Manifesto

Summer Portal • Manifesto• Report Outline • Side Stories • Glossary
Guiding Doc • Case study format • Rejected text

Media Re:public Manifesto

In the United States, which relies more than any country in the world on for-profit businesses to meet its needs for news and information, the crisis created for traditional US news media by the Internet represents a growing threat to the ideal of a democratic public sphere. Financial pressures on traditional media, especially general interest newspapers, has led to their failure to adequately serve the information needs of their audiences. Specifically, traditional media outlets are:

• failing to educate citizens on the world outside the US, in a time of increasing globalization
• cutting back on investigative journalism and other in-depth reporting, neglecting their role as watchdog
• ignoring serious social policy issues like education, gun control, poverty, etc.
• reducing reporting resources to the point where they can no longer guarantee that they will provide comprehensive coverage of local issues and events

Meanwhile, a decade of explosive growth in online media, both amateur and professional, has produced an abundance of alternatives to traditional media sources. While there is much to celebrate and more research to be done, there is increasing evidence that across the spectrum of topics and communities blogs, community news sites, citizen journalism aggregators and professionally staffed online-only media are not filling all the gaps left by the changes in traditional media structures:

• community news sites turn out to be less responsive and open to the public than expected, and both individual sites and aggregators focused on citizen journalism are falling far short of their own targets for original reporting
• the overwhelming majority of online media sites are based on organizational and editorial models that are inherently incapable of addressing the specific tasks of international reporting, in-depth journalism and comprehensive coverage;
• commercial sites that potentially have the structure to take on bigger projects are mostly not doing so - they face the same limitations of online advertising to support extensive professional reporting staffs as traditional media; and
• both the volunteer energy and the commercial money fueling new media outlets is overwhelmingly skewed towards coverage of politics and technology, leaving numerous issues, geographic areas and populations all but ignored.

Many well-intentioned projects to address these problems are limited in their potential from the start. Media Re:public has identified the following characteristics that most often result in projects that do not adequately identify and serve the needs of a defined audience:

• over-dependent on the inspiration and expertise of a single person or very small homogenous group
• primarily driven by the interests or needs of the content producer(s) rather than the value of the resulting product to the audience
• failing to acknowledge existing media (traditional or new) working in the same niche
• defining success primarily by audience size and/or advertising revenue
• not designed to take advantage of the best available technology, too dependent on a rigid technological model, or not structured to incorporate emerging technologies as they become available
• unrealistic expectations of growth of audience, contributors, or both and inadequate evaluation systems
• mismatched skill sets: most journalists are neither managers nor technologists, not everyone who is passionate about an issue is a good communicator, etc.

New and emerging digital media technologies have enormous potential to create a news and information environment that provides the accurate, balanced and complete information we expect from the news media and much more. But we know enough now about the tendencies of the current traditional and alternative media to assert that this will not happen without support from groups dedicated to high-quality media in the public interest. This support should focus its efforts on projects that aim to support the creation of quality content that is not available from other sources while observing the following principles:

• understanding and meeting the needs of the target public(s) drives all aspects of program design and implementation
• engaging relevant civil society and community organizations and media entities to avoid duplication and draw on existing expertise is essential, even if it requires persistent efforts to achieve
• ensuring that the multiple roles of the editor are being filled in some way
• cross-disciplinary collaboration and the desire to learn new skills are key to success in the networked environment
• taking non-US experience into account, actively collaborating with non-US partners if appropriate

In addition to supporting original content creation, there are some system-wide types of intervention that deserve attention as well. These would aim to:

• address the credibility issues by educating and assisting the public in becoming more sophisticated and active consumers of news, recognizing that the vast majority will remain essentially passive;
• work to bridge the gaps between US and international experience, through joint projects, collaborative research, and projects that facilitate the sharing of content on both individual and institutional levels
• support civil society organizations in developing their use of new media in ways that promote not only advocacy but also independent reporting
• seek cost-effective ways to support interested professional journalists in acquiring skills and contacts that will help them use new technologies more effectively in their work
• create new mechanisms to fund the production of high-quality content that are available to all
• provide support networks that enhance the ability of existing reporters or media entities to work effectively through access to affordable training, legal support, insurance, technical support, and in some cases, funding
• support efforts within and without the existing public broadcasting system to push for more imaginative and comprehensive responses to the challenge of the new environment.

These conclusions and recommendations are addressed in more detail in the remainder of the paper.

Your humble servants at Media Re:public