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A project of the Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program
A new report out this month finds that, while President Obama’s Open Government Directive has been a catalyst for thinking about new ways to engage the public in governance and experiment with new tools and techniques to do so, the plans proposed by most agencies lack important elements and key features to fully and meaningfully [...]
What can journalists and libraries do to create opportunities for local news and civic engagement?
Leading-edge thinkers in both fields have come together recently in several different venues to explore answers to this question. The early feedback on these discussions is that this is a worthwhile topic to discuss at a critical time for both institutions.
In [...]
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation announced the winners of the 2011 Knight News Challenge at the MIT-Knight Civic Media Conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts today. Sixteen ideas that push the future of news and information will receive a total of $4.7 million to foster innovation at “the intersection of journalism and technology,” according to Knight Foundation President Alberto [...]
U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke today announced the launch of a new government initiative aimed at promoting digital literacy resources and collaboration. The federal Digital Literacy Initiative represents a major advance toward implementing the Knight Commission’s recommendations for enhancing the information capacity of individuals through new collaborations, public policies and investments in [...]
The fierce rhetoric surrounding the debate over federal funding for the current fiscal year gave the appearance that public broadcasting is a partisan issue. But public broadcasting clearly enjoys more support across the country than the recent debates and media coverage over the funding battle and the controversies swirling around NPR would suggest.
When we announced in late February that we were moving our successful local blog, Rockville Central, entirely to our Facebook page and that we would no longer be updating our standalone web site, a number of readers were surprised and dismayed. And we ourselves were surprised when this move gained some national attention as people who think about journalism weighed in on whether Facebook was “the future of news” and whether our move was a harbinger of things to come. (See here for a wrap-up of some of the key reactions.)
The firestorm raging around federal funding of public broadcasting has led to the resignation of Vivian Schiller as president and CEO of NPR, following the release of a video that showed the head of NPR’s fundraising unit criticizing the Republican party while also referring to Tea Party supporters as “seriously racist, racist people.” The video [...]
The Knight Commission recognized that for there to be healthy news communities, all Americans need access to diverse sources of news and information. In the future, that means that all Americans will need access to broadband networks, and public policy should encourage broadband adoption. Yet current government programs to assure communication networks are available to [...]
“What’s at stake when local news and information flow doesn’t serve all members of a community equally well? How can people respond?”
These questions lie at the heart of Information Stories, a riveting new series of twelve three-to-five minute videos that show how people can overcome the powerlessness caused by living in an information vacuum. Combining [...]
Access to relevant, high-quality information about the community is a key ingredient to a vibrant civic culture and, as the Knight Commission observed, a necessary element for fostering robust civic engagement. Finding that information can be difficult in a fragmented media environments that often fluctuate between extremes of too much or too little information, and [...]
Following the release of Rethinking Public Media: More Local, More Inclusive, More Interactive, by Barbara Cochran, we wanted to learn more about what members of the public think about their public media. So the Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program asked our friends at Spot.us to help us by surveying members of their community to [...]
The Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy stated in its report, Informing Communities, that a national commitment to an open Internet is an important element of ensuring that individuals and communities have the resources necessary to be fully informed in the digital age. In light of the Federal Communications Commission’s vote on [...]
The Knight Foundation and the Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program jointly released a policy paper on Wednesday with recommendations for federal support for public broadcasting. The report, written by Barbara Cochran of the University of Missouri School of Journalism, is entitled “Rethinking Public Media” and is available here.
Below is Part I of a summary of the Aspen Institute roundtable on public media reform held on December 8, 2010, to mark the release of “Rethinking Public Media: More Local, More Inclusive, More Interactive,” by Barbara Cochran, Curtis B. Hurley Chair in Public Affairs Journalism at the University of Missouri School of [...]
At a time when government funding for public broadcasting is hotly debated, Rethinking Public Media: More Local, More Inclusive, More Interactive, a new policy paper by Barbara Cochran, offers five broad strategies and 21 specific recommendations to reform public media. The strategies include strengthening local news operations, sharing digital platforms among public entities, recruiting more [...]
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