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

Survey tells two tales about feds’ social media use

KnightComm — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 17:27:11 +0000

The following article was published at Federal Computer Week on July 27, 2010.

by Alice Lipowicz

Social media applications for government are becoming more popular, but significant numbers of federal employees and agencies are not making use of those tools, according to a new Market Connections Inc. research survey of government social media use.

In a recent survey of 321 federal employees, 60 percent said they use social media at home or work, while 35 percent said they were not using social media; 5 percent said they do not know about social media, John Kagia, research director at Market Connections, said at a conference in McLean, Va.

McLaughlin: Government Secrecy Worsens Info Divide

Amy Garmer — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 18:58:12 +0000

Sean McLaughlin, Executive Director of Access Humboldt

Impoverishing Democracy

by Sean McLaughlin, Special to AOL News, July 22, 2010 http://www.aolnews.com/opinion/article/opinion-feds-meet-in-secret-on-national-communications-rules/19563441

Thomas Jefferson once observed, “Information is the currency of democracy.”

That’s never been more true than it is today. We live, after all, in an information age, one that’s seen a virtual explosion in new sources of information — ranging from newspapers and TV to talk radio, cable news, millions upon millions of blogs, even billboards. Today, particularly on the Web, openness is supposed to be the watchword when it comes to communication.

But, oddly enough, rules that govern much of our information currency are being written by regulatory agencies and lawmakers in closed private meetings, accountable to no one. Three recent examples:

The Los Angeles Times reported on the “redaction” of filings to the Federal Communications Commission by Comcast/NBCU in their move to merge the largest broadband media provider with one of the largest content producers. The full page of blacked-out text makes a clear statement about the information you will not see.

The Federal Communications Commission disclosed that they are convening closed, private meetings to broker a policy deal regarding future regulation of Internet service in the U.S.

Congressional leadership staff began convening closed-door meetings to outline plans for an overhaul of U.S. communications law. The public is not invited — until after the agenda has been set.

Secret meetings and redacted filings may serve private interests, which can be expected to look out for their own needs, even if it comes at the expense of the public good. But the real question is why federal communications agencies, and congressional committees charged with overseeing federal communications laws, are acquiescing to this.

Civic Leaders Consider How to Meet Community Information Needs

Amy Garmer — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 18:18:25 +0000

The League of Women Voters took up the Knight Commission’s challenge to help meet the information needs of America’s communities during a workshop at its 2010 convention in Atlanta last month. The session, entitled “Informing Communities: Sustaining Democracy and Citizen Participation in the Digital Age,” provided an opportunity for LWV members to explore what role the national and local LWV organizations can play to bring about healthier, more informed communities.

The Knight Commission report’s Appendix I — Taking Stock: Are You a Healthy Information Community? — provided the framework for the group exercise at the workshop.

Following a welcome by LWVUS National President Mary G. Wilson, Charlie Firestone, executive director of the Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program, kicked-off the workshop with an overview of the Knight Commission’s findings and recommendations. A panel discussion and group exercise followed.

Other experts featured at the workshop included Leonard Witt, director of the Center for Sustainable Journalism at Kennesaw State University; Jim Walls, former head of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s investigative team who now runs Atlanta Unfiltered, his own online investigative blog; and Steven Clift, founder of E-Democracy.org, whose presentation focused on information needs to support open democracy and “Sunshine 2.0.”

Lenn Witt posted a video interview with Charlie following the workshop (”Firestone: Healthy Communities Need High Quality Information“) in which Charlie points out the importance of engaging community-focused organizations like the League of Women Voters in a broad, sustained effort to bring communities together around the issue of information health in the same way that community leadership has coalesced around urban renewal, education and other critical issues.

Measuring the Information Health of American Cities

Amy Garmer — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 16:24:24 +0000

Photo Credit: gennaro cicalese.it on Flickr

Since the release of the report of the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy, we’ve seen efforts in communities across the country to take stock of their unique information needs and assets. One of the great things about these case studies is that they are bringing a discussion that has raged largely in professional and academic circles at the national level into the mainstream of public conversation at the community level.

In some cases, the Knight Commission’s call to action inspired the community assessments as part of the process of addressing the overall health of the community. In others, the inquiries are part of the broader movement concerned with the future of media and journalism at a time when both local and national media systems are undergoing massive restructuring. Regardless of origin, these case studies are available to other communities as potential models for engaging in similar assessments toward creating informed communities, addressing community affairs and pursuing common goals.

Each community has a unique blend of interconnected networks of people, organizations, institutions, technological infrastructure, content, habits and values that make up its information ecosystem. Taking stock of the information resources in your community and identifying what information-resources the community needs to remain strong, healthy and dynamic are the first steps toward building a healthy, informed community.

This is the essence of the Knight Commission’s Recommendation #5: develop systematic quality measures of community information ecologies, and study how they affect social outcomes.

The problem at the moment is a lack of good tools for communities to assess the quality of local information ecologies. The Commission noted:

There are no widely accepted indices for comparing different communities’ ecologies or determining whether information flow within a particular community is improving or degrading. Communities need measure of both kinds. If activists, policy makers, and the general public had more concrete ways of describing, measuring and comparing the systems of community news and information flow, it would be much easier to mobilize public interest around community information needs.

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, which funded the Knight Commission and continues to sponsor its ongoing work to implement the 15 Commission recommendations, is currently at work to develop better tools to measure the information health of communities. (As a precursor to Knight’s current work, see Esther Thorson & Eric Newton’s paper, “Indexing Community Information Needs in a Democracy,” which contains a checklist outlining some basic requirements for community information needs.) The Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program, which provided the institutional home of the Knight Commission, has commissioned a series of white papers on various aspects of building healthy information communities. (These will be published in Fall 2010.) In the meantime, KnightComm.org is collecting information about and links to community information case studies and updating the list here.

Our aim is to use crowd sourcing and collaborative methods to tease out a template that will be a useful resource for hosting public conversations and community information summits and assessing the information resources available. Because this is only a starting point, we need your help to grow this list. Post information and links about community information assessments in the comments section below, or send me an email at garmer@aspeninstitute.org with sample documents, links or other resources for assessing community information resources and I’ll add the information.

The Community Information Ecosystem Assessments below highlights published case studies of projects that have inventoried all or part of the information and media-related resources that exist in the community.

Additionally, there is a growing number of local and regional conversations about strengthening the information environment and creating more engaged communities, such as those convened by Journalism That Matters in Seattle and Detroit. These convenings–billed as summits, conferences, “unconferences”, gatherings, conversations or other titles–can be invaluable to the understanding of the community’s information ecosystem and lay the groundwork for more rigorous, detailed case studies. Thus, I’ve started a second list below of Community Information Summits and Conversations.

This is most certainly a work in progress, not a finished product. Neither list is intended to be exhaustive and I’m sure there are many endeavors which we’ve missed that deserve to be included. This is why collaborative technologies and crowd sourcing techniques are so important–please join our effort to build up this database of information!

Take a look at what others are doing in their communities to mobilize public interest in creating more informed communities. Share with us what’s happening in your own community. And join us in highlighting new and ongoing projects that measure and improve the information health of America’s communities.
Community Information Ecosystem Assessments (by state)

Illinois | Chicago
The New News: Journalism We Want and Need
Community Media Workshop commissioned by The Chicago Community Trust, June 2009.
Economic pressures on one hand and continuing democratization of news on the other
have already changed the news picture in Chicago, as elsewhere in the U.S.

Maryland | Baltimore
How News Happens: A Study of the News Ecosystem of One American City
Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, January 11, 2010.
The study suggests that while the news landscape has rapidly expanded, most of what the public learns is still overwhelmingly driven by traditional media—particularly newspapers.

Oregon | Portland
City of Portland Social Media Conversation Audit
Jamie Beckland, White Horse (digital marketing agency), Portland, Oregon, December 2009.
Study finds local blogs beating legacy media on substantive policy discussions.

Pennsylvania | Philadelphia
Exploring a Networked Journalism Collaborative in Philadelphia
Jan Schaeffer, J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism, April 2010.
The city is awash in media and technological assets that can pioneer a new Golden Era of Journalism.

Pennsylvania | Scranton
An Information Community Case Study: Scranton
Jessica Durkin and Tom Glaisyer, New America Foundation’s Media Policy Initiative, May 2010 (release 1.0).
An industrial city with a media ecosystem yet to take advantage of digital opportunities.

Washington | Seattle
An Information Community Case Study: Seattle
Jessica Durkin, Tom Glaisyer, Kara Hadge, New America Foundation’s Media Policy Initiative, May 2010 (release 1.0).
A digital community still in transition.

Community Information Summits and Conversations (by date)

Re-imagining News & Community in the Pacific Northwest, Journalism That Matters, Seattle, Washington, January 7-10, 2010.

Meeting the Information Needs of Southwestern Vermont, Shires Media Partnership, Inc., Bennington Free Library, Bennington, Vermont, January 24, 2010.

Creating an Online Community Hub, Bill Densmore and Gail Burns, Williamstown, Massachusetts, March 1, 2010. See http://williamstownbeat.org/.

Informing Scranton: Gauging Community News and Information Needs, Jessica Durkin/University of Scranton, Scranton, Pennsylvania, March 3, 2010.

Create or Die, Journalism That Matters, Detroit, Michigan, June 3-6, 2010.

What does Government 2.0 look like?

KnightComm — Wed, 26 May 2010 21:46:08 +0000

[In observance of the Gov 2.0 Expo occurring this week in DC, check out this O'Reilly Radar post written by Mark Drapeau in which he visually represents the components of Government 2.0. The post is here: http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/05/what-does-government-20-look-l.html. The Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy has called for government at all levels to operate transparently, facilitate easy and low-cost access to public records, and make civic and social data available in standardized formats that support the productive public use of such data (See Recommendation 4). Additionally, Recommendation 13 calls for all citizens to be empowered to participate actively in community self-governance, including local “community summits” to address community affairs and pursue common goals.]

What does Government 2.0 look like?

By Mark Drapeau

The most important thing I learned in grad school was very simple: “Draw the picture.” (Thanks Tony.) By that my advisor meant that it’s often hard or impossible to describe a complex system in words alone. And consequently, if you can’t draw a picture of what you’re trying to explain, you probably don’t understand it. Drawing pictures of complex systems also helps everyone understand where the knowledge gaps are, or where unsolved problems are buried, or where contradictions exist.

So, moving into the inaugural Gov 2.0 Expo week, as I reflect on where Government 2.0 is and where it’s headed, I thought I would draw a picture of it. To some people Gov 2.0 is about technology, to some it’s about culture change, to some it’s still about taking risks and doing experiments, to some it’s about policy, or collaboration, or openness. It’s about all of those things. How do they come together into a complex system?

Measuring Informed Communities at the Free Press Summit

Amy Garmer — Mon, 17 May 2010 16:11:08 +0000

Following the Free Press Summit: Ideas to Action, Josh Stearns summarized a summit session on measuring media’s impact on local communities that featured opening remarks by Jessica Clark, Knight Media Policy Fellow at the New America Foundation and a researcher/activist at American University’s Center for Social Media where she directs the Future of Public Media project. His post cites the Knight Commission’s work to define the elements of informed communities. This post appears in full at SavetheNews.

by Josh Stearns, SavetheNews.org

We talk a lot about the digital divide, the lack of local news coverage in communities across the country, and how this absence of information affects civic participation, quality of life and ultimately our democracy. We are facing a growing information divide that is leaving more and more people with less and less access to the basic information that helps them make choices about their jobs, families and communities. We have to have a national approach to the challenge of meeting these information needs.

But first we have to answer a few core questions: How do we define the information needs of communities, and how do we measure them? What metrics should we use and what tools do we need? Are communities receiving quality news and information? A panel at the Free Press Summit delved into these questions because understanding our communities information needs is essential in shaping the policies and solutions we fight for in our quest for a better media system.

We have a good foundation to build upon. The Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy developed some overarching categories for defining an informed community, but they admit, “No one has developed a system for measuring the quality of a local community’s information environment.”

Read more

Close-up on Seattle: Local Blogs and Community Collaboration

Amy Garmer — Wed, 12 May 2010 22:12:01 +0000

Photo credit: Seattle Skyline dherrera_96 on Flickr

The following post is by Kara Hadge for New America Foundation’s Media Policy Initiative. MPI hired its first batch of fellows in Spring 2010, and its current work centers on the recently published Knight Commission Report, Informing Communities: Sustaining Democracy in the Digital Age.

by Kara Hadge, Sustaining Democracy in a Digital Age blog, New America Foundation, May 11, 2010

We’ve just published our first two information ecology case studies, which take a close look at the local conditions in Seattle and Scranton. When we started investigating these media ecosystems, we used the Knight Commission Report, “Informing Communities: Sustaining Democracy in the Digital Age,” as our guide. Newspapers, television, and radio were all important to us, but so were residents’ access to education, broadband, government data, libraries, and other community institutions, as well as evidence we found that showed how citizens engaged with the information. The results were illuminating, and the two cities are an interesting contrast in showing the diverse resources available to today’s American communities.

Seattle, in particular, seemed to offer a preview of where today’s media landscape is headed. The case study covers a lot of ground, but what stood out in particular in Seattle was the role that online news start-ups have begun to play. As you may recall, Seattle went from a two-newspaper to a one-newspaper town last year, when The Seattle Post-Intelligencer became the nation’s first online-only metro daily. Even as the remaining print paper, The Seattle Times, tried to regain its footing during the transition, a number of hyperlocal, neighborhood-based online news sites were already springing up. I compared four of the blogs with SeattleTimes.com and SeattlePI.com and found some interesting trends.

With their focus on community news, Seattle’s neighborhood blogs have the potential to fill the gaps in local coverage by the city’s mainstream media outlets. And the numbers seem to back this up: When I examined the six news sites (SeattlePI.com, SeattleTimes.com, “Capitol Hill Seattle,” “West Seattle Blog,” “My Ballard,” and “Wallyhood”) for three days over a three-week period last month, the two newspaper websites devoted 11 to 12% of their news coverage to neighborhood issues, while the blogs’ coverage ranged from 81 to 97%. The blogs are devoting more space to announcements of City Council meetings and civic events relevant to their neighborhoods, and they’re covering more stories related to subjects identified by the Knight Commission as meeting community information needs (e.g, social services and education).

It’s not just what they’re covering, but how they’re discussing these subjects that merits a closer look. Let’s take a few days’ coverage on the “Capitol Hill Seattle” blog, for example. On April 21, posts featured on the homepage included news about the progress of the City Council’s streetcar proposal, City Hall’s plans for installing new green spaces in the neighborhood, an announcement for a public forum with a City Councilwoman to discuss plans for installing surveillance cameras at a local park, and four posts on government activity regarding transit and traffic concerns. There were two posts about events seeking citizen feedback in neighborhood development projects, which included a planned housing renovation in one instance and potential uses for property held by a local church in another. Another post made use of government data to create a map of designated heritage and non-heritage trees in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, as classified by the City of Seattle. Other neighborhood blogs function similarly, providing relevant information to the public while also encouraging neighborhood civic engagement offline. On an anecdotal basis, the blogs seemed to be covering subjects that were within the grasp of their resources that had not garnered much attention from the mainstream media, but to find the extent to which the blogs are really engaging in original reporting would require a deeper analysis.

That’s what’s happening on the ground in Seattle. Can you think of anything we missed? Which cities should we examine next? We’d love to get your feedback – let us know in the comments.

http://mediapolicy.newamerica.net/blogposts/2010/close_up_on_seattle_local_blogs_and_community_collaboration-31585

Survey Reports Citizen Satisfaction With E-Gov Services

Amy Garmer — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 16:24:55 +0000

The American public is expressing increased satisfaction with federal government services that are offered online, according to the latest quarterly report of the American Customer Satisfaction Index E-Government Satisfaction Index. The e-government satisfaction index is produced by the market research firm ForeSee Results. This survey and previous research conducted by ForeSee show that citizens who are very satisfied with a website are more likely to use that channel to interact with government in the future. Such satisfaction, along with perceptions of transparency, also lead to greater citizen trust and participation in government.

Read more about the ACSI citizen satisfaction survey, including the Top 10 Satisfying E-Gov sites, at NextGov.

Going on the record: Civic engagement is for journalists, too!

Knight Digital Media Center All-Site Feed — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 18:26:39 +0000

The traditional culture and ethics of professional journalism encourage journalists to hold themselves aloof from the communities they cover; to maintain objectivity through distance. Generally this means not voicing personal opinions on politics or controversial issues, and not engaging directly in civic processes. Sometimes even voting, campaign contributions, or speaking up at civic meetings are considered dicey territory for “real” journalists.

Now might be a good time to question this tradition…

By Amy Gahran

(This is the final guest post in a series by Amy Gahran. Amy is looking how news organizations and other institutions can implement the findings of the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy, This joint project of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Aspen Institute Communications and Society program produced the report, “Informing Communities: Sustaining Democracy in the Digital Age.” See all posts in this series.)

The advent of the Obama administration has led to substantial policy activity in areas that directly affect the work that journalists do, the communities they serve, and ventures that publish and distribute journalism. Earlier in this series I discussed the civic engagement implications of the proposed National Broadband Plan, the FCC’s Future of Media project, and the emerging government 2.0 movement.

Currently, US government at all levels is seeking (or at least is claiming to seek) to become more transparent. Obviously, this won’t just benefit communities and citizens. Journalists and news organizations also stand to reap direct benefits from increased government transparency.

Similarly, the ability of journalists and news organizations to continue to work effectively hinges partly on policy issues such as net neutrality, and the outcome of the FCC’s Future of Media project. (UPDATE Apr. 6: Today Mashable reports that “A U.S. appeals court has ruled that the FCC doesn’t have the right to enforce net neutrality principles for ISPs.” This could significantly affect the long-term prospects of anyone—but especially anyone not with a major media organizations—who relies on broadband for content distribution or community building.)

As Robert Niles says in OJR this week, online publishers can no longer afford to remain politically neutral. It’s time for journalists, news organizations, journalism schools, and other journalism organizations to speak up on their own behalf. To publicly participate in relevant civic processes. To push for policies that will further the interests of journalism and the communities served by journalism.

ACTION STEP: Find and use all opportunities to comment publicly in media policy debates. Doing so does not “taint” journalistic purity or otherwise sully your reputation. These actions cannot damage your credibility or compromise your objectivity—because if you’re being honest with yourself (and your audience) you cannot be objective when you’ve got so much at stake.

A good example of this comes from the Society of Environmental Journalists. In March, SEJ submitted a list of eight suggestions for improving transparency to the OpenEPA discussion forum. Suggestions included:

“1. End the practice that prevents EPA scientists or employees from talking to reporters without press office permission and a press officer present.”

“4. A presumption that press officers and other officials are talking on the record unless otherwise agreed to explicitly in advance by both sides. ‘Background’ should be the rare exception, not the standard operating procedure.”

“7. Improve press office inclusiveness to include routinely a broader spectrum of media types that make up today’s changing news media landscape.”

Submitting these suggestions supports SEJ’s ongoing efforts to work with EPA to improve transparency at the national and regional levels. But better EPA transparency would also translate to better environmental reporting at the local level, too.

(Disclosure: I’ve worked with SEJ in various roles for many years, but I was not involved in this particular engagement effort.)

Many states also have sites to collect public ideas on increasing transparency. The Pew Center on the States recently listed several. Where these sites exist, journos and news organizations should use them to lobby publicly and specifically for the kinds of transparency changes that will enhance journalism and democracy.

Also, submit public comments on the FCC’s Future of Media project. The deadline has been extended to May 7. This is a valuable opportunity to offer input on core issues affecting all aspects of the media business. It looks like most comments are being submitted via the FCC’s electronic comment filing system. Reference docket No. 10-25 in comments you leave there, and be sure to related your comments back to the specific questions posed by FCC. (See the document embedded at the end of this post.)

My closing thought for this series is: Civic engagement really IS for journalists, too. We’re definitely affected by government policy and transparency. We have legitimate interests. And if we don’t speak up in civic processes, on the record, our views won’t really count.

So put aside any cultural qualms about “getting involved.” This is a story journalists are living and working, not just covering. This is our story. If we don’t claim a leading role, we’ll be relegated to the background. Ultimately, communities would pay the price for our reticence.
FCC Future of Media Questions

Sourced from: Knight Digital Media Center All-Site Feed

Major Milestone Reached in Open Government Initiative

Amy Garmer — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 21:00:14 +0000

April 7 marked a major milestone in the White House’s Open Government Initiative: 120 days since Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag issued the Open Government Directive. The 120 day mark is notable as the deadline for each federal agency to publish its own Open Government Plan describing how the agency will improve transparency and integrate public participation and collaboration into its activities.

The Open Government Initiative is an important endeavor. Public information belongs to the public. The Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy has pointed out that public ownership of public information is meaningless unless government at all levels operates transparently, facilitates easy and low-cost access to public records, and makes civic and social data available in standardized formats that support the productive use of such data (recommendation 4).

Norm Eisen, senior advisor the President Obama, highlights the initiative’s progress to date in a blog post on the White House website.

Additionally, the White House has created a series of online resources to track developments in increasing government transparency and accountability. These include a Fact Sheet of Open Government Flagship Initiatives describing a variety of dashboards, databases, wikis, portals and other tools for accessing public information and promoting engagement with the public. There is also an Innovations Gallery showcasing solutions to information-related challenges faced by government agencies. Among the featured innovations are:

2009 Flu Prevention PSA Video Contest, run by the Department of Health and Human Services, designed to help HHS reach teens and young adults and educate them about how to avoid the H1N1 flu. The contest received more than 250 video submissions, over 50,000 votes were cast and major media outlets sought to showcase the winning and runner-up videos.
Peer-to-Patent, a U.S. Patent and Trademark Office pilot program using a voluntary peer review process to review patent applications, locate potential prior art, and facilitate decisions about which inventions merit a U.S. patent.
NASA’s Spacebook, an enhanced intranet designed around user profiles, forums, groups and social tagging that lets NASA people and communities connect in a new way around issues of mutual interest. Begun in June 2009, it has over 850 members.
Wikified Army Field Guide, which uses the same software behind Wikipedia to collaboratively and securely update Army tactics, techniques and procedures documentation. The “wikified” process incorporates the experiences and advice of battle-tested soldiers in the field, reflecting the latest knowledge within a time frame that traditional updating and editing processes cannot match.

Despite the announcements made thus far, some observers have pointed out that it’s one thing to meet deadlines and quite another to make the kind of substantial, meaningful operational and cultural changes that last (see Gartner’s Andrea Di Maio, “Open Government May Not Be Sustainable,” “What Open Government Plans are Missing,” “Open Government Aftermath Needs Both a Carrot and a Stick,” and “Not All Government Plans Are Open to Analysis“. See also Aliya Sternstein, “Agencies’ Open Government Plans Receive Mostly Positive Reviews.”)

OpentheGovernment.org is evaluating the Open Government Plans and will assign a grade to each plan. The intent, according to the announcement on the organization’s website, is to “allow people to quickly judge where an agency’s plan is lacking, and where it excels.” OpentheGovernment.org expects the evaluations to be posted in May, and has opened up the evaluation process to crowd-sourcing. To find out how you can help, click here.

We should recognize that the 120 day mark is really just a starting point, not an endpoint. Progress is made one step at a time. It is wise to applaud the Obama Administration for its efforts to make open government such a priority while still pushing for more and better results.

National Broadband Plan Debuts

Amy Garmer — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 16:46:10 +0000

Finally, it’s here – the National Broadband Plan. Released yesterday by the Federal Communications Commission, the National Broadband Plan mandated in last year’s stimulus legislation lays out a broad, aspirational and ultimately attainable vision for achieving universal broadband service across the United States. With the release of the Plan, the national conversation on the information needs of Americans in the 21st Century takes a giant step forward.

The Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy stands squarely behind the goal of ensuring universal access to high-speed Internet service in this country, having recommended that the nation “set ambitious standards for nationwide broadband availability and adopt public policies encouraging consumer demand for broadband services” (recommendation #8). The FCC’s Plan picks up right where the Knight Commission report recommended.

The Plan defines the end point and a road map to get there. The robust debate that now ensues will decide how far we go and what path we take to get there. Information and communications technologies are so much a part of everyday life, there is no shortage of areas to capture public interest and attention in this debate. Economic opportunity, education, healthcare, energy and environment, government performance, civic engagement and public safety — all are covered in the National Broadband Plan.

The Knight Commission has said, “Information is as vital to the healthy functioning of communities as clean air, safe streets, good schools and public health.” Broadband is increasingly the way we access that information in the digital age. The Commission encourages everyone to get involved and be heard in the conversation and debate. The information issue is everyone’s issue.

Creating Online, Public Accountability for Government

KnightComm — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 17:28:01 +0000

[KnightComm is pleased to publish the following op-ed by the Sunlight Foundation as part of Sunshine Week 2010. This is the sixth year of the week-long national initiative to promote the importance of open government and freedom of information. The Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy called for greater transparency and openness in government in its recommendation #4, noting that "public information belongs to the public." Sunshine Week is led by the American Society of News Editors (ASNE) and endowed through a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.]

Every day, the federal government releases vast amounts of useful information about every aspect of our nation and how government works. This public information has a deep impact on almost every aspect of American life. Some of it can be used to hold our elected officials accountable for their actions, or have a profound effect on health, economic development and commerce. The problem is, much of this government information is too often hard to find, difficult to understand, expensive to obtain in useful formats, and available in only a few locations.

There is a solution to this problem: the Internet. Because of this revolutionary medium, we now have new expectations about our ability to access information, including information about the work of government. The Internet enables us to obtain a myriad of information 24 hours a day, seven days a week—from our latest credit card transactions to local traffic reports to the most recent baseball rankings. But if we want information about our federal government—information often required by law to be made available to the public—we often must resort to filing a formal request and waiting for weeks or even months for a response.

This is why the Sunlight Foundation is working to inform a new legislative initiative that will soon be introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives to require that all public government-held information be available online. This legislation follows Sunlight’s ethos that “public equals online.” That is, whatever information the government collects and discloses must be freely accessible online, in a format that can be downloaded and parsed by any citizen. In the 21st century, information is properly described as “public” only if it is available online, 24/7, for free, in a machine-readable format. Government information cannot be considered public if, to access it, one must travel to Washington and view it on paper or on the screen of a balky 1997-vintage computer in the basement office of a government building, open only on weekdays from 9 to 5.

Currently, there is a multitude of information that the government has determined is public, but has not made available on the Internet. This includes data pertaining to pension plans’ solvency and investment practices, lobbying activities by federal grantees, the financial practices of the charitable sector, lawmakers’ financial disclosures and reports on travel by executive branch officials paid for by corporations and other third parties. The failure to publicly disclose these data sets limits their usefulness, and deprives government and citizens alike of the value invested in collecting and maintaining this data.

Fortunately, the Obama administration is leading a movement within the government to create the new kind of disclosure regime necessary for the Internet age. But it does not go far enough.

We believe there should be a requirement that all newly created executive branch information—with commonsense exceptions for privacy, trade secrets, and such—must be made available online to anybody who wants to see it, free of charge. Legislation to this end complements other developments we have witnessed during the Obama administration—including the online disclosure by the White House of its visitor logs; the launch of Data.gov, a central repository of government databases and data feeds; and last year’s Open Government Directive, which gave federal agencies a number of milestones to make government more open and collaborative.

But much more needs to be done. The government should be encouraged to expand on its transparent agenda.

A new paradigm must emerge that shifts the burden from the public to request information from the government using the Freedom of Information Act to the government to disclose the information proactively. Providing online, real time, public access to government information will positively transform the relationship of citizens to government, rewiring our social contract.

Contact:

Gabriela Schneider, Communications Director
The Sunlight Foundation
202/742-1520, ext 236
gschneider@sunlightfoundation.com

Op-ed by Eric Newton: Shame on us…

KnightComm — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 17:26:09 +0000

Shame on us if we don’t take the steps needed to feed knowledge to our democracy

By Eric Newton

Way back in the age of paper, in 1986, professor James Beniger, then at Harvard, produced a useful chart on the civilian labor force of the United States. It showed how the bulk of American workers had moved during the past two centuries from working in agriculture to industry to service, and now, to information. Point being: the digital age didn’t just sneak up on us. It’s been a long, slow evolution. So shame on us for not changing our rules and laws and institutions for this new age.

We were well warned. Just after World War II, the Hutchins Commission said that traditional media could do much better: they should take on the social responsibility of providing the news “in a context that gives it meaning.” In the 1960s, the Kerner Commission said mainstream media wasn’t diverse enough to properly tell the story of this changing nation.

Beniger's 1986 Chart

Same decade: the Carnegie Commission said the status quo was simply not working, that public broadcasting must be created to fill the gap.

After that, a stream of reports — from the University of Pennsylvania, from Columbia University and others — agreed and repeated the same three fundamental findings:

— Hutchins: Our news systems are not good enough,

— Kerner: They don’t engage everyone,

— Carnegie: We need alternatives.

Here comes digital media, and — boom! — an explosion of alternatives. And we’re all — shocked? Apparently. So let’s try it again. This time, the big report comes from the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy, prepared by the Aspen Institute with a grant from Knight Foundation, where I work.

A new examination of a familiar problem

Why a new commission? We are now deep into the second decade of the World Wide Web. It was our hope that when our leaders were finally ready to change things, they would consider a new perspective. Hutchins, Kerner and Carnegie and the others focused on what should be done to improve, diversify, add to — and nowadays the talk is to save — traditional media.

The Knight Commission started with communities, by visiting them and hearing from their residents. News and information, the commission says, are as important to communities as good schools, safe streets or clean air. Journalism, it says, does not need saving so much as it needs creating.

As a former newspaper editor, that last point seems pretty important to me. Of the nation’s 30,000 burgs, towns, suburbs and cities, how many are thoroughly covered by the current news system? Ten percent? Five? Less? We’re talking about knowing how to get, sometimes for the first time, the news and information we need to run our communities and live our lives.

Is the Knight Commission making a difference? We hope so. The Federal Communications Commission has hired Internet expert Steve Waldman to study the agency, top to bottom, thinking of reforms with Knight’s 15 recommendations in mind. Free Press, the nation’s largest grassroots media policy group, embraced the report, especially its call for universal affordable broadband. Ernie Wilson, dean of USC’s Annenberg School and chair of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, announced he is boosting innovation in public media. CPB backed NPR’s Project Argo in a partnership with Knight Foundation.

Community lawmakers are agreeing with commissioner and former FCC chair Michael Powell’s points about “information healthy communities,” about the role of open government and public web sites in local information flow. Commissioner Reed Hundt, also a former FCC chair, presented the Knight findings to the Federal Trade Commission.

Librarians across the country are pushing the role they can play as digital training and access centers. In addition to its dozens of media innovation grants, Knight Foundation itself took the commission’s advice: it has made more than $5 million in grants to libraries.

Taking the next steps

Now what? The policy work needs to come down to the detail level. Steve Coll and New America Foundation are among those thinking about that. How can we really spur more marketplace innovation? How can government rules and laws make it easier for newspapers to be nonprofits, treat student and nonprofit journalists equally, require the teaching of news literacy?

The hard part is ahead of us: that is, involving every aspect of our communities in this issue, governments, nonprofits, traditional media, schools, universities, libraries, churches, social groups — and, especially, citizens themselves. How do you do that? How do you make “news and information” everyone’s issue? It’s a tall order, perhaps the most difficult thing of all.

Universities could help here. Nearly two thirds of the nation’s high school graduates at least start out in a college or university of some kind. These institutions could make news literacy courses mandatory for incoming students. Understanding and being able to navigate the exploding world of news and information is as fundamental to the college students of our nation as knowing English. Stony Brook has already been paving that path. There, nearly 5,000 students have taken news literacy under the first university-wide course of its kind.

Colleges could set an example for the rest of our institutions. We are, after all, at the dawn of a new age. Who a journalist is, what a story is, what medium works, and how to manage the new interactive relationship with the people formerly known as the audience — all of these are changing as we speak. The complete metamorphosis of how a society connects the data and events of daily life to the issues and ideas that can better its life — would seem to be something colleges should want all of its students to think about.

This is hardly a short-term project. It took more than 200 years for America to change from a country where most people work growing food to one where most people work growing information. It will take time for the wholesale rewriting of America’s media policies, not to mention getting up the guts to spend the trillion dollars or more needed to remake our access to high speed digital systems and ability to use them.

Yet all of this is needed for America to become an information-healthy nation. A nation without universal, affordable broadband is like a nation without highways and railroads. We would be stuck on the surface streets of the new economy, tracing our fall from a global force to a secondary society.

More than 70 years after Hutchins, the basic story is still the same. The country’s news and information systems still aren’t good enough, still don’t engage everyone and still invite alternatives. It’s time to start doing something about this issue. Our rules, the laws, the policies — even the high school and college classes we teach — these things matter to how the news ecosystem in any given community is shaped. They can speed innovation or stunt it. So pick a recommendation — the Knight Commission lists 15 — and have at it.

This article was originally published at Nieman Labs. Used with permission of author.

FCC Extends Public Comment Period on Future of Media to May 7

Amy Garmer — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 16:12:33 +0000

You now have until May 7th to submit comments to the the Federal Communications Commission’s examination of the Future of Media and Information Needs of Communities in a Digital Age thanks to a request by a group of public service media. The Association of Public Television Stations, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Public Radio, and the Public Broadcasting Service jointly filed a motion last month to extend the deadline in part to accommodate a series of townhall meetings planned around the country to solicit the viewpoints of community leaders and broadcast station executives. The Commission noted in its order extending the filing deadline that “a limited extension of time will further the public interest by allowing all commenters additional time to file studies, analyses and other submissions in response to the Public Notice, facilitating the compilation of a more complete record.”

You can submit comments through the Discussions section of the Future of Media website at http://reboot.fcc.gov/futureofmedia/. At the site, the Commission invites members of the public to share stories about media in your community and their thoughts about government policies that could improve news and information media and how media companies should change their approach to delivering news and information. Follow these links to read what others have said and to add your own comments.

FTC Announces Second Workshop on the Future of Journalism

KnightComm — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 20:35:58 +0000

The Federal Trade Commission will hold its second two-day workshop on the future of journalism March 9-10, 2010, in Room 432 of the FTC Headquarters at 600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. The agenda and information about the workshop can be found at http://www.ftc.gov/opp/workshops/news/mar9/agenda.pdf.

The workshop will address proposals to better support and lower the costs of journalism, including:

Changes to copyright law, that have been suggested as a means to require news aggregators to pay fees to news-gathering operations. Panelists will discuss whether such changes would be workable and likely achieve the desired results.
Consideration of the potential advantages and disadvantages of combining the interests of for-profit and non-profit investors in hybrid entities, such as so-called L3Cs, as vehicles for new media organizations.
Efforts to make government data more accessible and easily managed in ways that may lower the costs of journalism.
Discussion of the wide variety of collaborations that news organizations may use to lower their costs and better support journalism.

The items on the FTC’s Workshop agenda track several of the issues addressed by the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in its report, Informing Communities. These include directing policy toward innovation, competition and support for business models that will provide marketplace incentives for quality journalism; increasing the role of community and nonprofit institutions as hubs of journalistic activity; and requiring government to operate transparently and facilitate civic uses of public data and information.

In December 2009, the FTC held the first two-day workshop to consider a wide range of issues, including: the economics of journalism in print and online; the variety of new business and non-profit models for journalism online; factors relevant to the new economic realities for news organizations, such as behavioral and other online targeted advertising, online news aggregators, and bloggers; and ways in which the costs of journalism could be reduced.

The first workshop featured a presentation of the report of the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy by former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt who served as one of 15 members of the Commission. Eric Newton, Vice President of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, which funded the Knight Commission, was also a presenter at the December event.

The workshop is free and open to the public. Those planning to attend should arrive early to permit time to go through security screening.