The Carshare Media Room

Carsharing, like anything that is new, a bit unfamiliar, or otherwise outside the ordinary run of things, can tempt the journalist into a certain number of traps -- false confidence in their own understanding of the thing, cuteness, folksiness, outright error and disdain among them. The trick of course is that it all looks so familiar, so easy to get your arms around. A daily life phenomenon which anyone can understand in a snap. And yet... and yet...

No sense in getting mad about it though -- it's all part of the game. But there are certainly advantages if we are forewarned, and if we can help the journalist, reporter or media team to come to a full and fair understanding of what is it going on. The bottom line though is that if we get poor coverage at least part of the fault lies in our inability to work with the media. Which is what this portion of our group work site is all about. Sharing among us what we know on all this.

(Some of the materials that are presented on these pages will also be found in other carshare sites; we present them here as well for the convenience of the user. In all cases, however the original source can be easily identified.)

Media notes (in process)

Listen to this 10 June 2005 interview of the Vancouver car co-op on the occasoin of their introducing the 100th car into their fleet. Click for RealPlayer interview.
Check out the Urban Game: "Green Parks instead of Car Parks" on the Bremen Car Free Cities site.
Want to take this further? Have a look at the illustrated presentation entitled "How CityCarClub Works?", in the Bremen Car Free Cities which in our view is useful because it helps render the basic steps behind carsharing just that bit more transparent and easy to grasp. Helps bring us all just that bit more out of the Dark Ages.
The Calgary Alternative Transportation Co-op has a nice video explaining the basics of their operation available at http://www.catco-op.org/news.html
Likewise, when it comes to putting other media to work here, we still like the August 4th 1998 radio interview which you can get at Oregon Public Radio. The program is based on interviews with a number of people concerned with this project and runs for approximately five minutes. You will need RealAudio for this. If you don't have it, you can download it freely here.

Your Ideas, Materials, Comments and Suggestions

Have a candidate piece for this slot? A comment? This is the place to click to share your ideas with us..