Neighborhood & Community Media Association of Greater Cleveland (NCMA-CLE) is a dynamic co-op of over a dozen community media outlets. We share resources, combine reporting, connect investigative and data journalism support, mentor new community media outlets, and navigate the media landscape together rather than alone. Strengthening each other through collaboration rather than competition, we enable longer-lasting institutional accountability while delivering higher quality, more trusted information to and from stakeholders in Cleveland’s neighborhoods, groups of Cleveland neighborhoods, or any of Cleveland’s cultural communities. We visualize a greater Cleveland with understanding across communities, and participation from diverse voices ignored so long they don’t see themselves belonging in legacy media news but for the crime reports.
Mission: Neighborhood & Community Media Association of Greater Cleveland (NCMA) exists for small local media producers to seek mutual assistance and to support each other in a new technological environment and media landscape.
Recognizing that community media is rooted in an ethos of inclusivity and universal access to opportunity and that it is sourced and produced by organizations, by individuals, and by informal groups, whether characterized by geography, interest, ethnicity, age, gender or social background;
Recognizing that the production, practice, and content of Community Media foster greater understanding among communities, including those most marginalized and support peace, tolerance, democracy, and development;
Community Media organizations, groups, and networks should
1. Promote the right to communicate, foster freedom of expression and freedom to form and confront opinions, assist the free flow of information and opinions, encourage creative expression, contribute to the democratic process and to a pluralist society;
2. Provide access to training, production and distribution facilities, encourage creative talent and foster local traditions and culture, provide services for the benefit, entertainment, education, engagement and development of the wider community;
3. Seek to have their ownership be representative of local geographically recognizable communities or of communities of common interest;
4. Honestly inform an audience on the basis of information drawn from various sources, and provide a right of reply to any person or organization who is or may be subject to serious misrepresentation;
5. Ensure a right of access to production facilities and platforms for minority and marginalized groups, in order to promote and protect cultural diversity;
6. Be established as not-for-profit organizations, which reinvest any surplus and ensure their independence by being financed from a variety of sources;
7. Operate management, programming, and employment practices that oppose discrimination, promote equality, and are open and accountable to all; and
8. Promote and foster improved communication and partnership working in the community media sector, building networks at all levels to further develop good practice and strengthen communities.