNY, a local opinion website, when Odien spotted his writing. He’s been involved ever since. Today, Smith is focusing on sales, and has a plan to “reinvent the way web advertising is done in Buffalo,” he says. “We want to try to find some unique ways to monetize putting content online. What we want to do is try to create an online mass of advertising.” Similar to Odien, Smith grew up in Western New York, left the area after college, and returned. He says he’s starting to see a similar drive among many former residents. “Once many of them left and got a little perspective, they missed their roots. They do long for it, and they’re waiting for a reason to come home.”

WNYMedia.net and Convergence Media Networks represent examples of how Buffalo can grow and innovate. “Eventually there will be five of us here and forty coming in and out each day,” says Odien. “Ultimately there’s a group of about fifty-sixty different people affiliated with WNYMedia. We have about eight different channels.” These channels will include a greater variety of coverage, especially sports, in addition to politics and news. “People are logging on,” says Smith. “If people log on to talk about the Sabres or the Bills, perhaps they stick around and maybe read about some other things that are going on. We represent a new version of citizen advocacy journalism. If we can bring them on with cool stuff and keep them there, we can get them to see how they can make a change, and how they can be a part of a better city.” As Odien says, “Everyday we get more and more interest, and there are more and more people coming to us with ideas. The sky’s the limit.”

Christopher Schobert is associate editor of Buffalo Spree and editor of Spree’s City Guide.