The FCC’s eighteen-months-in-the-making Future of Media report—now called “The Information Needs of Communities”—is now out and available below for your perusal.
Steve Waldman, the lead author of the report is currently presenting the report at an FCC Open Commission Meeting. The live stream of that presentation is here.
If you’re looking for a yard stick to measure the report’s recommendations against, check out Steve Coll’s open letter to Waldman outlining his own recommendations here. The piece ran on the cover of CJR’s Nov/Dec 2010 issue.
FCC Report: THE INFORMATION NEEDS OF COMMUNITIES
If you were listening to Waldman’s presentation earlier and noticed he mentioned CJR’s “Hamster Wheel” story, you can read that feature, by Dean Starkman, here.
The report's emphasis on local accountability reporting is spot on. That's just what our Public Data Ferret project is doing in Greater Seattle and WA state. The report also makes valuable and very specific suggestions on how local and state governments can be more systematically and robustly transparent, and suggests the need to help philanthropists and place-based foundations better see the close linkage between news ecosystem health and community health. I can testify from personal experience that last one ain't easy, right now. Our take on the report here.
#1 Posted by Matt Rosenberg, CJR on Thu 9 Jun 2011 at 08:51 PM