All the new ways of getting information out mean the so-called “information highway” can swerve around the corporate giants that have tried to dominate media.

For 15 years, I have been deeply involved in walking the talk through a media initiative anyone can replicate. It began at the Conference for a Nuclear-Free 1990s in Washington, D.C. There, I wanted to do some video that featured leading critics of nuclear power, an issue I’d been concerned that the media was ignoring (having the two biggest nuclear plant manufacturers, General Electric and Westinghouse, owning the NBC and CBS networks hasn’t helped). My background includes five years as a TV anchor, and I called contacts. Yes, they said, they’d go to the conference to shoot—if I could raise several thousand dollars. Yeah, sure.

So there I was on a Saturday night in 1991 listening to speakers chronicling the dangers of nuclear power—and the push by the first Bush administration (being repeated by the second) to revive it—upset because I wanted to record this.

Then I noticed a fellow shooting the presentations who seemed to know what he was doing. A friend introduced us. A man of conscience, Steve Jambeck had just left NBC because of its takeover by GE. He asked when could we work together. Now, I said. So at 11 p.m. until 4 the next morning, we interviewed speakers—the start of our first documentary, “The Push To Revive Nuclear Power.”

With his wife Joan Flynn as producer, we created EnviroVideo. We’ve now made hundreds of programs. They’ve received important awards. We deal with environmental topics that receive little or no attention on commercial TV—indeed, the EnviroVideo Web site (www.envirovideo.com) states: “Too Hot For TV.”

"Enviro Close-Up" with Karl Grossman and our documentaries are available in millions of homes through Free Speech TV, the Dish Satellite Network and 140 cable TV stations. They are video-streamed on the Internet and distributed as DVDs through our Web site for home, college and university showings. The e-mails and letters we receive are heartwarming. Many stress that this is information about which they were unaware. For me, as an educator, there is no greater compliment.

The lesson of EnviroVideo is that anyone can do it. Production costs are attainable. When I did anchoring, studio cameras cost $100,000 each (in 1970s dollars), editing systems more. The digital cameras we use cost $3,000 each, our Apple computer editing system $3,000. Add lights and mikes, and for $10,000, you can make high-quality TV.

Our concentration is the environment, but any issue will work. The “democratization of television” has arrived, explains Matthew York, publisher/editor of Videomaker (a good resource on equipment and techniques).

A class project can (with some help from an audio-visual department) become a program. A sociology class can use TV to explore the treatment of day laborers and put it on air. A political science class can examine impacts of the effort to end legal abortion and distribute its findings on DVD. An economics class can study and document Wal-Mart’s drive for a low-wage, nonunionized future—and video-stream the program on the Web.

For all the bad news about media, notably monopolization of ownership and dumbing down of content, there’s good news: We can make and disseminate our own media.