Groundswell

Bio and Disclosures

I’m currently the Journalism and Public Media Campaign Director at Free Press, a national nonprofit public interest organization. I manage a number of campaigns focused on engaging the public in efforts to strengthen journalism, expand public media and fight media consolidation. I also direct Free Press’s internship and volunteer program.

I regularly speak at conferences, in classrooms and am a guest on radio and TV to discuss media policy, consolidation, the future of news, journalism collaborations, and public and community media.

Prior to my work at Free Press I taught writing and literature at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where I did my graduate work in American Studies.

I have been involved in student civic engagement and service learning for over ten years. While at UMass I worked in the Office of Community Service Learning, managing strategic communications and the office’s independent study program. Before that, I worked as Policy and Communications Associate for Campus Compact, a national coalition of more than 1,000 colleges and universities committed to fulfilling the civic purposes of higher education. I coordinated external relations with legislators, the White House, federal agencies, and corporations and developed a national advocacy coalition for service learning legislation and funding. I’ve edited and authored service-learning faculty development publications, coordinated a national faculty award program and edited an academic service-learning journal.

In addition to my work, I’m involved with a number organizations as a board member and advisor.

• For over nine years I served on the board of directors for the Student Conservation Association. I served as an SCA/AmeriCorps volunteer for ten months after college.
• From 2002-2006 I served on the steering committee for the Educators for Community Engagement.
• I have served on the board for, been a consultant to, and volunteered with the Valley Land Fund, a local land conservation organization in western Massachusetts.
• I am an advisor for J-Seed, a software project to develop an open publishing platform for micro-scale news outlets.

Recently, most of my attention has been given over to renovating a 150 year old farm house and celebrating each day with my family. I bake bread, make yogurt, brew beer and am hatching plans to build a cob oven.

I write on media, technology, culture, literature and community and dabble in photography. You can find me around the web:

Home page: http://jcstearns.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/jcstearns
Groundswell: http://stearns.wordpress.com
Tumblr: http://jcstearns.tumblr.com
SaveTheNews.org Blog: http://www.savethenews.org/blog (my work)
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jstearns/sets/