KnightComm: Strengthening journalism, communities and democracy in the digital age » KnightComm

Roundtable on Assessing Community Information Needs

KnightComm — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 19:25:18 +0000

On October 17, 2011, the Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation released the final in a series of eight white papers aimed at implementing the recommendations of the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy. The paper—“Assessing Community Information Needs: A Practical Guide” by Richard C. Harwood—proposes four guideposts and nine strategies for communities to assess and build a healthy information environment. (Read it here)

The formal release took place during a high-level roundtable discussion among a select group of leaders, innovators, advocates and experts from the national, state and local levels on Monday, October 17 at the Aspen Institute in Washington, DC. Following the presentation of the paper, these leaders and experts debated the best ways to incorporate the strategies at a time when citizens need to focus on re-building and re-engaging the community. Several strategies include creating authentic, credible steering committees to guide the work; mapping community concerns; mobilizing the community as a resource; cultivating boundary-spanning organizations; and telling the community’s story of change. Join the discussion on Twitter using the hashtag #knightcomm.

Featured Speaker:

Richard C. Harwood is the founder of the Harwood Institute for Public Innovation. For more than 20 years, Harwood has been dedicated to transforming public and political lives by supporting individuals, organizations and communities in their quest to create change.

Roundtable participants included:

Joaquin Alvarado, Senior Vice President, Digital Innovation, American Public Media
Kathy Brown, Senior Vice President, Public Policy Development and Corporate Responsibility, Verizon Communications
David Crowley, President and Founder, Social Capital Inc.
Sasha Costanza-Chock, Assistant Professor of Civic Media and Principal Investigator, Center for Civic Media, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Bill Densmore, Principal, Densmore Associates, and Director and Editor, Media Giraffe Project
Nathan Dietz, Associate Director of Research and Evaluation, Office of Strategy and Special Initiatives, Corporation for National and Community Service
Mike Fandy, Vice President, Learning & Conferencing, United Way Worldwide
Christopher Gates, Executive Director, Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement
Joe Goldman, Director, Omidyar Network
Robert Hackett, President, The Corella & Bertram F. Bonner Foundation
Darell Hammond, Chief Executive Officer and Founder, KaBOOM! Inc.
John Horrigan, Vice President of Policy Research, TechNet
Jacquie Jones, Executive Director, National Black Programming Coalition
Bob Levey, Freelance Consultant, Journalist, Speaker, Fundraising Executive
Caroline Little, President and Chief Executive Officer, Newspaper Association of America
Lynn Luckow, President and Chief Executive Officer, Craigslist Foundation
Carolyn Lukensmeyer, Founder and President, AmericaSpeaks
Charles Meyer, Executive Director, National Center for Media Engagement
Amy Mitchell, Deputy Director, Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism
Forrest Moore, Executive Vice President, America’s Promise Alliance
Mayur Patel, Vice President of Strategy and Assessment, Knight Foundation
Wendy Puriefoy, President, Public Education Network
Jan Schaffer, Executive Director, J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism
Paul Schmitz, President and Chief Executive Officer, Public Allies, Inc.
Marsha Semmel, Director of Strategic Partnerships, Institute for Museum and Library Services
David Smith, Executive Director, National Conference on Citizenship
Nancy Tate, Executive Director, League of Women Voters
Mary Thomas, Executive Vice President, The Spartanburg County Foundation
Vivian Vahlberg, President, Vahlberg & Associates
Lisa Flick Wilson, Director of Strategic Partnerships, The Harwood Institute for Public Innovation

Moderator: Charlie Firestone, Executive Director, Communications and Society Program, The Aspen Institute

Agenda: The roundtable began with a presentation by Richard Harwood, followed by a roundtable discussion with key policymakers and leaders about the recommendations and how they may best be implemented.

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The Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy was a blue ribbon panel of seventeen media, policy and community leaders that met in 2008 and 2009. Its purpose was to assess the information needs of communities, and recommend measures to help Americans better meet those needs. Its Report, Informing Communities: Sustaining Democracy in the Digital Age, was the first major commission on media since the Hutchins Commission in the 1940’s and the Kerner and Carnegie Commissions of the 1960’s.

The Commission’s aims were to maximize the availability and flow of credible local information; to enhance access and capacity to use the new tools of knowledge and exchange; and to encourage people to engage with information and each other within their geographic communities. Among its 15 recommendations the Commission argues for universal broadband, open networks, transparent government, a media and digitally literate populace, vibrant local journalism, public media reform, and more local public engagement.

The Knight Commission is a project of the Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

About The Harwood Institute for Public Innovation: Founded by Richard C. Harwood over twenty years ago in reaction to the cynicism and distrust that permeates much of politics and public life, The Harwood Institute (harwoodonline.org) is today a leading change organization, recognized nationally for a unique approach to breaking down barriers and empowering people to make progress in improving their communities. Harwood has worked with thousands of individuals, guiding them to make more intentional choices which will lead to fundamental change and a different way of thinking, living and doing business in this country.

Fancher: “American journalism is at a tipping point”

KnightComm — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 17:39:59 +0000

Following on the release of his recent white paper, “Re-imagining Journalism: Local News for a Networked World,” Mike Fancher turns his thoughts to the Federal Communication Commission’s report on the state of the news media. In this op-ed in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Fancher writes that journalism must be reinvented as an interactive endeavor.

A Tipping Point for Journalism

by Michael Fancher

The long-awaited Federal Communications Commission report on the state of America’s news media landed with a big thud, sort of like the Sunday newspaper of old hitting your front porch.

Initial reactions to the recent FCC report have uniformly praised its exhaustive diagnosis of the problems facing local news reporting. But there also has been disappointment that the report didn’t offer remedies.

Can that really be a surprise?

American journalism is at a tipping point. The Internet has disrupted the business model that underwrote local news for more than 100 years. The Great Recession made matters worse, resulting in local newspaper and television newsrooms dramatically cutting staffs and other news resources. Another economic shock would hit the media like the tornado that devastated Joplin. Little would be left that we could recognize as local news coverage. If remedies to this were obvious, they would be working by now.

So, I sympathize with the FCC working group that produced the report, “Information Needs of Communities.” I was on the writing team for the 2009 Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy, which was an impetus for the FCC work. The Knight Commission also offered no easy answers for local news, but it did make a counter-intuitive assertion:

Journalistic institutions do not need saving; they need creating.

click here to continue reading.

Re-Imagining Journalism: Local News for a Networked World

KnightComm — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 11:01:00 +0000

Re-Imagining Journalism: Local News for a Networked World, a new policy paper by Michael R. Fancher, identifies five strategic areas and specific ideas for promoting experimentation, collaboration and public engagement that are critical for reforming local journalism. The paper calls upon a variety of stakeholders in business, the nonprofit sector, government and community institutions, and citizens themselves to each play a role in nurturing a revitalized and re-imagined local media ecosystem. (Download PDF or Read Online)

The five key strategies for re-inventing local journalism include:

For-profit media organizations must re-invent themselves to extend the role and values of journalism in interactive ways.
Not-for-profit and non-traditional media must be important sources of local journalism.
Higher education, community and non-profit institutions can be hubs of journalistic activity and other information-sharing for local communities.
Greater urgency must be placed on relevance, research and revenues to support local journalism.
Government at all levels should support policies that create an environment for sustainable, quality local journalism.

In particular, Fancher calls on leaders of local print and broadcast media to spearhead the creation of regional and local collaborative news networks that meet the information needs of their communities. These interactive news networks are part of a broader set of strategies for re-inventing local journalism that are aimed at addressing the need for media policies that foster innovation, competition and support for business models that provide marketplace incentives for quality journalism and envision new roles for universities and community institutions as hubs of journalistic activity.

Fancher served for 20 years as executive editor of The Seattle Times. Under his leadership, The Times won four Pulitzer Prizes and was a Pulitzer finalist 13 other times. Fancher serves as co-convener of Journalism That Matters Pacific Northwest, advises other local journalism projects and is vice-president of the Washington Coalition for Open Government.

Re-Imagining Journalism: Local News for a Networked World

A White Paper on Recommendations 1 and 3 of the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy

by Michael R. Fancher

Download PDF | View on Scribd | Comment

Executive Summary

Introduction
The Challenge
The Opportunity
Information Needs of Communities—A Case Study
Strategies and Ideas for Action
I. For-profit media to extend journalism in an interactive way
II. Not-for-profit and non-traditional media as sources of local journalism
III. Higher education, community and non-profit institutions as hubs
IV. Greater urgency on relevance, research and revenues
V. Government support for sustainable quality local journalism
Who Should Do What
Conclusion
References

Appendices

What the Knight Commission Report Says About Local Journalism
What is Happening to Local Journalism
About the Author
The Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program

Norm Ornstein on Creating a New Public Square

KnightComm — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 11:00:24 +0000

Following on the release of Civic Engagement and Community Information: Five Strategies to Revive Civic Communication by Peter Levine earlier this month, Norman Ornstein at the American Enterprise Institute has published a new white paper that also takes a critical look at the challenges to boosting civic participation and improving the current state of democracy. Creating a Public Square in a Challenging Media Age is a white paper on the Knight Commission Report on Informing Communities: Sustaining Democracy in the Digital Age, by Norman Ornstein with John C. Fortier and Jennifer Marsico. (Download PDF)

The authors note:

“Much has changed in media and communications technologies over the past fifty years. Today we face the dual problems of an increasing gap in access to these technologies between the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ and fragmentation of the once-common set of facts that Americans shared through similar experiences with the media. This white paper lays out four major challenges that the current era poses and proposes ways to meet these challenges and boost civic participation.”

The four challenges explored in this paper include keeping newspapers alive until they are well, universal access and adequate spectrum, providing quality information to citizens in communities, and creating a vibrant public square.

Implementing the Recommendations of the Knight Commission

KnightComm — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 22:45:17 +0000

The Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy released its report “Informing Communities: Sustaining Democracy in the Digital Age” in 2009 with 15 recommendations to better meet community information needs. Immediately following the release of “Informing Communities,” the Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation partnered to explore ways to implement the Commission’s recommendations. As a result, the Aspen Institute commissioned a series of white papers with the purpose of moving the Knight Commission recommendations from report into action.

Universal Broadband: Targeting Investments to Deliver Broadband Services to All Americans, Blair Levin, Former Executive Director of the Omnibus Broadband Initiative of the Federal Communications Commission and currently Communications and Society Fellow at the Aspen Institute. The paper analyzes how to diminish second-class digital citizenship by assuring access by all to broadband services. Universal Broadband author Blair Levin rigorously and repeatedly engaged the broadband community and other, more general audiences from Washington, D.C. to Las Vegas, Nevada. His in-person debates were reported in the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and in the PBS space.

Digital and Media Literacy: A Plan of Action, Renee Hobbs, Founding Director, Media Education Lab, and Professor in the School of Communications and Theater and College of Education, Temple University. The paper asks how we can better foster the teaching or provision of digital, media and other “new literacies” in schools, libraries, colleges and universities, workforce development sites, and other local organizations. The paper has received wide distribution during at least five large conferences (including the American Library Association) engaged in the subject area, and is being used in the classroom at the college level. Also, the U.S. State Department is using the paper as they develop and implement an initiative linking schools in the U.S. with schools in Africa.

Rethinking Public Media: More Local, More Inclusive, More Interactive, Barbara Cochran, Curtis B. Hurley Chair of Public Service Journalism at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, President Emeritus, Radio Television News Directors Association, and former Washington Bureau Chief, CBS News. The paper focuses on implementing ways to create support for a more local, diverse and interactive public media. Marymount University faculty are using the ideas expressed in Cochran’s Public Media paper as a “stepping off point” for one of their upcoming community initiatives. The paper was also the impetus for the University of Missouri Washington Program’s 2011 Hurley Symposium, held at the National Press Club and broadcast by C-SPAN. Nationally, NBC’s Andrea Mitchell featured the issues in the Public Media report during a national interview with author Barbara Cochran. The interview was also published on the MSNBC website.

Government Transparency: Six Strategies for More Open and Participatory Government, Jon Gant, University of Illinois, and Nicol Turner-Lee, Vice President &Director of the Media and Technology Institute for the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. The paper outlines ways of enabling the provision of local government information online. The authors’ ideas appear in articles or blogs from O’Reilly Radar and Reuters, to state and university level publications, and as far as Australia.

Creating Local Online Hubs: Three Models for Action, Adam Thierer, Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and former President of The Progress & Freedom Foundation. The paper provides steps to ensure that every local community has at least one high-quality online hub. Huffington Post and O’Reilly Radar’s Alex Howard spread the word on Thierer’s approaches to online hubs, offering in-depth analysis.

Civic Engagement and Community Information: Five Strategies to Revive Civic Communication, Peter Levine, Research Director of the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service at Tufts University and Director of CIRCLE (The Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement). The paper evaluates ways to encourage locals not just to have access to information but to engage with it and with other citizens in the community. The paper was featured at the spring 2011 Beyond Books Journalism & Libraries conference at MIT where Levine gave a keynote. Ideas in the Civic Engagement paper were discussed in Huffington Post, and redistributed via The World Bank’s Weekly Wire: The Global Forum.

Re-Imagining Journalism: Local News for a Networked World, Michael R. Fancher, Co-convenor of Journalism that Matters Pacific Northwest, Vice President of the Washington Coalition for Open Government, and former Executive Editor of the Seattle Times. The paper offers strategies and action ideas to strengthen local journalism that are supported by marketplace incentives, including both for-profit and non-profit models. The American Library Association featured the author and this paper at a session on the benefits of librarian and journalist collaborations at the 2011 ALA annual convention. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch printed the author’s guest commentary on the steps needed to promote original reporting in local communities.

Assessing Local Information Needs: A Practical Guide, Richard C. Harwood, President, Harwood Institute.
The paper offers a practical guide for building a more engaged, informed community by adopting civic strategies that spur the assessment and development of the local news and information environment. The paper proposes a set of nine strategies, governed by four guiding principles, to help people in a community take effective action. The paper includes a helpful checklist for getting started.

FCC Releases Knight Commission-inspired Report on Information Needs

KnightComm — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 17:10:56 +0000

Click to download PDF

Today the FCC released the findings of its inquiry into the Future of Media, a project begun in early 2010 in response to the Knight Commission. In a report over 450 pages long, author Steve Waldman and the Working Group on Information Needs of Communities inspect the shifting media landscape and lay out how relevant policy and regulations can be more “in sync with the information needs of communities and the fluid nature of modern local media markets.” The central issue at hand, the report states, is the shortage of “local, professional, accountability reporting”.

The report early on explains the origins of the study and its relationship to the challenges posed by the Knight Commission’s Informing Communities report:

That sense of the vital link between informed citizens and a healthy democracy is why civic and media leaders grew alarmed a few years ago when the digital revolution began undercutting traditional media business models, leading to massive layoffs of journalists at newspapers, newsmagazines, and TV stations. Since then, experts in the media and information technology spheres have been debating whether the media is fulfilling the crucial role envisioned for it by the Founders. In 2008 and 2009, a group that was both bipartisan (Republicans and Democrats) and bi-generational (“new media” and “old media”) studied this issue at the behest of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The group, the Knight Commission on Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy…posed a bipartisan challenge to the FCC, whose policies often affect the information health of communities. The chairman responded in December 2009 by initiating an effort at the FCC to answer two questions: 1) are citizens and communities getting the news, information, and reporting they want and need? and 2) is public policy in sync with the nature of modern media markets, especially when it comes to encouraging innovation and advancing local public interest goals?

The Knight Commission’s series of white papers has been moving into action the recommendations of Informing Communities. Later this month a white paper by Michael Fancher will offer actionable steps on the issue of local journalism and community information needs.

Read: The Information Needs of Communities: The changing media landscape in a broadband age

Chicago Roundtable to Launch New Report on Reviving Civic Communication

KnightComm — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 20:58:13 +0000

This Friday the Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation release the sixth in a series of white papers aimed at implementing the recommendations of the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy. The paper—“Civic Engagement and Community Information: Five Strategies to Revive Civic Communication” by Peter Levine—proposes practical strategies to strengthen civic communication and citizen engagement with an emphasis on a civic information corps and the role of youth and digital communications.

The formal release will take place during a high-level roundtable discussion among a select group of leaders, innovators, advocates and critics from the national, state and local levels on Friday, June 10, from 12:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. (CST) at The Chicago Club (81 E. Van Buren, Chicago, IL 60605). Following the presentation of the paper, these leaders and experts will debate the best ways to implement the recommendations at a time when citizens are demanding a more participatory society, and as systems for exchanging news and information undergo significant change.

Peter Levine

Featured Speaker:

Peter Levine is director of CIRCLE, The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, and research director of Tufts University’s Jonathan Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service.

Roundtable participants include:

Lisa Bardwell, President and Chief Executive Officer, Earth Force Incorporated
Susan Benton, President and Chief Executive Officer, Urban Libraries Council
Brian Brady, Executive Director, Mikva Challenge
Lisa Morrison Butler, Executive Director, City Year Chicago
An-Me Chung, Associate Director of Education, MacArthur Foundation
Thom Clark, President, Community Media Workshop
Steven Clift, Founder and Executive Director, E-Democracy.org
David Crowley, President and Founder, Social Capital Inc.
Paula Ellis, Vice President, Strategic Initiatives, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
Barbara Ferman, Executive Director, University Community Collaborative of Philadelphia
Lew Friedland, Professor, School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Wisconsin
Christopher Gates, Executive Director, Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement
Robert Hackett, President, The Corella & Bertram F. Bonner Foundation
Don Heider, Dean, School of Communication, Loyola University Chicago
Joseph Hoereth, Director, Institute for Policy and Civic Engagement, University of Illinois at Chicago
Ngoan Le, Vice President of Programs, The Chicago Community Trust
Torey Malatia, President and Chief Executive Officer, Chicago Public Media
Mabel McKinney-Browning, Director, American Bar Association Division for Public Education
Heather Peeler, Chief Strategy Officer, Corporation for National and Community Service
John Sirek, Director, Civics Program, Robert R. McCormick Foundation
Scott Warren, Co-Founder and Executive Director, Generation Citizen
Lauren Young, Program Director, The Spencer Foundation
Constance Yowell, Director of Education, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

Moderator: Charlie Firestone, Executive Director, Communications and Society Program, The Aspen Institute

*Please note that space is limited to members of the press who RSVP. Please RSVP to erin.silliman@aspeninstitute.org or 202.841.4968.

NAMLE Summer Conference on Digital and Media Literacy

KnightComm — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 16:49:44 +0000

The National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE) Summer Conference, June 22-25 in Philadelphia, moves into action a key recommendation of the Knight Commission Report, Recommendation 6, calling for the integration of “digital and media literacy as critical elements for education at all levels”. The conference is offering over 150 workshops, demonstrations, and presentations designed to inspire educators to strengthen the capacity of their students to engage with information. The Modern Media Makers workshop integrates youth voices and their on-site creative productions into the conference. Keynote speakers at the conference include Douglas Rushkoff, author of the book, Programmed or Be Programmed, and Mohammed Bilal, Executive Producer of Media for One Economy Corporation.

Digital and Media Literacy: A Plan for Action, the KnightComm white paper by Renee Hobbs, highlights NAMLE’s work in developing core principles for media literacy education.

More information about the conference is available at www.namle.net/conference.

Free Webinar: Knight Foundation’s New Community Information Toolkit

KnightComm — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 17:19:28 +0000

Invitation from the Knight Foundation:

Please join us for a webinar on the newly-released

“Community Information Toolkit”

2 to 3:30 p.m. EDT April 14

The toolkit helps leaders like you harness the power of information to advance their goals for a better community. It offers a simple, easy-to-use set of tools to help take stock of your community’s news and information resources, and take action to improve them.

To take a look at the toolkit, please visit www.infotoolkit.org.

During the webinar you can learn more about this new tool – and provide feedback to help shape its next iteration.

Hear from speakers, including Mayur Patel of Knight Foundation, Tony Siesfeld and Barbara Kibbe of Monitor Institute and Lee Rainie of the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Sign up for the webinar. It’s free!

The Community Information Toolkit is a project of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Monitor Institute, with advisory support from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. This webinar is co-sponsored by the Council on Foundations and Knight Foundation.

The Future of Democracy, According to Knight Reports

KnightComm — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 21:18:57 +0000

Nick Judd reports on the release of two Knight Commission-inspired white papers, Government Transparency: Six Strategies for More Open and Participatory Government by Jon Gant and Nicol Turner-Lee and Creating Online Local Hubs: Three Models for Action by Adam Thierer. Nick Judd, “Broadband and Online Forums: The Future of Democracy, According to Knight Reports,” techPresident.

by Nick Judd, techPresident

The keys to a more open and transparent democracy include increased broadband access and a steady flow of government data into online communities, according to two white papers released today by the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy.

The papers, Government Transparency: Six Strategies for More Open and Participatory Government by Nicol Turner-Lee and Jon Gant and Creating Local Online Hubs: Three Models for Action, by Adam Thierer, retrace many of the footsteps made in the past few years by open-government advocates. The government transparency report recommends a working group for CIOs, more open state legislative data, and apps contests to spur the use of government data, for example. Thierer’s report describes a variety of models for places where citizens could go to get civic information and participate online, from the closed forum (or the open one) to the email newsletter to the slick blog conglomerate.

Which isn’t to say that the research doesn’t complicate the discussion about participatory democracy and transparent government. Thierer, for example, makes an assertion that will be bad news for Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, who has staff collaborating with some of the we-government digerati here in New York to create a conversation hub for Manhattan called Speak Up NY.

“The government’s role in creating high-quality online hubs will likely be quite limited,” Thierer said Friday, presenting his research at a roundtable presentation at the Aspen Institute’s Washington, D.C. headquarters.

Government bodies encounter serious problems when they try to host a conversation that could turn political at any time, ranging from legal and First Amendment concerns to political pressure when discussions take an inconvenient turn. But one longtime we-government advocate says that’s a problem that needs solving, not an impossible roadblock.

“If legislatures, councils, etc. can’t host public online participation – with tools for decorum,” Steven Clift, the founder of e-democracy.org, wrote on Twitter during the roundtable at Aspen, “democracy will die. Game over.”

In Thierer’s most robust model, goverments produce data about the areas they govern, and about their own operations, then push them out to whomever will take them — a broad network of listserves, online forums, wikis and blogs, supported through a pastiche of university support, foundation funding and various private business models, as well as more traditional news media.

That premise — echoed Gant and Turner-Lee’s report — hinges on the idea that governments will produce open data and release information online in the first place. Largely left unaddressed are questions of internal organization, data management, and a cultural resistance to openness.

“I’ve been doing this three decades,” OMB Watch’s Gary Bass proclaimed during the roundtable discussion. “I don’t feel like I know what you’re talking about. This has been a battle royale, to get information free from government.”

Questions of privacy and the protection of business secrets have kept a lot of information from public view, he said.

As O’Reilly Media’s Alex Howard notes, Gant described the difficulties in government procurement that stand between government officials and the kinds of technology tools that might help them update how information is stored and managed.

Turner-Lee and Gant also suggested Congress revisit public records laws and earmark support for local governments to migrate their vital services online.

At 45 and 39 pages for the open government and online hubs reports respectively, both reports try to condense years of trial and error into just a few pages. They leave much out as a result — for example, the Open311 project, which is bringing a standardized open-source system for 311 non-emergency issue handling to cities across the country.

They also framed Internet communication in a very centralized way, calling for central data portals, single points of contact between government and constituents. Citizens are called “consumers” in the report, which is an odd choice of word for a group that is onstensibly expected to become more empowered and active in its own governance. And while Aspen Institute Program on Communications & Society Executive Director Charlie Firestone situated the roundtable conversation in the context of a country that was moving from “push to pull” — from a world where information is pushed out to where individuals get what they want to know and share what they think is important — there was little discussion of individual agency.

Panelists at the roundtable on Friday discussed open government “champions,” who become advocates and eventually implementers of transparency initiatives. But the roundtable gave little time to the idea that people outside government might become champions for the change they wished to see and put political pressure on their elected officials to make it happen — nor did anyone consider how whistleblowers within government factored in to a transparent, 21st-century government, except when Howard, from O’Reilly Media, suggested that Wikileaks had a chilling effect on open government initiatives.

“You don’t have to be a hardcore technologist or a geek to push openness of government data,” Participatory Politics Foundation’s David Moore told the panel.

Turner-Lee in particular, however, emphasized that transparency efforts should do more to empower people who are currently left out of public debate. A strategy for a more open and participatory government must include increased access to broadband, she said, and assets uploaded to the web must be accessible to people who are blind.

These reports are two in an extended series that elaborates on the findings of the Knight Commission, an expert panel convened in 2008 and 2009.

CC BY-NC-ND-2.0

‘Rethinking Public Media’ Author Explains Importance of Public Media on MSNBC

KnightComm — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 17:12:53 +0000

Barbara Cochran, author of Rethinking Public Media, a white paper that proposes strategies for implementing the Knight Commission’s recommendation on public media, has gone on MSNBC to discuss the justification for public funding of public media. Cochran sat down with NBC’s Andrea Mitchell and told her that funding public media is “an investment in information and news for the public that they are not getting elsewhere”. You can watch the interview here:

The Community Information Toolkit, Version 1.0

KnightComm — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 22:52:37 +0000

At the 2011 Media Learning Seminar, an annual gathering hosted by the Knight Foundation, hundreds of community foundation leaders and journalism and technology experts previewed the beta version of the Community Information Toolkit, a set of tools and steps designed to help communities take stock of their news and information flow and take actionable steps to improve it. We are very pleased to report these tools are now available online and already being tested in communities across the country.

The Toolkit derives from the checklist appearing in Appendix I of Informing Communities, and has been developed under the leadership of Mayur Patel of the Knight Foundation in partnership with the Monitor Institute and the Pew Internet and American Life Project. The unveiling of the Community Information Toolkit is a major breakthrough in the implementation of the recommendations of the Knight Commission, as it provides a competent means to assess a community based on one of the Commission’s core premises–that information is as vital to the healthy functioning of communities as clean air, safe streets and good schools. Of course, this is only Version 1.0, and the Knight Foundation is encouraging communities to share their experiences to help innovate a future version 2.0. To begin, go to www.infotoolkit.org. Or you can download the toolkit as a PDF here.

Mayur Patel introduces the Community Information Toolkit at the Media Learning Seminar:

Community Information Toolkit from Knight Foundation on Vimeo.

Lee Rainie, Director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, also discusses it:

Lee Rainie, of Pew, on Community Information Toolkit from Knight Foundation on Vimeo.

GovFresh: New recommendations for improving local open government and creating online hubs

KnightComm — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 18:19:43 +0000

Alex Howard, Government 2.0 Correspondent for O’Reilly Radar, provided a good wrap-up of last week’s Roundtable on implementing the recommendations for government transparency and creating community hubs.

New recommendations for improving local open government and creating online hubs

By Alex Howard · February 25, 2011

Today, the Aspen Institute hosted a roundtable on government transparency and online hubs in Washington, DC. You can watch the archived webcast below.

The roundtable focused on the release of two new white papers. The first, “Creating Local Online Hubs: Three Models for Action,” by Adam Thierer, discusses scenarios where community leaders, citizens, media, technologists and — critically, local government — can work together” to create local online hubs where citizens can access information about their governments and local communities.” Creating such high-quality online information hubs was one of the 15 key recommendations of Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy. “Just as communities depend on maps of physical space, they should create maps of information flow that enable members of the public to connect to the data and information they want,” said the Knight Commission. (Download PDF or Read Online)

“Governments need to get more information out and make it more accessible, said Thierer today. “This shouldn’t be controversial.” Thierer said that government can do well to catalyze and support this development simply by doing a better job of making such information easily available in easy to use formats. While open government data stores have grown, Thierer noted that this has not trickled down. He cited the example of Manor, Texas as one example of where one local champion (former CIO Dustin Haisler) got help from Stanford and other external resources to get the local open data repository online.

Continue reading at http://gov20.govfresh.com

Five Strategies to Revive Civic Communication

KnightComm — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 05:00:59 +0000

Promoting greater civic engagement and investing in the capacity of citizens to engage with civic information and one another to solve public problems are among the recommendations made by the Knight Commission. Civic Engagement and Community Information: Five Strategies to Revive Civic Communication, a new policy paper by Peter Levine, calls on community and elected leaders to adopt sensible strategies to strengthen civic communication and citizen engagement. (Download PDF or Read Online)

The strategies posed in the report include reforming existing federal, state and local programs and institutions that could make significant contributions to the information environment and health of local communities through a Civic Information Corps; engaging young people in building the information and communication capacity of their communities; realigning incentives in higher education to turn these institutions into local information hubs; investing in public deliberations; and mapping the civic networks that exist in communities.

Adopting these strategies will enable communities to tap into the expertise and innovative spirit of the public to create public knowledge and culture that benefits the whole community.

Levine is the director of CIRCLE: the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement and research director of the Jonathan Tisch School of Citizenship and Public Service at Tufts University. His paper is the sixth in a series focused on implementing the Knight Commission’s 15 recommendations for creating healthy informed communities across the country released in 2009 in a landmark report, Informing Communities.

Civic Engagement and Community Information:

Five Strategies to Revive Civic Communication

A White Paper on the Civic Engagement Recommendations of the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy

by Peter Levine

Download PDF | View on Scribd

Introduction
Strategy 1
Strategy 2
Strategy 3
Strategy 4
Strategy 5
Who Should Do What
Relationship to Knight Report
References
About the Author
The Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program

Video: Roundtable on Open Government and Local Online Hubs

KnightComm — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 16:02:59 +0000

On February 25th the Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation released the fourth and fifth in a series of white papers aimed at implementing the recommendations of the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy. The papers—“Government Transparency: Six Strategies for More Open and Participatory Government” by Jon Gant and Nicol Turner-Lee (here), and “Creating Local Online Hubs: Three Models for Action” by Adam Thierer (here)—outline specific steps that community and elected leaders need to take to enact the Knight Commission’s recommendations to expand government transparency and create local online information hubs.

To formally launch the white papers, the Institute convened a high-level roundtable discussion among a select group of leaders, innovators, advocates and critics from the national, state and local levels.

Please watch the event and share your thoughts on the site. You can also join the discussion on Twitter using the hashtag #knightcomm.

Featured Roundtable Speakers

Dr. Jon Gant, Fellow, Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, and Associate Professor, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is a leading scholar in the field of information systems and public administration.

Dr. Nicol Turner-Lee, Vice President and Director of the Media and Technology Institute for the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. She has produced path breaking research on broadband adoption among minority and disadvantaged populations and engages city, state and federal legislators on issues in telecommunications, open government and the emerging technology innovation sectors.

Adam Thierer, Senior Research Fellow, Technology Policy Program, Mercatus Center at George Mason University, having previously served as President of the Progress & Freedom Foundation. His work spans technology, media, and Internet and free speech with a focus in online child safety and digital privacy policy issues.

Roundtable participants include:

Gary Bass, Executive Director, OMB Watch
Ben Berkowitz, Founder, SeeClickFix
John Bracken, Directory of Digital Media, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
Jerry Brito, Senior Research Fellow, George Mason University
Kevin Curry, Co-Founder, CityCamp.com
Lucy Dalglish, Executive Director, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
Charlie Firestone, Executive Director, Communications and Society Program, Aspen Institute
Feather Houstoun, President, William Penn Foundation
Alex Howard, Government 2.0 Washington Correspondent, O’Reilly Media
William Kellibrew, IV, Deputy Director, National Coalition on Black Civic Participation
Alex Kreilein, Legislative Assistant, Office of Congresswoman Jane Harman
Ngoan Le, Vice President of Programs, The Chicago Community Trust
Blair Levin, Communications and Society Fellow, Aspen Institute
David Moore, Executive Director, Participatory Politics Foundation
Philip Neustrom, Founder, Davis Wiki
Steve Pearson, Publisher and Chief Technologist, Project Virginia
Lee Rainie, Director, PEW Internet and American Life Project
Rachel Sterne, Chief Digital Officer, Mayor’s Office of Media & Entertainment, New York City
Daniel Schuman, Policy Counsel, Sunlight Foundation
Nancy Tate, Executive Director, League of Women Voters
Tracy Viselli, Community Manager, ACTion Alexandria
Marijke Visser, Assistant Director, OITP, American Library Association
Eric Wenger, Policy Counsel, US-Legal-Government Affairs, Microsoft Corporation
Harry Wingo, Senior Policy Counsel, Google, Inc.

The Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy was a blue ribbon panel of seventeen media, policy and community leaders that met in 2008 and 2009. Its purpose was to assess the information needs of communities, and recommend measures to help Americans better meet those needs. Its Report, Informing Communities: Sustaining Democracy in the Digital Age, was the first major commission on media since the Hutchins Commission in the 1940’s and the Kerner and Carnegie Commissions of the 1960’s.

The Knight Commission is a project of the Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.