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New Round of Knight Community Information Challenge Now Open

Posted by Amy Garmer on Jan 18, 2012 in Blog, Civic Engagement, Digital Literacy, Local Journalism, Public Service Media

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation today opened a new round of funding for the Knight Community Information Challenge. The challenge provides matching grants to community foundations seeking to fund news and information projects.
To submit an application or for further information, go to www.informationneeds.org. Non-foundation community partners may participate, but they must partner [...]

Taking Stock of the State of Web Journalism

Posted by Amy Garmer on Dec 07, 2011 in Blog, Civic Engagement, Public Service Media

The buzz about how bloggers and citizen journalists will save the day, once almost deafening, has died down to a murmur, although the buzz about Twitter, Facebook and cellphone video cameras saving the day has picked up thanks to their powerful contributions to coverage of major breaking stories, from the Arab Spring to Occupy Wall Street. But the triumphant march to the digital future, at least when measured in terms of original reporting, has yet to lead anywhere near triumph.

Gary Knell Takes Helm at NPR, Cochran Advises: Fight for Federal Funding

Posted by Amy Garmer on Dec 01, 2011 in Blog, Local Journalism, Public Service Media

Barbara Cochran, the author of “Rethinking Public Media: More Local, More Inclusive, More Interactive,” has a featured blog post on the Huffington Post front page today making the case for the continuation of modest federal funding for public media. The op-ed, “Why Federal Funds for Public Broadcasting is the Right Decision,” is especially timely as [...]

Assessing Community Information Needs: A Practical Guide

Posted by Amy Garmer on Oct 17, 2011 in Blog, Civic Engagement, Digital Literacy, Local Journalism, Open Government, Public Service Media, Spotlight, Universal Broadband, White Paper Series

Free flowing news and information is essential to the health of democratic communities, but not all information environments are equally effective at meeting community information needs. What can a community do to measure the quality of its information environment, identify its information needs and take steps to build a more robust news and information ecosystem?
Assessing [...]

Progress Announced on Key Recommendations of “Information Needs of Communities” Report

Posted by Amy Garmer on Oct 05, 2011 in Blog, Local Journalism, Public Service Media, Universal Broadband

Two years ago this week, the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy released its Informing Communities report, which has served as a catalyst for a broader national conversation on how to bring the benefits and opportunities of the digital age to every community.
The fruits of this ongoing conversation were on [...]

Fancher: “American journalism is at a tipping point”

Posted by KnightComm on Jul 19, 2011 in Blog, Local Journalism, Public Service Media

In an interactive world, journalism must be a trusting partnership between journalists and the public. Building that partnership will require enlightened leadership within traditional and emerging news organizations. And partnerships will require involvement by local governments and foundations, schools and universities, libraries and churches, social groups and, most important, individual citizens.

Journalists and Librarians Finding Common Ground

Posted by Amy Garmer on Jul 01, 2011 in Blog, Civic Engagement, Digital Literacy, Local Journalism, Public Service Media, Universal Broadband

What can journalists and libraries do to create opportunities for local news and civic engagement?
Leading-edge thinkers in both fields have come together recently in several different venues to explore answers to this question. The early feedback on these discussions is that this is a worthwhile topic to discuss at a critical time for both institutions.
In [...]

2011 Knight News Challenge Winners Announced

Posted by Amy Garmer on Jun 22, 2011 in Blog, Civic Engagement, Local Journalism, Open Government, Public Service Media

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation announced the winners of the 2011 Knight News Challenge at the MIT-Knight Civic Media Conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts today. Sixteen ideas that push the future of news and information will receive a total of $4.7 million to foster innovation at “the intersection of journalism and technology,” according to Knight Foundation President Alberto [...]

Implementing the Recommendations of the Knight Commission

Posted by KnightComm on Jun 22, 2011 in Civic Engagement, Digital Literacy, Featured, Local Journalism, Open Government, Public Service Media, Universal Broadband, White Paper Series

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. [...]

Invest More, Innovate More, Say Public Media Leaders

Posted by Amy Garmer on Apr 29, 2011 in Blog, Digital Literacy, Local Journalism, Public Service Media

The fierce rhetoric surrounding the debate over federal funding for the current fiscal year gave the appearance that public broadcasting is a partisan issue. But public broadcasting clearly enjoys more support across the country than the recent debates and media coverage over the funding battle and the controversies swirling around NPR would suggest.

Local Online Hubs: Rockville Central Founder Explains Move to Facebook

Posted by Amy Garmer on Apr 04, 2011 in Blog, Civic Engagement, Local Journalism, Public Service Media

When we announced in late February that we were moving our successful local blog, Rockville Central, entirely to our Facebook page and that we would no longer be updating our standalone web site, a number of readers were surprised and dismayed. And we ourselves were surprised when this move gained some national attention as people who think about journalism weighed in on whether Facebook was “the future of news” and whether our move was a harbinger of things to come. (See here for a wrap-up of some of the key reactions.)

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

Posted by KnightComm on Mar 11, 2011 in Blog, Local Journalism, Public Service Media

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 [...]

Cochran: Local Public Broadcasters Shouldn’t Lose Funding Because of Problems at NPR

Posted by Amy Garmer on Mar 09, 2011 in Blog, Public Service Media

The firestorm raging around federal funding of public broadcasting has led to the resignation of Vivian Schiller as president and CEO of NPR, following the release of a video that showed the head of NPR’s fundraising unit criticizing the Republican party while also referring to Tea Party supporters as “seriously racist, racist people.” The video [...]

The Community Information Toolkit, Version 1.0

Posted by KnightComm on Mar 04, 2011 in Blog, Civic Engagement, Digital Literacy, Open Government, Public Service Media, Spotlight, Universal Broadband

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 [...]

Why Congress shouldn’t desert public media

Posted by KnightComm on Feb 04, 2011 in Local Journalism, Public Service Media

The following is an excerpt from an opinion piece written by Laura Walker of New York Public Radio and Jaclyn Sallee of Kohanic Broadcast Corp., published in the Washington Post February 4, 2011.
Why Congress shouldn’t desert public media
By Laura R. Walker and Jaclyn Sallee
Federal funding for public media has once again become a target in [...]