Sustaining Democracy in a Digital Age

A Blog from New America's Media Policy Initiative

All Media Is Local: Comments from the FCC's "Media In Your Community" Forum

  • By
  • Kara Hadge
May 27, 2010
Stock Photo (Houses)

The FCC launched its far-ranging inquiry into the “Future of Media” at a crucial time: No one is untouched by the pervasive changes to the American media landscape, but plenty are still left out of the process through which those transformations arise. When the Media Policy Initiative and our partners at Free Press and Media Access Project approached our reply to the FCC’s request for comments, we tapped diverse geographic and professional expertise to tackle the Commission’s daunting 42-question prompt. Our 147 pages of answers covered a lot of ground, but in its efforts to cast a wide net for comments, the FCC also created a public online forum for less formal—or at least briefer—comments. “Tell us about your community and its media,” the FCC asked. “Do you have a newspaper? Local TV news stations? Great websites? Anything else? What works well? What works poorly? How have things changed over time? What information do you wish you could get but can’t?” Such broad questions often yield vague answers, but most of the comments posted to the Future of Media’s online forum on "Media In Your Community" are remarkably specific.

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Toward a Healthy Media Ecosystem for Philadelphia

  • By
  • Joshua Breitbart
May 25, 2010

"Infection in our Health Care System," an hour-long investigation by Media Mobilizing Project (MMP) into the local impacts of the healthcare crisis, premiered May 18 on PhillyCAM, the new public access cable station serving the people of Philadelphia.

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From Scranton to Seattle: A Contrast in Modern News Media Environments

  • By
  • Jessica Durkin
May 18, 2010
Photo credit: tomdobb

Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Seattle, Washington, have little in common.  Scranton is landlocked, tucked in a valley 120 miles away from the nearest major city in the Northeast, with a population of approximately 73,000. Seattle, three time zones to the west, is on the Pacific coast and has eight times the population of Scranton.

Scranton's population is half of what it was in 1940; the Seattle population has nearly doubled in that time. Seattle is younger and more ethnically diverse than Scranton, and its residents are higher paid. 

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Close-up on Seattle: Local Blogs and Community Collaboration

  • By
  • Kara Hadge
May 11, 2010
Photo credit: kethry (stock.xchng)

We’ve just published our first two information ecology case studies, which take a close look at the local conditions in Seattle and Scranton. When we started investigating these media ecosystems, we used the Knight Commission Report, "Informing Communities: Sustaining Democracy in the Digital Age," as our guide. Newspapers, television, and radio were all important to us, but so were residents’ access to education, broadband, government data, libraries, and other community institutions, as well as evidence we found that showed how citizens engaged with the information. The results were illuminating, and the two cities are an interesting contrast in showing the diverse resources available to today’s American communities.

Seattle, in particular, seemed to offer a preview of where today’s media landscape is headed.

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How PEG Access TV Serves Underserved Communities

  • By
  • Colin Rhinesmith
April 26, 2010
Photo credit: St. Paul Neighborhood Network

Guest post from Colin Rhinesmith, Community Media and Technology Manager for Cambridge Community Television and an Affiliate with the New America Foundation's Media Policy Initiative.

For over thirty years, people living in big cities and small towns across the United States have used Public, Educational, and Government (PEG) Access Television to inform, engage, and entertain others in their community. The Cable Act of 1984 mandated that cable operators in the 100 largest markets set aside channels, equipment, and facilities for PEG Access TV in exchange for commercial use of public rights-of-way.

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Mapping Media: Public Access Channels

  • By
  • Tom Glaisyer
April 26, 2010
Publication Image

This is a map of some of the providers of local cable access television channels in the United States, drawn from data collected by th

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Mapping Media: Journalism Schools

  • By
  • Tom Glaisyer
  • Amanda Summers-Plotno
April 26, 2010
JComsSchoolsandDepartments

We have created a map that shows the location of over 300 journalism schools, communication schools, and journalism or communication departments at universities across the country.  The data came from a list compiled by researchers at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg's Department of Journalism and Media Studies.

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Public Interest Obligations: Can you help us collect data for our analysis?

  • By
  • Tom Glaisyer
April 20, 2010
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Today we posted a set of public files we have recently collected. In the context of the Future of Media Inquiry being run by the FCC we have decided to examine copies of the public files broadcasters are required to make available in fulfillment of the public interest obligation they accept as licensees of the public airways.

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Hooray for Philadelpia

April 14, 2010

Guest post from Hannah Sassaman a committed Philadelphian, longtime media activist, and coalition builder in the media reform movement.

As soon as I saw that the Philadelphia Daily News – my city’s go-to spot for sports coverage, neighborhood happenings, police reports and news from City Hall – had won a Pulitzer Prize, I called my dad to celebrate. The Daily News sells itself as the People’s Paper, and it’s the one you see behind the cheesesteak counter, on the ledge on the SEPTA trolley, for sale on Girard and Grey’s Ferry and down at Broad and Pattison. 
When the Phillies won the series I sent my dad, born 40 blocks north of me in Overbrook, a copy of the Inquirer and the Daily News, but I have a feeling about which one is up on his wall. When Barack Obama won the presidency, I kept a copy of the Daily News for myself.
Two amazing women won the Pulitzer for my city on Monday  – Barbara Laker and Wendy Ruderman. They investigated corrupt narcotics cops who lied about evidence, and threatened and got violent when the reporters brought the story to light. Their series – Tainted Justice – bubbles like the best potboiler – until you remember that families’ lives and hundreds of folks accused of crimes were brought down by this corrupt team of police. Laker and Ruderman’s story has resulted in, according to the DN’s victory lap article in Tuesday’s paper:
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The Black Box of Broadcasting: The Case for Open Data in Public Broadcasting

  • By
  • Tom Glaisyer
  • James Losey
April 12, 2010
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At her penultimate Impact Summit, Knight Media Policy Fellow Jessica Clark posed the question "How do you measure impact of the media you produce?" She brought together a round table of public broadcasters, media funders, and media policy analysts to discuss the question. 

Clark split impact into five parts: Reach, Relevance, Inclusion, Engagement, and Influence and her blog post on MediaShift outlines those categories and the challenges many media producers have to overcome as they move beyond an environment where metrics where they existed were scarce, expensive to acquire, and focused on Nielsen ratings points or share for television and for radio the average quarter hour or time spent listening. All are metrics valuable to advertisers. 
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