Park Center for Independent Media

The Park Center for Independent Media (PCIM), launched in 2008 and funded by a generous endowment from the Park Foundation, is a center for the study of media outlets that create and distribute content outside traditional corporate systems

PCIM's mission is to engage media producers and students in dialogue and action about independent media, especially US-based outlets producing content (across single- or multiple-content platforms) on issues such as equity, social justice, and sustainability.

It examines the impact of independent media on journalism, democracy, society, and participatory cultures in response to concentration of media ownership, the emergence of conglomerates, and corporate constraints on journalism in the United States. In order to address multiple economic, environmental, political, and social crises, it is critical to protect a free, independent, and viable media system outside the corporatized mainstream journalism sectors. The highest principles of the First Amendment of the United States and a democracy based on the free exercise of an informed citizenry are of paramount and urgent importance in the current era.

The Center's founding director was Jeff Cohen.  Before coming to Ithaca, Cohen was a media critic, columnist and campus lecturer who founded FAIR, the national media watch group. 

The Center publishes The Indy Brief, a daily summary of news reports from noted indy media outlets.  You can learn more about PCIM and can subscribe to this newsletter to ensure that you remain informed of important news about the Center and the work it covers.

Raza Ahmad Rumi, the current director, is a Pakistani writer and a public policy specialist who teaches in our journalism department and is also visiting faculty at the Cornell Institute for Public Affairs.  He continues to be the consulting editor for The Friday Times, and a senior fellow at the Jinnah Institute in Islamabad.  Before coming to the U.S., Mr. Rumi was a print and broadcast journalist in Pakistan where in March 2014, he narrowly survived an assassination attempt in which his driver lost his life. 

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Raza Ahmad Rumi
Director, Park Center for Independent Media and Associate Professor in the Department of Journalism
rahmad@ithaca.edu (607) 274-1330, Park 257

Hannah Brooks
Research and Communications Associate- Park Center for Independent Media
hbrooks@ithaca.edu