An industry-backed bill in the North Carolina state legislature would squash attempts by cities and towns to follow the City of Wilson’s lead and build their own broadband networks. And local radio advocates lobbied Congress last week to pass the Local Community Radio Act.

Time Warner Cable's price-gouging scheme to meter broadband usage was stopped by grassroots action and a congressional response. And the Women's Media Equity Collaborative aims to create sustainable funding and other resources for more than 350 women's media organizations.

The FCC came one step closer to increasing the diversity in media ownership by proposing changes that should give the public accurate information on the race, ethnicity and gender of broadcast station owners. And as technology becomes central to media distribution, anyone with a message to share must embrace their inner geek.

FixCNBC.org delivered more than 20,000 petitions to the network, demanding that it hire at least one person who was right about forecasting the economic crisis. And Time Warner Cable’s new metered pricing scheme for its broadband service is getting a poor reception from customers and politicians.

Several public interest groups want to see the broadband mapping process taken out of private hands and conducted instead by a government agency. And the quick and mobile social networking site Twitter facilitates reporting on the turmoil in Madagascar.

The open nature of the Internet will be lost if Internet Service Providers are allowed to use a technology called Deep Packet Inspection to snoop on Internet users’ data and communications. And EFF’s “Surveillance Self-Defense” guide shows you how to legally protect your computer data against government spying.

Blogger Glen Greenwald and Democracy Now! host and executive producer Amy Goodman are sharing the first annual Izzy Award for Independent Media. And the Local Community Radio Act will be invaluable to local musicians across the country.

Public advocates shared their ideas about how to use the $7 billion marked for broadband in President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus package. And hundreds of journalists, activists, academics, artists and students are coming together for the Sixth Annual Women, Action and the Media Conference.

The Local Community Radio Act of 2009, just introduced in Congress, could dramatically alter the radio landscape. And it’s been a bad couple of weeks for newspapers, but the most devastating blow was the closing of the 150-year-old Rocky Mountain News.

In North Carolina, nearly 5 million people are without a broadband connection. Hundreds will meet in Durham for a town hall meeting on the future of the Internet. Megan Tady of Free Press recently spoke to people across the state about the importance of Internet access.