Strategies and Ideas for Action

Strategies and Ideas for Action

The Knight Commission’s focus was communities, not journalism. But journalism is a thread that runs throughout its report.

Five of the Commission’s 15 recommendations deal directly with media and journalism. Two of the Commission’s recommendations are particularly central to this white paper:

• Recommendation 1: Direct media policy toward innovation, competition and support for business models that provide marketplace incentives for quality journalism.

• Recommendation 3: Increase the role of higher education, community and non-profit institutions as hubs of journalistic activity and other information-sharing for local communities.

The Commission’s definition of journalism broadly encompasses “the gathering, preparing, collecting, photographing, recording, writing, editing, reporting or publishing of news or information that concerns local, national or international events or other matters of public interest for dissemination to the public.”

The Commission noted that the main source of journalism throughout American history has been private enterprise. While embracing the importance of public media, the Commission said:

Journalism supported by marketplace incentives—including both for-profit and not-for-profit models—is likely always to provide the lion’s share of original and verified reporting. The health of the private media sector is an important public policy goal. So too is the independence of private media from governmental intervention on content grounds.

Below are five areas of strategic importance and ideas for action to implement the recommendations of the Knight Commission. Because one cannot know what ideas might work in a time of technological disruption, these strategic areas are broad and structural. They are not intended to be exhaustive, but they can be catalysts for thinking about possibilities.

Key areas of strategic importance:

I. For-profit media organizations must re-invent themselves to extend the role and values of journalism in interactive ways.

II. Not-for-profit and non-traditional media must be important sources of local journalism.

III. Higher education, community and non-profit institutions can be hubs of journalistic activity and other information-sharing for local communities.

IV. Greater urgency must be placed on relevance, research and revenues to support local journalism.

V. Government at all levels should support policies that create an environment for sustainable, quality local journalism.

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