MEMORANDUM

To: Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy
From: Peter M. Shane, Executive Director
Re: Knight Commission Research Plan
Date: June 23, 2008

The purpose of this memo is to brief you on research activities currently under way in connection with the Commission. As currently envisioned, these activities will be of three kinds: bibliographic research, interviews, and community forums. To support all three efforts, the Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program has created a large informal advisory group to whom I send occasional questions and preliminary ideas, looking for leads and other feedback.

Bibliographic Research

A major part of our research effort will be digesting the truly mountainous literature relevant to community information needs in a democracy that is being produced by both academics and practitioners in a host of fields – anthropology, communications, cultural studies, democratic theory, economics, information science, journalism, media studies, political science, sociology, and technology studies. Especially important sources of data are likely to the annual State of the Media reports by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, the Media Management Center at Northwestern University, the Pew Center for the People and the Press, and the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

To give you some measure of the scope of this enterprise, I have also attached two lists to this memorandum. One is entitled, SEQ CHAPTER \h \r 1“ SEQ CHAPTER \h \r 1Trends Potentially Relevant to Local Community Information Environments,” and includes nearly fifty social or economic trends we might wish to understand in order to get a handle on our subject. The other is entitled, “ SEQ CHAPTER \h \r 1Potential Areas of Controversy and Initiative Relevant to Local Community Information Environments,” and includes roughly forty topics that have arisen in conversations I have had with Commissioners or others as areas for potential reforms that might have a positive impact on community information flow. Your feedback on these lists would be invaluable – topics you think are missing, topics you think perhaps not worth exploring, topics you think most essential. I do not mean to suggest through the second list which, if any, of these topics deserve Commission attention or endorsement. I just want you to see the breadth of the landscape as it is already unfolding.

Interviews

A second research strategy will be interviewing at least 25-40 “thought leaders” who are working at the intersection of information, community, and democracy. The list will certainly include people who are currently engaged in innovative projects to improve the information environments of local communities, as well as journalism educators, public officials, and community activists. Your suggestions of valuable interviewees would likewise be invaluable.

Community Forums

Our third strategy to supplement our understanding of community information environments will be to hold three community forums around the country to try to get a richer sense, in each community, of the story behind the statistics. We have chosen Philadelphia, PA, Missoula, MT, and San Jose, CA as our three venues. These forums will likely be held in September and October, and it would be ideal if at least some Commissioners could be present at each.

SEQ CHAPTER \h \r 1We would like at each forum to hear from a series of speakers who could give us answers to the following big questions:

How do people in each community get their local news and information?
What are the political, economic and other challenges confronting established media – television, radio, newspapers – in providing local news and information?
How are both established and “new media” entrepreneurs innovating in the provision of local news and information?
Are the different ways of getting news and information working, in the opinions of the users of information?
Is there evidence that any news and information innovations are changing how people interact with and around new information?
Are there ways of getting news and information in the local community that users/citizens do not currently have access to are not currently being utilized?
How do media institutions involve or consult the community in the process of innovating for the provision of news and information?
What is the role of public, educational and government cable channels in providing the community with local news and information?
What factors help or hinder innovation in the provision of local news and information, in either the private or nonprofit sectors?
How active is local government in making timely community-relevant information available?
How well are established and new media serving the needs of relevant sub-communities?
To what extent do members of the community - including public officials, civic activists, and journalists themselves - connect specific, concrete local problems or their resolution with successes or failures in the provision of local news and information?
What efforts are under way to spur the use of local news and information for civic engagement purposes by young people?
To what extent are people in the community engaged in media reform or communication policy issues and what issues are “hot” locally?
To what extent are universities, libraries, and other information sector institutions actively engaged in facilitating effective community engagement with local news and information?

For each forum, we would like to invite 8-15 main speakers, who could address these questions from a variety of informed perspectives. We would ask each speaker to provide written comments and background information at least two weeks before the forum, and to make a prepared statement at the hearing of roughly five minutes. (In providing their written comments, it would be useful for speakers to relate with whom they consulted and how they developed the information they are presenting, to help us understand how information flows in the local community.)

The speakers would respond to questions individually from Commission members and the Commission staff, as well as from invited facilitators. After each group of speakers makes its presentations, the floor would then be open to questions and observations from members of the general public.

* * *

Your suggestions for shaping and focusing this plan of research will be most welcome. My hope is to give the Commission a strong basis in the best available thinking as it evaluates the ideas presented to it and decides how best to proceed.
TRENDS POTENTIALLY RELEVANT
TO LOCAL COMMUNITY INFORMATION ENVIRONMENTS

Adoption patterns for new technologies
Alternative/independent press outlets
Audience demographics
Broadband penetration
Civic knowledge
Civic leaders= views of the press
Civic participation
Community conflict trends
Concentration of media ownership
Development of local government web sites
Digital divide
Ethnic media consumption
Ethnic media revenues
Home broadband adoption
Journalism education
Journalist attitudes towards news
Library books in circulation
Local social networking initiatives
Local news aggregation sites
Local media employment statistics
Mobile access to data
New business models
News websites
Newspaper subscriptions/sales
Newspaper revenues
Numbers and types of available print publications
Online newspapers
Online user practices
Online advertising
Opportunities for civic discourse
Pages in newspapers devoted to local stories
Popular attitudes towards the press
Radio station revenues
Radio news hours per day
Ratings for TV, radio, cable, satellite
Regulation and deregulation of media
Reporters= career paths
Size of local news staffs for radio and TV
Social capital trends
Technology trends (mobility, ubiquity, collaboration, others?)
Topics of local stories covered
TV news hours per day
TV station revenues
University-community partnerships
Youth media consumption
SEQ CHAPTER \h \r 1POTENTIAL AREAS OF CONTROVERSY AND INITIATIVE
RELEVANT TO LOCAL COMMUNITY INFORMATION ENVIRONMENTS

Á la carte cable pricing
Antitrust law
Broadband deployment/national broadband strategy
Citizen participation in media production
Community foundation priorities
Community summit meetings
Community technology centers
Cross-ownership (broadcast/print) limitations
Digital government
Disabilities, Persons with
Diversity (ownership, programming)
Fiber-to-the-home
Independent local news councils
Independent government observers
Intellectual property
Investigative journalism, new models for
Journalism education, formal and informal
Libraries
Localism requirements for broadcasters
Low-power FM policy
Media/technology/news literacy programs
Municipal broadband
Net neutrality/network management nondiscrimination requirements
Open government laws
Ownership caps on local media
PEG (public/educational/government channel) requirements for cable
Postal rates
Privacy impacts of local information exchange
Public access channels
Public interest obligations of broadcasters
Public records access
Public broadcasting
Social media education
Spectrum policy/unlicensed white space
Student opportunities (scholarships, internships)
Tax treatment of media institutions
Tax treatment of nonprofit institutions
Universal service policy
University-community partnerships