Endnotes
Endnotes
1. Loris Ann Taylor, Native Public Media Policy Priorities, Paper Prepared for the Obama-Biden Presidential FCC Transition Team (2008), available at http://www.media-democracy.net/files/NativePublicMediaPolicy-1.pdf.
2. Although the Commission has strived to take an evidence-based approach to its analysis and recommendations, its experience confirms the conclusion of other researchers that “[e]fforts to understand and address these issues are limited by a lack of solid empirical evidence, and must rely instead on incomplete information, anecdotes, and information. We know far too little about how changes in the delivery and consumption of news are affecting public awareness, opinion, and public engagement.” Persephone Miel and Robert Faris, News and Information as Digital Media Come of Age, at 2 (2008), available at http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/sites/cyber.law.harvard.edu/files/Overview_MR.pdf.
3. Paul Starr, “Goodbye to the Age of Newspapers (Hello to a New Era of Corruption),” The New Republic, Mar. 4, 2009, at 28, available at http://www.tnr.com/article/goodbye-the-age-newspapers-hello-new-era-corruption.
4. Project for Excellence in Journalism, Local TV News Reports a Drop in Revenue, Ratings, Mar. 26, 2009, available at http://www.journalism.org/commentary_backgrounder/local_tv_sees_drop_revenue_and_ratings.
5. AJR Staff, “AJR’s 2009 Count of Statehouse Reporters,” American Journalism Review, Apr./May 2009, available at http://www.ajr.org/article.asp?id=4722.
6. Michael Liedtke, “AP Survey of News Execs: Staff Cuts Hurting Coverage,” EditorandPublisher.com, May 13, 2009, available at http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003972765.
7. “You Tell Us: Gigabit Wireless on the Cheap,” IEEE Spectrum, Jan. 2008, available at http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/networks/you-tell-us-gigabit-wireless-on-the-cheap.
8. John Horrigan, Wireless Internet Use, 4, 33 (2009), available at http://pewinternet.org/~/media//Files/Reports/2009/Wireless-Internet-Use.pdf.
9. For many purposes, communities are properly defined in a broad sense as “networks of interpersonal ties that provide sociability, support, information, a sense of belonging, and social identity.” Barry Wellman, “Physical Place and CyberPlace: The Rise of Personalized Networking,” 25 Journal of Urban and Regional Research 227, 228 (2001), available at http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman/publications/individualism/N_1_#N_1_. The quality of democracy, however, depends fundamentally on people’s relationship to the places in which they live. Geography defines the scope of people’s common governance over resources for which they share jurisdiction. At the founding of the republic, there was a significant correspondence between the geographical boundaries that defined people’s sense of community and most of the structures that evolved to produce news and information. From the age of the telegraph to the digital age, the evolution of technology has steadily worked to erode, if not eliminate, that correspondence. This is one key reason why focusing on the needs of geographically defined local communities is now so crucial.
10. These include INSEAD’s Global Networked Readiness Index, available at http://www.insead.edu/v1/gitr/wef/main/analysis/showcountrydetails.cfm; the Media Sustainability Index created by the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX), see http://www.irex.org/msi/, and the Access to Knowledge Index being created by Yale Law School’s Information Society Project, see Lea Bishop Shaver, Defining and Measuring A2K: A Blueprint for an Index of Access to Knowledge, 4 I/S: A Journal of Law and Policy for the Information Society 235 (2008). UNESCO’s Press Freedom and Development survey of 194 countries is beginning to find suggestive links between a free press and other measurable aspects of social welfare. Marina Guseva, et al., Press freedom and development: An analysis of correlations between freedom of the press and the different dimensions of development, poverty, governance and peace (UNESCO 2008), available at http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0016/001618/161825e.pdf.
11. At USC Annenberg, Professor Sandra Ball-Rokeach has developed the thesis that local communication infrastructure plays a critical role in three components of civic engagement: neighborhood belonging, collective efficacy, and civic participation. She has even developed a measure that she calls Integrated Connectedness to a Storytelling Network (ICSN), which she has determined—at least for the local communities she has studied—to be an effective summation of the relationship between what she calls local media connectedness, their scope of connections to community organizations, and the intensity of interpersonal neighborhood storytelling. Yong-Chan Kim & Sandra J. Ball-Rokeach, “Civic Engagement From a Communication Infrastructure Perspective,” 16 Communication Theory 173 (2006). Researchers Mark Lloyd and Phil Napoli, in addition, have proposed a local media diversity index that could be used to correlate elements of media diversity with local levels of both civic participation and civic knowledge. Mark Lloyd and Phil Napoli, Local Media Diversity Matters: Measure Media Diversity According to Democratic Values, Not Market Values, Center for American Progress (2007), available at http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2007/01/pdf/media_diversity.pdf. These projects, along with such community assessment efforts as the Sense of Community Index, D. W. McMillan & D. M. Chavis, “Sense of Community: A definition and theory,” 14 American Journal of Community Psychology 6–23 (1986), the National Civic Health Index created by the National Council on Citizenship, available at http://www.ncoc.net/index.php?tray=series&tid=top5&cid=97, and Patchwork Nation, http://www.csmonitor.com/patchworknation/, point the way to the possibility of a deeper understanding over time between the precise elements of local information ecologies and other positive social outcomes.
12. Sheila Grissett, “Shifting Federal Budget Erodes Protection from Levees; Because of Cuts, Hurricane Risk Grows,” The Times Picayune, June 4, 2004, at 1.
13. The Commission on Freedom of the Press, A Free and Responsible Press – A General Report on Mass Communication: Newspapers, Radio, Motion Pictures, Magazines and Books, 20 (1947).
14. Starr, supra note 3, at 29.
15. James M. Snyder, Jr, and David Strömberg, Press Coverage and Political Accountability, March, 2008, available at http://www.nber.org/papers/w13878.pdf. A new Princeton study even suggests that when news outlets close, people disengage more broadly from community affairs. The year after the Cincinnati Post closed “fewer candidates ran for municipal office in the suburbs most reliant on the Post, incumbents became more likely to win re-election, and voter turnout fell.” Sam Schulhofer-Wohl and Miguel Garrido, Do Newspapers Matter? Evidence from the Closure of The Cincinnati Post (Woodrow Wilson School Discussion Papers in Economics, Mar. 2009), available at http://wws-roxen.princeton.edu/wwseconpapers/papers/dp236.pdf.
16. Ira Machefsky, Newspaper Advertising Revenue Trends, TheNumbersGuru.com, Aug. 1, 2008, available at http://thenumbersguru.blogspot.com/2008/07/newspapers-advertising-revenue-trends.html (based on data from the Newspaper Association of America, available at http://www.naa.org/TrendsandNumbers/Advertising-Expenditures.aspx).
17. Richard R. John, Spreading the News: The American Postal System from Franklin to Morse (1998).
18. Adrienne Chute and P. Elaine Kroe, Public Libraries in the United States: Fiscal Year 2005, at 3, (National Center for Education Statistics, 2007), available at http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2008/2008301.pdf.
19. American Library Association, The State of America’s Libraries 20, (April, 2009), available at http://www.ala.org/ala/newspresscenter/mediapresscenter/presskits/2009stateofamericaslibraries/State%20draft_04.10.09.pdf.
20. Leigh Estabrook and Lee Rainie, Information Searches that Solve Problems: How People Use the Internet, Libraries, and Government Agencies When They Need Help, at 10, 22 (Pew Internet & American Life Project, 2007), available at http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2007/Information-Searches-That-Solve-Problems.aspx.
21. Denise M. Davis, Funding Issues in U.S. Public Libraries, Fiscal Years 2003-2006, at 1 (Mar. 10, 2006), available at http://www.lita.org/ala/research/librarystats/public/fundingissuesinuspls.pdf.
22. This is how the Free Flow of Information Act of 2009, H.R. 985, 111th Cong., 1st Sess. (2009), the proposed federal journalist shield law recently approved by the House of Representatives, defines journalism.
23. Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism, The State of the News Media 2009: News Investment, available at http://www.stateofthemedia.org/2009/narrative_newspapers_newsinvestment.php?cat=4&media=4.
24. Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism, The State of the News Media 2009: Audio – News Investment, available at http://www.stateofthemedia.org/2009/narrative_audio_newsinvestment.php?media=10&cat=4#1newsroomsize.
25. Television News Jobs and Salaries Decline As Amount of News Increases, RTNDA/Hofstra University Survey Shows, RTNDA.org, Apr. 19, 2009, available at http://www.rtnda.org/pages/posts/television-news-jobs-and-salaries-decline-as-amount-of-news-increases-rtndahofstrauniversity-survey-shows481.php.
26. U.S. Census Bureau, Geographic Areas Reference Manual, Chap. 2 at 2-3 (2005), available at http://www.census.gov/geo/www/GARM/Ch2GARM.pdf.
27. Circulation of U.S. Community Weekly Newspapers by Circulation Groups, EditorandPublisher.com, available at http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/images/pdf/US%20Weekly%20Circ.%20by%20Circ.pdf.
28. See generally Charlie Beckett, SuperMedia: Saving Journalism So It Can Save the World (2008).
29. Jay Rosen, the founder and director of NewAssignment.net, writes, “At New Assignment, pros and amateurs cooperate to produce work that neither could manage alone. The site uses open source methods to develop good assignments and help bring them to completion. It pays professional journalists to carry the project home and set high standards; they work closely with users who have something to contribute. The betting is that (some) people will donate to stories they can see are going to be great because the open methods allow for that glimpse ahead.” Jay Rosen, Welcome to NewAssignment.Net, NewAssignment.net (Aug. 19, 2006), available at http://www.newassignment.net/blog/jay_rosen/welcome_to_newassignment_net.
30. Charles M. Firestone, “The New Intermediaries,” in David Bollier, The Future of Community and Personal Identity in the Coming Electronic Culture, Aspen Institute (1995).
31. See Association for Computing Machinery, ACM U.S. Public Policy Committee (USACM) Universal Internet Accessibility Policy Recommendations, available at http://www.acm.org/publicpolicy/accessibility.
32. Sunshine Week 2009 Survey of State Government Information Online, SunshineWeek.org, Mar. 14, 2009, available at http://www.sunshineweek.org/index.cfm?id=7284.
33. Stephanie R. Hoffer, Taxes, Local Journalism, and Transition to the Public Sector (Paper for the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy, November, 2008), at 1.
34. Id., at 1.
35. PBS Research, Roper Public Opinion Poll on PBS: 2007 vs. Past Years, available at http://www.pbs.org/aboutpbs/pbsfoundation/news/pastroperpolls.pdf.
36. National Public Radio, Final Report to the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation re: Local News Initiative: Research and Planning Phase (June 2006).
37. Jessica Clark and Patricia Aufderheide, Public Media 2.0: Dynamic Engaged Publics, at 21 Center for Social Media (2009) (hereafter, Public Media 2.0).
38. Victor Pickard, Josh Stearns and Craig Aaron, “New Ideas for Challenging Times,” in Free Press, Changing Media: Public Interest Policies for the Digital Age, at 221 (2009) (hereafter, “Changing Media”).
39. Public Media 2.0, supra note 37, at 6-7.
40. Id. at 7.
41. John Horrigan, Home Broadband 2008: Adoption stalls for low-income Americans even as many broadband users opt for premium services that give them more speed, at ii (Pew Internet and American Life Project, July 2, 2008), available at http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/257/report_display.asp.
42. Pew Internet & American Life Project, Home Broadband Adoption 2009, at 9 (2009), available at http://www.pewinternet.org/~/media//Files/Reports/2009/Home-Broadband-Adoption-2009.pdf.
43. Jon M. Peha, Bringing Broadband to Unserved Communities, Brooking Institution, (July 2008), available at http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2008/07_broadband_peha.aspx. One recent report suggests a rural “broadband penetration rate” of 75 percent, but appears to define “penetration rate” as the percentage of all homes with an Internet connection that have broadband—not the percentage of all homes that have broadband. Broadband Plays Catch-Up in Rural Areas, Outpaces Growth in Big Cities: Broadband Penetration Rate Grows 16 Percentage Points in Rural Areas Over Past Two Years, Significantly Outpacing that of Metropolitan Areas, ComScore.com (Aug. 19, 2009), available at http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2009/8/Broadband_Plays_Catch-Up_in_Rural_Areas_Outpaces_Growth_in_Big_Cities.
44. Akamai Report: The State of the Internet, 1st Quarter 2009, at 26 (2009), available at http://www.akamai.com/stateoftheinternet/.
45. S. Derek Turner, “The Internet,” in Changing Media, supra note 38, at 16, 37–39.
46. National Center for Education Statistics, National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL): A First Look at the Literacy of America’s Adults in the 21st Century, at 3 (2005), available at http://nces.ed.gov/NAAL/PDF/2006470.PDF (hereafter, “NAAL”).
47. Christopher B. Swanson, Cities in Crisis 2009: Closing the Graduation Gap, Editorial Projects in Education (2009), available at http://www.edweek.org/rc/articles/2009/04/22/cities_in_crisis.html.
48. NAAL, supra note 46, at 5.
49. Henry Jenkins, MySpace and the Participation Gap, Aca-Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins (July, 2006), available at http://www.henryjenkins.org/2006/06/myspace_and_the_participation.html.
50. Id.
51. Robert W. Fairlie, et al., Crossing the Divide: Immigrant Youth and Digital Disparity in California, at 5, Canter for Justice, Tolerance, and Community, (2006).
52. Linda A. Jackson, et al., Does Home Internet Use Influence the Academic Performance of Low-Income Children? 42 DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY 429, 434 (2006).
53. Renee Hobbs, Reading the Media in High School: Media Literacy in High School English, at 7 (2007).
54. John Carlo Berthot and Charles R. McClure, Public Libraries and the Internet 2008: Study Results and Findings, Florida State University College of Information (2008).
55. The Commission notes that the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation has called for a “revitalized Technology Opportunities Program, with a particular focus on the development of nationally scalable Web-based projects that address particular social needs, including law enforcement, health care, education, and access for persons with disabilities.” Robert D. Atkinson, Daniel K. Correa and Julie A. Hedlund, Explaining International Broadband Leadership, at 3 (2008), available at http://www.itif.org/files/ExplainingBBLeadership.pdf. It likewise encourages governments to “[s]upport new applications, including putting more public content online, improving e-government, and supporting telework, telemedicine, and online learning programs.” Id., at 44.
56. Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Decline and Revival of American Community (2000).
57. “Sustainable development and sustainable communities typically measure indicators that show the overall health of the community: i.e., looking at measures of the economy, health, crime, in addition to human and social capital levels. We completely agree that a community’s stock of social capital is not the sole measure of a community’s health. Nevertheless, we believe that social capital is important in that it is a key driver for these other indicators (economy, health, crime, etc.) rather than merely a goal in and of itself.” The Saguaro Seminar: Civic Engagement in America, available at http://www.hks.harvard.edu/saguaro/faqs.htm#2. See Susan Saegert, Gary Winkel, and Charles Swartz, Social Capital and Crime in New York City’s Low-Income Housing, 13 Housing Policy Debate 189 (2002), available at http://www.fanniemaefoundation.org/programs/hpd/pdf/hpd_1301_saegert.pdf (describing how social capital helps lower crime).
58. Ming Wen, Christopher R. Browning, and Kathleen A. Cagney, Neighbourhood Deprivation, Social Capital and Regular Exercise during Adulthood: A Multilevel Study in Chicago, at 44, Urban Studies 2651 (2007).
59. S. Derek Turner, Off the Dial: Female and Minority Radio Station Ownership in the United States, Free Press (June 2007), available at http://www.freepress.net/docs/off_the_dial.pdf; S. Derek Turner and Mark Cooper, Out of The Picture: Minority & Female TV Station Ownership in the United States, Free Press (Oct. 2006), available at http://www.stopbigmedia.com/files/out_of_the_picture.pdf.
60. Changing Media, note 38, at 191–192.
61. U.S. Census Bureau News, An Older and More Diverse Nation by Midcentury, Census.gov (Aug. 14, 2008), available at http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/population/012496.html.
The following endnotes appear in Appendix IV:
62. The Commission was assisted in the organization of this forum by Dave Mills, Program Officer (San Jose), John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
63. The Commission was assisted in the organization of this forum by Professor Monroe Price of the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School of Communication, along with Annenberg staff members Sylvia Beauvais and Libby Morgan, research fellow Kate Coyer, and graduate student Lee Shaker. The planning team also included Matt Bergheiser, Program Officer (Philadelphia), John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and Todd Wolfson, Media Mobilizing Project.
64. The Commission was assisted in the organization of this forum by Dean Peggy Kuhr and Professors Dennis Swibold and Denise Dowling of the University of Montana School of Journalism.
