Informing Ohio Communities Report

A Symposium on Informing Communities: Sustaining Democracy in the Digital Age,

the Report of the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy

Friday, November 20, 2009

The Ohio State University

Columbus, Ohio

I'd like to start by thanking Harvey Graff for creating this opportunity to think through the implications of the Knight Commission for information and democracy right here in my home town. The timing could not be better. For instance, the recent Ohio casino referendum sets the stage for a perfect example of how government — both at the state and local levels — will be making crucial decisions in the months ahead that will affect the quality of life for a major American city. Will the citizens who stand to be affected by those decisions know what is at stake, who is making those decisions and what effect they might have on their neighborhoods? This is the connection between information and democracy.

But, before specifically introducing the work of the Knight Commission, I'd like to provoke you with a question. This is supposed to be the age of multi-tasking, so I am hoping you can listen, with one part of your brain, to a brief history of the Commission and to a summary of its conclusions, and ask another part of your brain to contemplate the following.

What would it be like to organize an entire college or university education around the idea of journalism? I am not talking here about what we think of as vocational journalism education. The idea is not to make everyone a professional editor or reporter. I am talking, instead, about conceiving an entire program of liberal education that takes as its central theme the idea that the new media phenomenon is potentially making everyone a journalist. Thus, for both students and faculty, it is critical to be able to analyze media products and to have the skills to help meet the challenge of arriving at "truthful, comprehensive, and intelligent account[s]" of a day's local community events "in a context which gives them meaning." (I am borrowing here the definition of news from the 1947 Hutchins Commission.) What would such an educational program look like?

We could imagine freshman writing courses devoted to some combination of news literacy and training in reportage. Students would have to learn something about who makes what decisions for the local community and what rights and capacities everyday citizens have to obtain information. They would have to learn about how to make technical matters accessible for a general audience. They would have to learn to evaluate information sources. Some might go on to be the campus equivalent of professional journalists, working for a student paper, radio station, or television outlet. Others might become bloggers or just better online commenters on the blogs of others. Perhaps some would form expert networks that would check on the accuracy of stories in mainstream media or offer their services in vetting professionally produced stories within their areas of expertise. Is something like this imaginable? Maybe even in, say, a state capital, where there would be lots and lots of government stories to tell at local, state and regional levels of decision making? Indeed, if I am on to something here, might Ohio State not be the perfect place to launch this educational vision?

Please let that question now reside for a moment in the part of your brain you do not need in order to listen to my explanation of the Knight Commission.

The Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy was organized in 2008 "to recommend policy reforms and other public initiatives to help American communities better meet their information needs." The idea for such an initiative hatched at a 2007 summer program called the Forum on Communications and Society, which is sponsored annually by the Communications and Society Program of the Aspen Institute, a Washington think tank. I was not present for the occasion, but I take it that what prompted the idea was a combination of anxiety about the economic crises facing mainstream media and a conviction that new technologies were simultaneously creating new opportunities for public information and new challenges in terms of understanding the roles, responsibilities, and ethics of journalists. The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation agreed to fund the initiative, enabling the Aspen Institute to recruit an exceptionally diverse Commission of thoughtful leaders from the worlds of media, public policy, and community development. They were tasked with figuring out: What are the information needs of communities in a democracy? Are they being met in the United States? If not, what can be done about it?

I was fortunate to be asked to work as a consultant to the Aspen Institute and to serve as executive director for the Commission. It apparently helped that I was not a conventional "media person," because the Knight Foundation did not want the Commission's inquiry job to be seen as "how to save the local newspaper" or some such thing. What I brought to the table was my research background in government's use of new media to involve the public more directly in actual policy making, and my administrative experience in organizing substantial interdisciplinary projects. My job until about a month ago was to direct the Commission's research, program the Commission's meetings and community forums, and serve as lead drafter of what became the Commission's final report, Informing Communities: Sustaining Democracy in the Digital Age. (Of course, I was part of a sizeable team in implementing these tasks, but I should give special mention to our project manager, Erin Silliman, who is herself a native of Columbus, Ohio.)

There are three things I found especially exciting about the Commission and the direction of its thinking. First, the Commission was asked to look at information needs through the eyes of the individual citizen, not through the lens of any media or other institution. Its product is thus not a nostalgic report about "saving" or "preserving." It's an analysis of what citizens and communities need in the digital age, and the Commission's recommendations proceed with those needs taken as paramount.