Sustaining Democracy in a Digital Age

Since freedom of the press is the foundation that American news outlets are built on, we all know that the First Amendment is sacrosanct to this country’s journalists. However, there are a few situations that test the limits of this freedom, and one of these situations has been in the news recently. Though it traditionally falls under the protections of the First Amendment, photography occupies that ambivalent space where cameras can be wielded by both journalists and private citizens with potentially harmful intent. It’s the latter group that leads to conflict between law enforcement officials and camera-toting individuals and frames the debate over security and freedom of the press in the incongruous terms of the Second Amendment.

But in the modern information society, the camera is not a weapon; on the contrary, it’s increasingly the main tool of citizen journalists in their effort to spread information. The easiest way that an average person can contribute to the news ecosystem—one of the prime opportunities for civic engagement—might be to take just one picture. As we pointed out earlier this month, this is how citizen journalism first took off.

But not everyone is happy to let your average American snap photos in public areas, even if it is for the good of the community.

It’s no secret that we live in a time when the news most likely to be consumed is that which is served bite-sized to readers, ideally in 140 characters or, if necessary, 140 words. Even when readers have the inclination and attention span to read long-form journalism, they might not want to curl up with their screen of choice and delve into an unending single-page view. Nicholas Carr’s recently published book, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, has only increased the buzz around the argument that the Internet is hurting human intelligence. So when big stories come out--investigative reports with both reportorial heft and wide-ranging policy implications--it helps to know that people will read them and give them the attention they merit.

With this in mind, the form and delivery of this week’s Washington Post investigation, “Top Secret America,” has piqued my interest even more than the content of the story itself

In the coming month, New America’s MPI team will publish three more case studies of “information communities” across the country. These reports will assess the availability of quality, local-level information and the capacity of individuals to engage with it in three metro areas:

By Bill Densmore and Colin Rhinesmith

With the nation's non-profit public-access television services often unable to count on a reliable stream of government-enforced funding from the cable industry, many are beginning to embrace the Internet and even journalism training as ways to further their public-service mission. The change is spurred by two counterbalancing trends. On the one hand, large cities such as Los Angeles and Las Vegas have pulled the plug on funding for public-access cable services. On the other hand, the plunging cost and easy use of web-based video technology is making it easier for the services that remain to embrace an entirely new method for delivering citizen-generated multimedia and information to mobile- and web-enabled citizens.