On December 15th, a team of media folks, techies, designers and artists is launching the beta test version of a new progressive news, views and arts website for the Boston area. If you're a fan of democracy, social justice, fair and accurate reporting, and fun, then you'll want to check us out.

We're calling the site Open Media Boston, and we're looking for experienced journalists and essayists, photographers, radio and video producers, and digital artists (or artists whose work can be digitized) who are interested to become regular contributors. We're particularly interested to talk to folks who'd like to cover one of the various community, political, and thematic "beats" that we'll run content about on an ongoing basis. Be it a community like Roxbury or Allston, a polity like the State House or Boston City Hall, or a interesting theme like Anti-War or Technology or Theater, Open Media Boston wants coverage in text, photos, audio and video. We're also planning to make room for academic publications and youth media--and doubtless other areas of interest we haven't thought of yet.

The editorial perspective will be from the broad left, the focus will be Boston and environs, the technology will be the latest social media built on free and open source software, but the material we'd like to spotlight will need to meet basic journalistic standards as overseen by Open Media Boston editors.

Regular contributors will see their work featured on our Front Page. All contributors will retain all rights to their work.

If you're not an experienced media person, no problem. People of all levels of experience are sought to post content to our Open Forum and to comment on published works in all areas of Open Media Boston--after signing up for a free User account. Editors will constantly scan the Open Forum looking for material to publish to the Front Page.

After testing and fine tuning the site for a couple of months, we're currently planning to do our full site launch in February.

Open Media Boston, a project of the non-profit Media Working Group--a national progressive media producers collaborative--will be all volunteer at first, but as we raise money over the months to come we'll seek to pay as many editors, staff, and regular contributors as we can. In the best spirit of community, collaborative and social media, we believe that many editors and staff will ultimately come from the ranks of the regular contributors. So we encourage folks to get involved in the project on the ground floor.

Anyone interested in becoming a regular contributor for the beta test launch should send 3 samples of their work (or web links to their work) to jpramas@igc.org . We'll get back to you as soon as we can. Anyone who'd just like to sign up for a User account for the test period should email the same address. All questions or comments are also welcome.