Q: How did you decide to get involved with free media productions?

A: Actually, it was me who initiated this iteration of the project. I’ve seen projects come and I’ve seen them go. Previously, a few of my online acquaintances had been involved in other projects, and I’ve opened up my own too. I felt that those projects revolved too much around a small circle of other websites. Even if we were to win over posters in this game of brutal competition, we still did not have control over our own destiny. According to the book Blue Ocean Strategy, projects fail when they try too hard to fight an intensive war with the competition. The ocean then bleeds red! But the advice is to head for a Blue Ocean, or to innovate a new idea and change the way you conduct your operations. After reading this book, I decided to apply the strategy to the internet and got some support from some of my previous collaborators. We left behind the previous circles of websites and started to work on truly being innovative.

The media theme and cohesive website is a break away from websites that only revolved around a forum. The mission statement of the forum talks about the importance of an independent identity. We are finding our Blue Ocean.

Q: What do you stand for ideologically? What does FMP stand for as a group?

A: I stand for a strong authoritarian collectivism with a focus on cutting edge science and secularism, and support for national boundaries. Free Media Productions has no ideology. Any person can contribute. The whole political spectrum, from Marxists to Muslims. We don’t “discriminate” based on ideology. However the general consensus is that capitalism as defined by liberal America is flawed.

Q: What are your plans for free media productions?

A: I’ve done a lot to build the website aesthetically. While I will continue to look into that, the main goal now is to reach now people with a link to our front page. Essentially, people need to learn about free media productions. Improving the website in terms of web design can’t help with that. A tree that falls never makes a sound if nobody can hear it.

Q: How do you feel about competition and other forums?

A: Again, our goal is not to go head to head, but to maneuver in our own direction. We don’t think of ourselves as fighting a competition with other websites.

Q: What are you doing in your free time, off and on the internet?

A: I involve myself with various types of websites. Anything from anthropology to video games. I’m also concerned with career goals, but of course I will not go into detail about that here. I physically am pushing myself to new limits and better condition.

Q: What do you consider the greatest strength of free media productions?

A: The desire to be unconventional. We do not let anybody tell us what to do, whether they be mainstream forces or the forces of peer pressure.

Q: What do you consider the greatest weakness of free media productions?

We haven’t delivered on exposing it to enough new people yet.

Q:What opportunities do you believe can be exploited by free media productions in the future?

A: That’s a good question. I hope we will have the opportunity to convert our casual forum users into hardcore contributors who write editorials and do audio programs. We’d welcome these people to get in the driver’s seat a bit more, instead of merely sitting along for the ride. We have some loose plans for media creation that could involve merging politics with entertainment, but I won’t disclose the details. We also want new users to get involved with our website. Also, we must spread the message of youtube’s hypocrisy. Hopefully those who recognize it will join with us as we strive for alternative media.

Q: What about youtube?

A: Youtube has banned us for successfully delivering our message. They kept changing the excuse to different reasons, but the bottom line is they didn’t want us there. We played within their rules and they still got rid of us. There are plenty of audio files and writings about this event throughout the website. If you want to learn more about what happened, then the information is there. I’m not going to reinvent the wheel by going into high detail, as the wheel is already spinning on different parts of the website.

Q:What do you plan to do about this?

A: We just need to make sure we stay on track with our goals. While it may have forced us to take an alternate trail through the woods, we’ll still hit the our milestones and objectives through one path or another.

Q: What do you consider to be the greatest threat to free media productions?

A: Reverting into an attempt to directly compete with other websites is our biggest threat. The more we walk our own path, the better. The more we try to walk a more conventional path, whether it is that of our peers, or that of the mainstream media, the more we will fall behind in both quality and in the sense of having an independent identity.

Q & A with Free Media Productions Editor Berianidze

Q: So what is Free Media Productions?

A: Well it’s simple, really. It started out as an extension of some previous projects some collaborators and myself had worked on in the past. Basically, most of us fall well beyond the mainstream political paradigm of liberal and conservative. And with this in mind, we’re well aware of how ours, and many others’, viewpoints are neglected or simply ignored in the mainstream media. Free Media Productions is an online multi-media project aimed at disseminating information, analysis, and opinions outside the mainstream.

Q: Who else is behind Free Media Productions?

A: Nobody actually. We’re completely independent. We fund all our own projects so our content is not restricted by any particular interest other than our own. We do have editorial agendas that are typically anti-imperialist, anti-liberal and anti-capitalist. Most of my perspectives and content reflect my thoughts on events.

Q: So what is your perspective or angle when producing content?

A: I’m a veteran Marxist-Leninist, which undoubtedly comes through in my work. I try to assess events from a viewpoint consistent with Marxist-Leninist interpretation of events – namely, historical and dialectical materialism. But I’m far from subtle about it. I don’t claim to be unbiased – but rather, try to present facts and information from a different bias than what you’ll see in the mainstream media.

Q: How has the project been received? Would you call it a “success?”

A: It’s been received very well, so yes, in and of itself, I would consider what we’ve accomplished so far a “success.” Several of our news stories have been picked up on various alternative news-wires, or linked in political and media blogs. It’s always hard to get your name publicized and gain a loyal audience when you’re literally competing with millions of other sites – many similar to yours – on the internet. But we do our best with what few resources we have available.

Q: What is your favorite aspect about Free Media Productions?

A: Probably the fact that we are a multi-media website that is really about disseminating messages. We don’t necessarily have a direct “call to action,” and we’re certainly not trying to sell anything. I would say what really makes us unique is our combination of simply disseminating key messages for the sake of letting the public know that alternatives to the status quo are out there, and utilizing modern technology in the process.

Q: What roles do you play as editor at Free Media Productions?

A: Most of my work has been focused on producing media content and outreach. For content production I manage the newsroom (writing news stories, researching current events), writing scripts for AuzioZone segments (like the Dog Tag Reports), and producing a few videos. In terms of outreach, my role is distributing our content to various online publications, reaching out to sympathetic or friendly sites/organizations that would be interested in cooperative partnerships, utilizing social-media networks to help market what FMP actually does and provides.

Q: The FMP video room used to be hosted on YouTube – but your channel has been disabled. What happened?

A: Knowing that YouTube takes an interest in advertising and profits – it didn’t take long for some of their moderators and administrators to remove some of our videos due to the content. We actually verified with all of the listed terms of service agreements that are posted on the YouTube website, and saw that our videos were NOT in violation of those terms. It boils down to people simply disagreeing with what we had to say.

Q: Are you planning to revive the Video Room?

A: Absolutely. We have an account with Daily Motion – which has better stipulations for video uploads anyways. The problem is that it simply doesn’t get the same traffic – so we’re not hitting the same size audience. So for the meantime we’re using DM to host our videos, and we’re embedding them directly to our Editorials page. We’re currently in the process of finding a new permanent location for the Video Room, though.

Q: What other projects will FMP be working on in the future?

A: One thing that hasn’t been released yet, but is currently in production, will be a series of VNRs, or video-news releases, that FMP will be producing. Many of the large, bourgeois media outlets utilize video-sharing capabilities to deliver the news. The staff at FMP thought this could be a great tool to spread our message in an interesting way. The VNRs will be just like broadcast news segments, with footage and commentary on current international and domestic news items.