Digital Future of Public Media

For one action-packed week in late April, Philadelphia techies and non-techies brainstormed, programmed, blogged, and tweeted about tech access, entrepreneurship, and innovation. Philly Tech Week (PTW 2012) events ranged from the first ever Philadelphia Women in Tech Summit to an arm-wrestling tetris tournament.

A global struggle for control of the Internet is now underway.  At stake are no less than civil liberties, privacy and even the character of democracy in the 21^st century.

The following is cross-posted from the British Council Voices blog. On November 9, the Open Technology Initiative and the British Council will co-host the event "Trust 2.0: Building Trust Through Technology" at the New America Foundation as part of the Washington, DC, festival Digital Capital Week.

As the media industry evolves to meet the challenges of the emerging digitally-networked era, so too are journalism schools. Democracy and healthy local communities require this evolution. As the media industry reshapes itself, a tremendous opportunity emerges for America’s journalism programs. Neither news organizations nor journalism programs will disappear, but both must rethink their missions, particularly now that many more people can be journalists (at least, on an occasional basis) and many more people produce media than ever before.

For millennia, trade routes defined the very foundations of civilization and empire. Today, the Internet backbone and the spread of broadband connectivity are as fundamentally important to the future of civil society and the twenty-first century economy.

NOTE: This article was originally posted by Nina Bianchi at the Detroit Digital Justice Coalition site.

It was the double date we had looked forward to more than any other. Just before sunset on a hot August day in Los Angeles, we sat in a nearly empty hotel restaurant awaiting the arrival of one of the most influential husband-and-wife intellectual teams in history: Alvin and Heidi Toffler.

In 1439, Johannes Gutenberg sparked an information revolution. The invention of movable type lowered barriers for sharing ideas, creating spaces for reformation and revolution. Today's Internet fulfills the same role, a flexible medium for sharing information and democratic communications. It was with this idealized Web in mind that President Obama used his 2011 State of the Union address to call for an expansion of next-generation mobile broadband.

It was a dream that never died — thousands of groups across the United States fighting for their own community radio stations. Now, after 10 years of struggle, the movement to expand community radio can celebrate a big victory with the bipartisan passage of the Local Community Radio Act. And hundreds if not thousands of communities across America can get ready to own their own pieces of the FM dial: their own local radio stations.

“Community radio is 10% radio and 90% community,” Jeff Shaw says. Speaking at a workshop about bringing together the worlds of low-power FM (LPFM) radio and public access television, Shaw drew this key lesson from his long career as a community media provider. The quote, he added, was inspired by community radio advocate Zane Ibrahim, founder of Bush Radio in Cape Town, South Africa. “It’s not necessarily the tools that are used--it’s about engaging with the community,” Shaw said.

The importance of community engagement was also a major theme for others at the workshop, which was presented at last week’s Alliance for Community Media Conferencein Tucson, Ariz. Titled “Turn Up the Radio: Exploring Collaborative Opportunities for PEG and LPFM,”  it featured a variety of lessons for how LPFM advocates and Public, Educational, and Government (PEG) Access TV providers could benefit from working together more closely.