Tony Shawcross

Tony Shawcross is a community media innovator, founder of Open Media Foundation, and one of the people who helped carry public access values into the digital era. Through Denver Open Media and later Open Media Foundation, Tony helped reimagine an access center as more than a studio and channels. His work connected training, nonprofit media services, government transparency, open-source tools, digital distribution, and public participation into a model that felt built for a changing media landscape.

Tony's work mattered because it asked a practical question at a moment of transition: if people were no longer finding local media only through cable channels, how could community media continue to serve the public? Denver Open Media became one answer. It gave residents, nonprofits, artists, and civic organizations a place to learn, create, publish, and participate, while also building tools that helped local governments and community organizations share information more openly.

In 2019, Open Media Foundation received the ACM's Dirk Koning-George Stoney Award for Humanistic Communication, recognizing work closely tied to the open, participatory, community-centered media practice Tony helped build.