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

Thierer: Thinking about the Future of Informed Communities and Journalism

Amy Garmer — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 23:36:59 +0000

Adam Thierer

Adam Thierer’s most recent op-ed (“Thinking about the Future of Informed Communities and Journalism”) in his Technologies of Freedom column on Forbes.com is worthy of note– and not just because it mentions the work of the Knight Commission and the related series of eight white papers published by the Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program. Adam, who is a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, authored one of these white papers, Creating Local Online Hubs: Three Models for Action, which was released earlier this year.

Incivility and outrage seem to be the fashion for a lot of public discourse these days. As we prepare to enter an important election year, Adam’s essay is especially notable, for two reasons. First, he brings a thoughtful approach to the big questions addressed by the Knight Commission, which are all the more significant as the country prepares for an election of major importance.

Do we, as citizens, have access to the right sort of information to make informed decisions for our communities and the broader public sphere? And,
Do we, individually and collectively, have the knowledge, skills and capacity to take action based on that information–action that benefits individuals, families, communities and the state of our deliberative democracy?

Second, his essay reflects the open-minded, democratic spirit and values that the bipartisan group of commissioners — 15 men and women from diverse personal, professional and political backgrounds — adopted as they went about investigating these questions. He recognizes that, even though people may differ on the best policies for promoting freedom and prosperity in the Information Age, the big questions are worth asking and discussing and we all benefit from the exploration and experimentation taking place. It’s the same sentiment that Adam brought to his white paper when he wrote,

There is no one-size-fits-all, best approach to designing high-quality local online hubs. A thousand flowers are blooming in today’s information marketplace and that is a wonderful thing. The more experimentation, the better at this point. But we should not assume that a hub model that works well in one community will automatically work for another. …Our primary concern should be underserved communities.

It’s easy for those of us who live in areas of relative affluence and information abundance, with a staggering array of information and communication services literally at our fingertips, to forget that there are still millions of Americans who do not have access to the technologies of freedom, or the resources to learn how to use them effectively for personal, commercial or civic benefit. Much of our civic discourse is moving to digital platforms, noisy spaces with new rules of engagement. We cannot sustain a healthy democracy with citizens who are forced into second-class status by an information divide. Adam is correct that the key to creating an informed, engaged citizenry in this new environment is maximizing the opportunities for information to flow and for people to acquire the skills they need to use it effectively. The white papers offer a selection of specific steps and policies for a path toward a brighter future of informed communities and journalism.

Assessing Community Information Needs: A Practical Guide

Amy Garmer — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 04:01:03 +0000

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 Community Information Needs: A Practical Guide is a guide for adopting civic innovation strategies to spur the development of news and information environments that address real community needs. Civic leaders, elected officials, motivated citizens, community-based organizations and others can use this guide to understand how to integrate useful practices for assessing and building engaged, informed communities—communities with the civic capacity necessary to deal successfully with today’s many economic, social, environmental and political challenges. (Download PDF or Read Online)

*Watch related Roundtable Discussion*

Author Richard C. Harwood sets forth a set of assessment strategies that go beyond merely counting the information assets that exist in the community. While high-speed broadband, news websites, social media and local online hubs are important for expanding opportunities to participate in public life, in order for these technologies to be truly transformative communities need to create a receptive environment where citizens engage more fully with the spectrum of information and knowledge providers that contribute to the health and stability of a community: schools, businesses, libraries, nonprofits, other organizations and each other.

Harwood proposes a set of nine strategies, governed by four guiding principles, to help people in a community take effective action toward improving their information ecology. The paper also includes a checklist for getting started.

Among the key elements of his nine step plan are the following:

Engage the community early on and focus on core community needs. Being in the community and hearing people talk about their community can yield valuable insights that lead to refocusing existing efforts, creating new types of content, developing new networks of partners, and building a more useful information infrastructure.

Actively cultivate boundary-spanning organizations and groups. Public and commercial media, community foundations, public libraries, and local United Ways are among the groups that bring people together across dividing lines, incubate new ideas and spin them off and reflect the aspirations and concerns of the community. These intermediary organizations should play an essential role in assessing and building healthy information environments.

Tell the community’s story of change. Told well and over time, such stories can help a community create a “can-do narrative” about its ability to tackle change and invite people to step forward.

Ensure enough entry points for people to engage. There must be sufficient “on-ramps” for people to participate in the information environment and community life. Technological on-ramps like high-speed broadband are important, but so are a variety of cultural and social access points.

Together, Harwood’s nine strategies and four guideposts will allow communities to focus on building information environments, engaging the community and taking action on what matters most.

This paper is the eighth paper in a series of white papers focused on implementing the 15 recommendations of the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy. The white paper series is published by the Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program in partnership with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Richard Harwood is the founder of The Harwood Institute for Public Innovation.

FCC’s Public-Private Broadband Initiative Emphasizes Adoption, Digital Literacy

Amy Garmer — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 13:27:52 +0000

Today, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski will announce a national public-private partnership program designed to increase broadband adoption, elevate digital literacy and assist Americans in searching and training for jobs. The public-private partnership seeks to overcome the top obstacles to broadband adoption, including digital literacy, relevance and cost. Representatives from partner companies, non-profits and think tanks will also deliver brief remarks.

The New York Times has an article on today’s announcement with more details here.

The event will be live streamed at 10:00 Eastern (link here).

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

Amy Garmer — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 20:42:00 +0000

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 display in Phoenix, Arizona this week, where a broad range of stakeholders representing journalism, business, academia, government, nonprofits, philanthropy and the public gathered to discuss the recommendations in the Federal Communications Commission’s staff-level report, Information Needs of Communities: The Changing Media Landscape in a Broadband Age, and to announce consensus and progress on key recommendations in the FCC report.

The FCC report, released in June 2011, examines the current state of the media landscape and found that, while new technologies and other innovations have created an expansive and rich media environment, there are important gaps in the areas of local accountability reporting and universal access to broadband opportunities that must be addressed.

Monday’s field event at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication provided a platform for showcasing a wide range of sensible policies and innovative new initiatives designed to strengthen news and information gathering that meets the needs of citizens, communities and democracy. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski and Commissioner Michael Copps participated in the event. Their remarks and the statements of other participants are available here.

Highlights of the event announced by the FCC include:

Consensus on basic framework for broadcaster transparency:

Jonathan Blake, representing six major local television station groups, said that while some details remain to be worked out, in general the FCC report’s recommendations on disclosure and transparency “will serve the public interest.”
Coriel Wright of Free Press said that the disclosure recommendations are “both important and necessary.”

Journalism School initiative:

Chris Callahan, dean of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University announced a new initiative from the nation’s leading journalism schools, funded by the Knight Foundation, to move forward on recommendations of the Report. Journalism schools will hold events and produce detailed research papers to advance various recommendations.

Targeting federal ad spending at local media:

Jason Klein, President and CEO, Newspaper National Network representing more than 9,000 print and online publications, expressed support for a proposal made by local television stations that existing federal advertising spending be targeted a local media, saying, “The federal government spends advertising dollars for necessary public purposes, and can better obtain value by shifting some ad spending to local media. It’s a smart strategy on a number of levels…and a development that should be encouraged.”

Representatives from 34 local online news organizations in a letter presented at the event said, “[G]overnment spending on local online news enterprises could be, in a relative sense, far more beneficial than legacy spends. Even modest advertising revenue will permit us to expand news coverage, create new journalism jobs and better serve our local communities.”

The Knight Foundation announced other initiatives it will fund to advance the recommendations in the FCC report, including:

A Knight-funded effort that will support the FCC report’s author Steven Waldman to study emerging media issues and explore implementation strategies for the report’s recommendations as a visiting senior media policy scholar at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.
A Knight Foundation grant to encourage debate and action around the report’s major recommendations, through a series of events and research papers hosted by at least 10 leading universities. The series is in partnership with Carnegie Corporation of New York.
Help in planning for the creation of “state C-Spans” in all 50 states – as recommended in the FCC’s report – through a meeting of the National Association of State Public Affairs Networks at the Newseum.
A task force headed by the Council on Foundations to make recommendations to the IRS about potential tax changes to remove obstacles to non-profit media innovation.
A partnership with GuideStar, Grantmakers for Film and Electronic Media (GFEM), Ford Foundation and the Foundation Center to develop reliable metrics on media philanthropy, so that people can know what’s funded in their communities and foundations can evaluate the field and level of funding.

Read the Knight Foundation press release here.

Michael Fancher identified additional roles that for-profit enterprises, nonprofits, universities, businesses, government, foundations and others can play in strengthening local journalism in his June 2011 white paper, Re-imagining Local Journalism, in which he identified five key areas of strategic importance for local journalism:

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.

As the Knight Commission report notes, “The bottom line for local communities is that people need relevant and credible information to be free and self-governing.” The participants in the Arizona field event recognize this essential fact and are working to make it happen.

Journalists and Librarians Finding Common Ground

Amy Garmer — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 18:18:33 +0000

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 April, Journalism That Matters convened a ground-breaking “Beyond Books” conversation among journalists and librarians at MIT’s Center for Civic Media. JTM’s Biblionews website is full of ideas for connections to explore, including information on pilot projects that are underway since the gathering at MIT. There is also an inspiring 7-minute video of the conference produced by the very talented Jacob Caggiano that describes what journalists and librarians can do together.

What’s possible when librarians and journalists meet? a video report from the “Beyond Books” event at MIT hosted by journalismthatmatters.org

Bill Densmore and Mike Fancher, who along with Peggy Holman are key leaders directing JTM’s fantastic work on innovating journalism at the local level, brought the discussion to the annual conference of the American Library Association, held in late June in New Orleans.

Mike presented his newly released white paper, Re-imagining Journalism: Local News for a Networked World, as part of a panel discussion on effective partnerships between libraries and journalists that create opportunities for local news and civic engagement. He also outlined how libraries are addressed in several of the other white papers on implementing the broad set of recommendations of the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy, a theme we will explore in future blog posts. Mike was joined on the panel by Nancy Kranich, founder and leader of ALA’s Center for Public Life and ALA’s civic engagement membership initiative, and Annie Anderson, who heads the LibrariUS initiative at American Public Media. (Due to travel delays, Bill did not make it to New Orleans for the panel.) The two-hour session on “Competing in the Information Marketplace II: Strategic PR partnerships — Journalists and Libraries,” was hosted by the Library Leadership and Management Association.

Mike’s key takeaways from the ALA discussion, summarized on the Biblionews website, include ideas that resonate with the Knight Commission’s Informing Communties report:

Librarians see civic engagement as an important element in what they do and how they make their case for public support. Civic engagement helps democracy, but it also has economic benefits to communities.

Digital literacy is a core competency of libraries. It needs to be actively advanced and promoted.

Institutional inertia could be a barrier in some library systems. Students are being trained for a new library culture, but the needed cultural change may come slowly in some systems. (This is a great topic to explore for libraries and journalism.)

People are excited about early results from LibrariUS, a partnership among the American Public Media Public, the ALA and its Public Library Association division. Attendees offered several ideas and examples for extending it.

Several people spoke glowing about their experience at the Biblionews conference at MIT in April. Two items stood out: 1) the JTM methodology for bringing together people from different backgrounds and disciplines; 2) the use of information technology to capture the experience immediately and permanently. The librarians were particularly interested in the second item.

The library community is ready to move ahead; bringing journalists along may be a tougher challenge. (That’s my view, not the librarians’.)

Higher education needs to be a partner.

Among ideas raised by others in attendance were the possibility of libraries helping to map local news and information ecosystems and new ways to extend the Public Insight Network’s partnership with the ALA and its Public Library Association Division (described in the JTM video).

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

New Online Hub for Digital Literacy Debuts

Amy Garmer — Fri, 13 May 2011 22:19:05 +0000

U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke today announced the launch of a new government initiative aimed at promoting digital literacy resources and collaboration. The federal Digital Literacy Initiative represents a major advance toward implementing the Knight Commission’s recommendations for enhancing the information capacity of individuals through new collaborations, public policies and investments in technology.

The centerpiece of the initiative is the DigitalLiteracy.gov portal, an online hub for librarians, educators, and other digital literacy practitioners to share content and best practices. It recognizes that Americans cannot compete globally without the skills and understanding to use technology and information effectively.

In a White House blog post accompanying the launch, U.S. Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra and Assistant Secretary and NTIA Director Lawrence Strickling said, “Through DigitalLiteracy.gov, NTIA is making available to all Americans the methods for improving broadband adoption that are being developed by Recovery Act projects.” The Commerce Department’s announcement is available here. NTIA, or the National Telecommunication and Information Administration, is one of two government agencies (the other being USDA’s Rural Utilities Service) responsible for administering the federal Broadband Opportunity Grant Program (BTOP) to achieve the goal of universal broadband penetration and adoption in the United States. (See KnightComm’s earlier posts about the BTOP grants.)

NTIA has posted a nice fact sheet on digital literacy on its website that cites statistics for why digital literacy is important. Among these statistics in the fact sheet are the following:

Ninety-six percent of working Americans use new communications technologies as part of their daily life.
Sixty-two percent of working Americans use the Internet as an integral part of their jobs.
American jobs related to the Internet contributed an estimated $300 billion of economic activity to the U.S. gross domestic product in 2009, according to one estimate.
Nearly one-third of U.S. households (32 percent) lack broadband service.
The two most commonly cited reasons for not having broadband Internet access at home are that it is perceived as not needed (46 percent) or too expensive (25 percent).
There are notable disparities between demographic groups: people with low incomes, disabilities, seniors, minorities, the less-educated, non-family households, and the non-employed tend to lag behind other groups in home broadband use.

These issues, and strategies for advancing digital literacy in all communities regardless of geography or demographics, are addressed in two white papers–Digital and Media Literacy: A Plan of Action by Renee Hobbs and Universal Broadband: Targeting Investments to Deliver Broadband Services to All Americans, by Blair Levin–published recently by the Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

National Broadband Plan: A Quartet for an Anniversary

Blair Levin — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 18:50:24 +0000

A Quartet for an Anniversary

by Blair Levin

Blair Levin is the Communications and Society Fellow at the Aspen Institute and author of Universal Broadband: Targeting Investments to Deliver Broadband Services to All Americans. He served as executive director of the Federal Communications Commission’s Omnibus Broadband Initiative which created the National Broadband Plan.

The one-year anniversary of the National Broadband Plan was marked by a number of conferences. I spoke at several. In each, I tried to address a different question.

In the first, hosted by the Joint Center for Economic and Political Studies, I looked at how we should approach increasing adoption. While I am very proud of the plan, on this issue, I have rethought what we did and think the approach we proposed will not work, and that there is a better way. Our approach, based on the voice-related issues of availability and cost are not the right foundation for broadband related issues in which, in addition to availability and cost, we must address use and training. I set out a four-step program that I hope will help reframe the debate, as we need a workable program to solve this problem. The speech can be found here. I might note many friends think it was a mistake to admit a mistake. In D.C., it certainly is unusual. Nonetheless, this issue is far too important to worry about such things, and I am hopeful the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) process now going on will help put us in the right direction.

In the second, an investor conference, I looked at some competition issues raised by Professor Susan Crawford in her article on “The Looming Cable Monopoly.” Her piece was based entirely on data from the plan. She didn’t misuse the data but, as I discuss in my talk, I think she errs in projecting how she thinks the market will unfold. Projecting data forward is always a tricky business. If it weren’t, stock picking would be both easy and not very lucrative. I think cable is in a very strong position, as it was for broadband a decade ago, but I am skeptical it is on the verge of a monopoly. Professor Crawford turns what I think of as a possibility not only into a probability but, further, into a certainty. My commentary on her piece, which I analyzed as I would have any piece of equity research, can be found here.

While at that conference, I also noted what several broadcasters have noted to me. Broadcasting will have to make another evolution—from the current MPEG 2 to the future MPEG 4 standard—if it is to remain a viable business. As MPEG 4 is more efficient in terms of spectrum use, I suggested broadcasters come forward with a plan that can be merged with the government’s path to obtain more spectrum. Needless to say, it stirred some controversy and no doubt, we will be discussing spectrum policy for many Plan anniversaries.

In the third conference, held by the Federal Communications Bar Association, I tried to explain what I thought was the core vision of the plan. While many think the core vision should be about faster wireline networks to homes, the speech explains how we were aiming toward high performance knowledge exchange. In sum, the idea is this: The core task for our economy and civic society is knowledge exchange. We gather information, analyze it, act on it, and then through a feedback loop, continually revise courses of action. Three revolutions in the last two decades have dramatically transformed knowledge exchange: the data revolution, the computing revolution, and the communications revolution. This knowledge exchange revolution affects every sector of the economy and every institution that constitutes our civic society.

Knowledge exchange takes many different forms but shares a common platform: the broadband ecosystem; the interaction of networks, devices, applications, and, above all, people who know how to use it. Broadband has created a commons of collaboration. As broadband is the common collaborative platform for both the economy and our civic society, we need a broadband ecosystem that facilitates knowledge exchange in ways that constantly improve so that we constantly improve how we exchange knowledge. Thus, the core idea of the National Broadband Plan: high performance knowledge exchange. In one sentence, the plan was about improving economic performance and our civic society by assuring that America has a broadband ecosystem that enables high performance knowledge exchange. The full speech can be found here.

What may have been my favorite conference was one where I didn’t speak (coincidence?). The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation did a conference in which the leaders of the National Purposes groups (Health Care, Education, Energy, Public Safety and Government Performance) spoke about what had transpired in the last year. It’s an extraordinary group of past, current and future public servants and the progress on a number of fronts is quite inspiring. The video of it will soon be on the ITIF website: www.itif.org. Actually, I did say something involving a 1976 Saturday Night Live sketch in which Lorne Michaels offered $3,000 to the Beatles if they would do a reunion gig on the show and learned that in 2011, references to a 1976 TV show are not likely to strike a chord.

And finally I spoke at a conference put on by Columbia and Georgetown Universities. My purpose in this one was to put the plan in the context of policy development make that case that, as we often said during the process, “plan beats no plan.” The speech describes how, properly understood, the plan was an agenda setting, target-clarifying device. That is, the plan was a process whose endpoint was to lay out—particularly for the stakeholders—an agenda for action. Further, the plan details policy targets to aim for–in the sense of policies to adopt–or aim at, in the sense of policies to shoot at and propose better alternatives. The speech also tries to provide a framework for how to judge the progress of the plan’s implementation. The speech can be found here.

Fortunately, the anniversary was not all serious policy and debate. The team held a wonderful reunion Tuesday night and one reporter decided to ask me a set of questions that were on the lighter side. That piece can be found here. It is likely the only time you will be able to Google “national broadband plan,” “Colin Firth,” “Michelle Yeoh,” and “Russell Crowe” and find a link. So, we got that going for us.

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.

A Sensible Approach to Universal Broadband

Amy Garmer — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 04:01:04 +0000

The Knight Commission recognized that for there to be healthy news communities, all Americans need access to diverse sources of news and information. In the future, that means that all Americans will need access to broadband networks, and public policy should encourage broadband adoption. Yet current government programs to assure communication networks are available to all Americans will neither ensure that such networks are available nor encourage adoption.

“Universal Broadband: Targeting Investments to Deliver Broadband Services to All Americans,” (download here) a new policy paper by Blair Levin, proposes a number of steps to achieve these goals. First, the paper outlines the steps necessary to make basic broadband available to all Americans, regardless of location. As an initial matter, the paper proposes setting a target of assuring that all Americans have access to a network capable of delivering 4 Mbps actual download speed and 1 Mbps actual upload speed. To do so requires a fund of approximately $10 billion over 10 years. This money can be obtained by repurposing existing money from the Universal Service Fund, which is no longer efficiently serving the goal of connecting Americans to the universal communications medium.

In the paper’s first major initiative, Levin recommends a ten-year transition to shift over $15 billion of inefficient USF expenditures to a more efficient system that allows for experimentation and is designed to address today’s needs. To assure deployment and operation of broadband networks everywhere, the government should

Create a Connect America Fund to support the provision of affordable broadband and voice specifically to those areas where, without such support, broadband would not be available.

Create a Mobility Fund to ensure no states are lagging significantly behind the national average for broadband wireless coverage; and

Remove barriers to local government funding of broadband networks.

The paper’s second major initiative makes a number of recommendations to increase adoption of broad¬band by low-income Americans and other non-adopter communities. Cost is the biggest factor, but it is not the only factor. Digital literacy and relevance also loom large as factors affecting adoption. Government should

Expand, and eventually transform, the current Lifeline and Link-Up programs from subsidizing voice services to making broadband affordable to low-income individuals.

Form partnerships with non-profit agencies to address relevance barriers with targeted programs.

Create a National Digital Literacy Corps to teach digital literacy skills and enable private sector programs addressed at breaking adoption barriers.

Convene a working group to address adoption by persons with disabilities, a key non-adopter community

Experiment, through a competition, to try new techniques to drive adoption.

In addition, the paper suggests that to drive both deployment and adoption, the country needs to improve broadband-related funding to community anchor institutions. This can be done by facilitating demand aggregation for public sector broadband facilities, such as health care facilities, and by enabling partnerships that focus on serving the needs of institutions that require more complex networks. The paper also recommends a number of steps to improve the use of broadband for economic development efforts, including competitions to improve broadband for economic development purposes and the creation of Model Communities for testing next-generation, ultra-high speed broadband on military bases and in designated economic enterprise zones.

Download: Universal Broadband: Targeting Investments to Deliver Broadband Services to All Americans

Information Stories tell of personal stakes in healthy info communities

Amy Garmer — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 22:36:05 +0000

“What’s at stake when local news and information flow doesn’t serve all members of a community equally well? How can people respond?”

These questions lie at the heart of Information Stories, a riveting new series of twelve three-to-five minute videos that show how people can overcome the powerlessness caused by living in an information vacuum. Combining the power of video storytelling with raw personal experience and the strong will to overcome obstacles, Information Stories highlights the critical importance of information to the healthy functioning of communities and the ability of ordinary Americans to live happy and healthy lives.

But make no mistake: there is nothing ordinary about the extraordinary people at the center of these stories, or the efforts they have made to improve the quality of information–and the quality of life–in their communities.

For example, we meet Loris Ann Taylor, Arizona-based executive director of Native Public Media, who explains how she went from growing up on a reservation that relied on a town crier to give the news to working, as an adult, to proliferate broadband availability and public radio stations throughout Indian country. See her video here:

The Information Stories series was conceived by law professor Peter Shane, who served as executive director of the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy, and filmmaker Liv Gjestvang. Professor Shane wanted to find a way to make the Knight Commission issues more compelling and concrete for the everyday public.

“The Commission explained why ‘second-class information citizenship is looming’ for many Americans,” said Professor Shane. “I hoped to motivate activists around the country to pay attention to their local information ecologies. I want them to ask whether everyone in their communities gets the information they require to meet both their personal and civic needs.” (Peter gives a great overview of the entire Information Stories project in his Huffington Post blog announcing the launch of the series and website, Digital Stories Dramatize Information’s Role in the Lives of People and Communities.)

Other storytellers we meet are:

Martin Macias, Jr., a young Latino radio reporter and organizer from Chicago, who explains how he learned what it takes to really hear his own community;

Maureen Mann, a New Hampshire state legislator who tells how her move to a media-poor part of the state led her to create an online newspaper that turned neighbors into journalists;

Brenda Jo Brueggeman, a “hard-of-hearing” writer and professor of English, who explains how she came to understand the struggle of deaf people to be part of the flow of information around them – and the life-and-death stakes of being excluded; and

Joshua Chisholm, a faith-based community organizer from Camden, New Jersey, who explains how he works to help people overcome the sense of powerlessness that arises when they live “in an information vacuum” generated by people and institutions that benefit from the public’s “lack of understanding.”

These Information Stories expose personal experiences with information deficits, obstacles to the free flow and exchange of information and other hurdles that are all too common in communities across America today. The good news, as each of the Information Stories shows, is that motivated, committed citizens can use a broad array of relationships, resources, tools and technologies to create positive and lasting change in their information environments and communities.

The videos are available on the Information Stories website at http://informationstories.org and on the InfoStories Channel on YouTube. Information Stories was produced with a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The storytellers attended a July 2010 Digital Storytelling Workshop at Ohio State University where they learned how to produce their narratives.

The Information Stories website includes both captioned and non-captioned versions of the individual stories. DVDs containing both the individual stories and the “full reel” version of the documentary series can be ordered from the website. Perhaps most importantly, the site links to resources that explain how anyone can produce his or her own “information story” and encourages feedback on the site by viewers to explain how they used Information Stories in their local communities.

Information Stories does a brilliant job of driving home the closing message of the Knight Commission’s Informing Communities report: “The ‘information issue’ is everyone’s issue.”

Manintaining the National Commitment to Open Networks

Amy Garmer — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 15:08:08 +0000

The Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy stated in its report, Informing Communities, that a national commitment to an open Internet is an important element of ensuring that individuals and communities have the resources necessary to be fully informed in the digital age. In light of the Federal Communications Commission’s vote on preserving the open Internet (i.e., the new net neutrality rules — see the FCC’s press release, “FCC Acts to Preserve Internet Freedom and Openness“), KnightComm highlights recommendation #9 of the Knight Commission. Here is what the Commission said about maintaining the national commitment to open networks:

Recommendation 9. Maintain the national commitment to open networks as a core objective of Internet policy.

The early architecture of the Internet supported untold user innovation, yielding vast social benefits. Under the so-called “end-to-end principle,” computing intelligence resided chiefly with users at the ends of the network. The owners and operators of the networks exerted little control over the flow of data. Over time, however, network owners and operators asserted that their active management of networks would also yield benefits, especially with regard to network security and the ability to support new services. The policy challenge is to balance these network benefits against the potential risk to innovation. It is critical that network practices do not undermine the overall environment for innovation.

The Federal Communications Commission’s embrace of the four Internet freedoms identified by then-FCC Chairman Michael Powell well illustrates the federal commitment to openness. The first freedom is the right to access content of the consumer’s choosing. The second is the freedom to use all lawful applications. The third is the freedom to attach personal devices that do no harm to the network. Chairman Powell identified the fourth freedom as the right to receive full and accurate information about one’s service plan. The FCC broadened that freedom into an expansive right to competition. These principles are widely accepted, and the FCC should vigorously enforce them in a way that assures the public open access to the content and services they desire. The Knight Commission regards the openness of networks as essential to meeting community information needs. Legislators and other policy makers should remain vigilant and committed to maintaining openness.

As to the new open Internet rules, are they ”The FCC’s Beautiful Net Neutrality Compromise,” as PC Magazine’s Dan Costa described them? Or has the FCC missed the mark? Share your thoughts here on KnightComm.

Recipe for Engaged Learners: Add One Heaping Portion of Games and Social Media

Amy Garmer — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 18:19:31 +0000

Thanksgiving week is a great time to don the chef’s hat and apron, imagine that you’re America’s next Top Chef and contemplate what delicious creations can come out of the kitchen. Traditional fare? It’s there. But the real excitment comes from making that fabulous new dessert you found on the foodie site. If the ultimate reward is sitting down to a bountiful feast, the fun is in the exploring, the experimenting and expressing your culinary talents – a little of this, a pinch of that.

So, too, it is with learning. Kids are naturally inquisitive learners, but a bland diet of drill and kill instruction on computers and constant entreaties to “eat your spinach” in the classroom can leave students with a bad taste. Idit Harel Caperton and Blair Levin offer what they view as a better recipe for engaging students in their Huffington Post op-ed, “Dessert Before Spinach? Yes. When Serving Digital Literacy, Start with Dessert.”

“When it comes to literacy, it may be time to force our children to eat their dessert with, or even before, their spinach,” the authors write. What’s on the dessert menu? Digital media, interactive gaming, social media.

Why dessert first? Because, the authors say, digital literacy is now the portal to all other kinds of literacy. ”Children today learn to read and write through games and social media before anything else. Their digital engagement is a reality we should leverage.”

But digital literacy is not just about fun and games. Digital and media literacy are core skills in the information age. Echoing the Knight Commission’s Informing Communities report, the authors point out that an increasing amount of information and services are available online, some exclusively online, which means that those without digital access and skills fall further behind in many crucial areas–in education, employment, civic participation. These are among the reasons why people need digital tools, skills and understanding to be successful individuals and citizens in the digital age.

This op-ed follows closely the release of two new white papers that propose specific policy measures to address the Knight Commission’s recommendations related to digital and media literacy and universal access to broadband services. Digital and Media Literacy: A Plan of Action, by Temple University’s Renee Hobbs, was released in early November, and Universal Broadband: Targeting Investments to Deliver Broadband Services to All Americans, by Blair Levin, Communications and Society Fellow at the Aspen Institute, was released earlier this fall.

Caperton has years of experience working with children and interactive media, most recently as founder of the World Wide Workshop Foundation, a New York based nonprofit known for its innovative Globaloria platform that uses game design to engage students in active learning that is aligned with curriculum standards. Globaloria is profiled in Digital and Media Literacy: A Plan of Action.

So when it comes to a recipe for engaged learners, turn around that bon mot about the uncertainty of life. We know that digital skills are essential for success in the digital age. Eat dessert first.

Levin Outlines Broadband Deployment Formula

KnightComm — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 17:06:46 +0000

Blair Levin, Communications and Society Fellow, Aspen Institute

This article by John Eggerton appeared in Broadcasting & Cable on September 29, 2010.

Levin Outlines Broadband Deployment Formula

Approach posits deployment to 97% of unserved homes in ten years for $10 billion

by John Eggerton

Former FCC broadband czar Blair Levin says he has a formula for deploying broadband to 97% of the country in ten years for $10 billion.

The government has just finished allocating almost $7 billion in stimulus funds to promote deployment to unserved and underserved areas, but Levin says that infusion “will not be sufficient to ensure that all people in the United States have access to and can enjoy the benefits of universal digital citizenship.”

Levin, who exited the FCC last spring, outlines his approach in a new paper for The Aspen Institute, where he is a fellow. The paper is being presented as part of the Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program, Universal Broadband: Targeting Investments to Deliver Broadband Services to All Americans.

Read more at Broadcasting & Cable.

See Levin’s presentation.

Read Levin’s white paper.