public media
Five Media Policies the FTC Should Support
Over the last year, the Federal Trade Commission has been investigating the role of public policy in helping to meet Americans’ information needs. This week, the FTC will hold its final hearing on finding policies that could reshape our media system for the better.
In preparation, the FTC released a “Discussion Draft” that outlined the various policy recommendations submitted to the agency for consideration. More than 2,000 citizens have filed comments, and many organizations submitted recommendations. FTC staff have been deployed to journalism-related events across the country to gather information and ideas percolating in those communities.
Public Policy and Journalism Innovation
Over the weekend the journalism tweetosphere and blogs were abuzz with rumors of a government plot to freeze journalism in time by propping up a range of failing business models at the expense of new innovation in news. The document that set off this flurry of digital doomsday warnings was a “Discussion Draft” of possible policy changes released by the Federal Trade Commission team working on their future of journalism initiative and the announcement of a June 15th roundtable discussion where the draft will be debated.
For the past year the FTC has been examining how laws related to copyright, antitrust, advertising, and tax status could be changed to ensure that our communities have access to the news and information they need. Along the way it has sought public input and has heard from thousands of people (Free Press members submitted over 2,000 comments last fall). Now it is preparing its report and seeking feedback on its draft.
New Journalism Centers Created for Public Media
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting has announced a major journalism initiative that will increase original local reporting in seven regions around the country. Media Minutes has the story this week.
The CPB is funding the creation of seven Local Journalism Centers that would combine the resources of participating public TV and radio stations to tackle important but under-reported regional news stories.
Patricia Harrison, President and CEO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, says that the public media system is uniquely structured to increase regional reporting.
CPB's New Initiative: Local Journalism Centers
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting has a pretty simple proposal for how to counter the decline in local journalism that has hit communities across the country: invest in local reporting.
Last Thursday, the CPB announced that it’s investing $10.5 million to create seven “Local Journalism Centers” across the country – multimedia hubs that will cover local issues.
Keeping Local News Flowing
Local news was a focal point at the recent FTC workshop, “How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?" Reed Hundt reported on the Knight Commission recommendations and emphasized the role of local news in promoting the traditional U.S. policy goal of localism both in newspapers and in broadcasting. Matthew Gentzkow reported on his study that the entry and exit of newspapers from local communities have the most pronounced effect on voter participation in local elections. Tom Rosenstiel emphasized again that local newspapers have more reporters on the ground to cover local news stories than all other local news entities combined, and drew the logical conclusion: Economic threats to local newspapers strike at the heart of the availability of information concerning the issues of public importance to local communities.
Journalism: A Classic ‘Public Good’
This post also appears at www.NewPublicMedia.org.
Last year practically burst at the seams with reports, conferences and other high-profile gatherings on the future of journalism. So what comes next? As one blog post summarized in December, “If 2009 was a year of study and debate about the future of journalism, 2010 must be a year of action.”
Those looking for a roadmap this year should turn to the latest analysis from Bob McChesney and John Nichols, whose new book, The Death and Life of American Journalism, kicks off the new decade with some sage advice: You want to save journalism? Take a history lesson, stop fear-mongering about government involvement in journalism, and get organized.
Leading Role for Public Media at FTC
This post originally appeared on www.NewPublicMedia.org
The second act of the Federal Trade Commission’s production of the latest off-Broadway hit, “Much Ado about the Future of Journalism,” came with a nice plot twist. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) kicked it off yesterday with a commendable soliloquy that pushed the market forces argument out of the spotlight by introducing suggestions for policy changes to promote a “vigorous” free press.
Public Media: Front and Center at the Future of News
This post originally appeared on www.NewPublicMedia.org.
Throughout the country and across the political divide, there has been a surge of support lately for a national investment in journalism. Meeting the information needs of our communities has become what the Twitter folks would call “a trending topic.”
In fact, this month alone saw the release of two major reports on the state of journalism and newsgathering in the United States.
Public Media and Journalism: A Crisis is a Terrible Thing to Waste
This is a guest post by Mark MacCarthy, a professor at Georgetown University's Communication, Culture, and Technology Program.
I want to develop the idea that substantially increased federal funding for public service media that provide local news and information would be an effective public policy response to the crisis in journalism. I start from several propositions:
Beyond Blue Ribbons
In general, there have been three kinds of responses to the calls for President Obama to endorse a commission to on the future of journalism and public media in America:
1. “Keep the government out of my journalism.”
2. “What good will a commission do?”
3. “Thank goodness, it’s about time!”
Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post exemplified the second and third responses in his article earlier this week, essentially arguing, “We don't need no stinkin' presidential commission.” My colleague Josh Silver has already outlined a few of the flaws in Kurtz’s article, but I want to step back and explore these responses to the commission idea in more depth.
