Grassroots campaigns urging CNN to drop Lou Dobbs from its nightly news lineup are gaining momentum. And the House Commerce Committee advanced the Local Community Radio Act. The bill will now move before the full House of Representatives.

Local radio wins a victory in the courts and gets a hearing in Congress. And the ACLU helps lead the way in unblocking Web sites based on "viewpoint discrimination" in Tennessee and Indiana schools.

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.

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.

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.

Media Minutes looks at five of the top stories of 2008: The FCC proceedings concerning Net Neutrality, the 700 MHz spectrum auction and white spaces; Pentagon propaganda; journalists’ arrests at the RNC; and grassroots media organizing for PEG and LPFM.