I’m excited to be part of an advisory group to new effort to look at the way the evolving landscape of media channels and content impacts the contemporary democratic experience in the U.S. Its something I’ve thought alot about since carrying out a research project for the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation about 5 years ago – we were looking at the ways democratic deliberation can better inform news coverage of urgent local, regional, national and international issues (think about it perhaps as if the media relied on how informed people talk about issues in representative groups at least as much as they do on opinion polls). In particular the way these stories are framed and the way public values are ascribed to trade-offs and policy alternatives.
Anyway, AP recently distributed an article on the public face of the effort:
Local News Loss Focus of New Commission
By JENNIFER C. KERRWASHINGTON (AP) — As people turn increasingly to the Internet for their news, there is concern whether they are learning enough about what goes on in their communities.
With “the thinning down of newspapers and local television in America, there is measurably less local, civic information available,” said Alberto Ibarguen, president and chief executive of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. “So what are the consequences of that?”
The foundation and the Aspen Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, hope to find out.
They are setting up a commission, funded by the foundation, to analyze whether people are getting the local news they need to make decisions in their communities. The panel will make recommendations that might include actions by the Federal Communications Commission or tax policies aimed at helping communities better meet their information needs, said Ibarguen, former publisher of The Miami Herald.
The commission will be led by Theodore Olson, former solicitor general who represented George W. Bush before the Supreme Court in the contested 2000 presidential election, and Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience at Google. The foundation said Olson was selected for his expertise in First Amendment issues and Mayer for her experience with new media and technologies.
About a dozen other members, including those with a journalism background, will be chosen.
The latest Pew Research Center Poll on the changing news landscape found 31 percent of people in the United States regularly got their news online in 2006, compared with 23 percent in 2000. The poll said newspaper readership slipped, from 47 percent in 2000 to 40 percent in 2006.
Creation of the commission comes as the newspaper industry faces some of the toughest economic times in years. Print advertising revenues have taken a major hit, as advertisers follow readers to the Internet. Last year, newspaper print advertising fell 9.4 percent, according to the Newspaper Association of America, marking the biggest percentage drop on record.
Circulation also is down, most recently declining 2.6 percent at major U.S. daily newspapers, leading to buyouts or layoffs in recent months at some of the biggest papers — The New York Times, USA Today, The Seattle Times, the San Jose Mercury News, The Oakland Tribune and the Contra Costa Times in California.
TV stations have cut jobs, too. This month, CBS laid off dozens of staffers at several stations it owns in cities including Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, San Francisco and Boston. CBS News, run separately from the company-owned local stations, also said it would cut about 1 percent of its 1,500 employees.
The commission, expected to run for about a year, will be funded by $1.7 million in grants from Knight.
The foundation compared the new commission to ones from the 1960s, such as the Kerner Commission and the Carnegie Commission on Educational Television. The Kerner Commission report in 1968 looked at racial conditions in the United States, concluding that the nation is moving toward “two societies, one black, one white — separate and unequal.”
In 1967, the Carnegie Commission concluded that an educational television system, bigger and more effective than the one that existed must be created. The report set the course for today’s public broadcasting system.
The Knight Foundation, based in Miami, is a nonprofit philanthropic organization that promotes excellence in journalism and invests in 26 communities where the founding Knight brothers owned newspapers.
On the Net:
- Knight Foundation: http://www.knightfoundation.org
- The Aspen Institute: http://www.aspeninstitute.org
