From Fargo to Austin, and Boston to the Bay Area, 10 public stations across the country are now poised to ramp up their innovation capacity. They'll be incubating projects led by winners of the Localore competition -- announced today -- who include independent and station-based producers, distinguished documentary filmmakers, gamers, data journalists, and front-edge developers.

Localore, produced by the Association of Independents in Radio (AIR), is a $2 million project that tasks independent producers with leading collaborative teams to invent new forms of reporting and storytelling. Localore's mantra is "go outside" -- their productions will reach beyond public media's core platforms and traditional audiences. More than $1 million comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to support the lead producers in developing 9-12 month projects with the stations, with additional funding from the MacArthur Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Wyncote Foundation.

Localore is the second in a series of projects spearheaded by AIR that tap producers to reinvent public media, building on the legacy of the successful Makers Quest 2.0 project (MQ2). This time around, makers weren't the only ones submitting their big ideas. Stations were also invited to strut their stuff, on the Station Runway, where 61 of them posted short, evocative audio and video profiles to entice producers to collaborate with them.

The result was an unexpectedly moving portrait of a diverse industry seeking new talent and strategies to engage a broader public. Sparking broad interest, Localore.net has drawn in nearly 7,500 unique visitors since its launch in mid-September.

the winners

Working with a Selection Committee, AIR matched promising producers with stations and then made the final selections:

• Jennifer Brandel -- WBEZ, Chicago: Curious City: Let's Get Answers will prompt audience members to pose, rank and help to answer relevant questions about community and news topics through online and mobile tools. Designed to democratize editorial research and story selection, the project will make the reporting process transparent at every step, and surface key issues for further exploration.

• Anayansi Diaz-Cortes -- KCRW, Los Angeles: How do immigrants' ideas of self and place shift in an era of always-on communication? Multiplatform documentary Sonic Trace will explore the relationship of Latin American immigrants to their home communities. Diaz-Cortes will gather stories from both sides of the border, with a focus on three evocative places: "Tres Puntos" in L.A., Koreatown kitchens where Oaxacan cooks are rising in popularity, and a mobile recording booth in local food trucks.

• Julia Drapkin -- KVNF, Paonia, Colo.: iSeeChange is a crowdsourced reporting project that will draw from participants' everyday observations about shifts in the weather. Inspired by successful "citizen science" projects, Drapkin will elicit photos, quotes and art submitted by local ranchers, coal miners, and others vitally affected by environmental shifts -- showcasing debates about climate through a mobile documentary unit, weekly broadcasts, and multimedia explorations of each season.

• Ken Eklund -- Twin Cites Public Television, Minneapolis: What should today's high school seniors know before they head out on their own? This question will drive Get Real Ed, a participatory alternate reality game that asks users to provide real-world solutions for the nation's pressing dropout crisis. The game will revolve around five fictional "OpOuts" led by the strong-willed Edwina, whose interactions with participants will both shape the game's trajectory and prompt lively dialogue about the state of U.S. education.

• Delaney Hall -- KUT, Austin, Texas: Beyond Austin's much-documented music scene lie the "third places" where musicians regularly meet, perform and commune: front porches, backyards, garages, sidewalks and churches. Austin Music Map (AMM) is a collaborative documentary and performance series exploring Austin's diverse sonic subcultures, and offering users a digital map to discover and learn more about such spots. The project will culminate with a celebratory music festival.

• Todd Melby -- Prairie Public Broadcasting, Fargo, N.D.: Through embedded reporting from the oil patches and "mancamps" of North Dakota, Black Gold Boom will catalyze discussion about the local and national impacts of the region's rush to drill. An interactive site featuring multimedia portraits of workers who have streamed to the state and the families they left behind will accompany a related photo exhibit mounted in local businesses. Data-driven reporting and mapping of active oil wells will provide deeper context for individuals' stories.

• Erica Mu -- KALW, San Francisco: A roving crowdsourced storytelling project based in the Bay Area and Oakland, Pop-Up Radio aims to build connections between these disparate communities through a series of playful events and broadcasts. Mu will gather stories in 2-month cycles around six themes -- via a mobile recording booth, online, and in concert with community partners such as schools, youth media programs, libraries and barbershops.

• Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar -- WYSO, Yellow Springs, Ohio: These veteran documentary filmmakers and Dayton residents will produce a participatory documentary, examining how residents of Dayton -- one of America's "fastest dying cities" -- are reinventing themselves in a new and unstable economy. Producers will ask residents: "Who was I before the bottom fell out? What happened that changed my life? Who am I becoming, or trying to become now?"

• Nikki Silva and Davia Nelson (the Kitchen Sisters) -- KQED Radio and Television, San Francisco: Northern California is America's ground zero for innovation. Two of public media's most influential native institutions join forces to bring together a young, diverse collaborative team from inside and outside public media to bridge dynamic communities of invention in new ways. They'll tap the worlds of interactive media, Berkeley School of Information, transmedia documentarians, and young ethnic producers to create THE MAKING OF ... an exciting, yearlong initiative reflecting the universality of craft across culture, ethnicity, and socioeconomic divides.

• Val Wang -- WGBH, Boston: Planet Takeout highlights the role that Chinese restaurants play as vital crossroads between cultures in neighborhoods in Boston and beyond. This participatory, multiplatform documentary project aims to break down barriers between the Chinese immigrants running these hyperlocal establishments, and the diverse customers they serve, through mobile storytelling, face-to-face dialogues, and an interactive site documenting the restaurants' eclectic visual flavor.

A New Breed

These producers represent a "new breed," observes Localore Executive Editor Noland Walker, "one that can perhaps best be described as a 'skilled adaptor.'" They are willing to make sacrifices: to move away from their homes, and to bring together and lead a team of collaborators in a new way to make something that will benefit the station and local community.

Mounting this competition was just the first step -- now that the winners have been announced, the real work of reinvention begins. Producers will begin launching the projects in March, and we'll be tracking their progress on AIR's blog, across Twitter via the #Localore tag, and on Facebook.

Watch this space -- once things get rolling I'll be back with an update.

Jessica Clark is AIR's Media Strategist, and an internationally recognized reporter and expert on the transformation of public interest journalism. She writes regularly about public media innovation and policy for MediaShift.

Abumrad, the co-host of WNYC's ground-breaking show Radiolab, advised the audience at last week's Public Radio Programming Conference (PRPC) to seek out this life-or-death sensation. Innovation isn't always obvious, he explained in his keynote address, and can elicit backlash from those comfortable with the familiar. You can't innovate by talking about it, only by doing, which can involve a painful "radical uncertainty." Sometimes you can only recognize promising new directions in retrospect.

Abumrad's keynote, "Change, and Why It's So Hard," kicked off three lively days of debate on: Should public radio change? Can it? And if so, how?

Opening the doors

Abumrad, a lauded producer who has painstakingly carved out a space for experimentation with support from a big urban station, falls on one end of this debate. On the other end are program directors in smaller markets who have few resources or staff hours for research and development, and don't want to alarm current listeners -- many of whom count on NPR's flagship news programs, and donate accordingly. These stations confront the infamous innovator's dilemma: They have found a successful formula for serving a core constituency, and find it hard to recognize or explore the value of disruptive new approaches.

But, with public service under the funding microscope, and the country's demographics shifting sharply, serving that educated, well-heeled core constituency may no longer be enough. On panels, in the hallways, and online, PRPC attendees grappled with the variety of ways in which public radio needs to expand -- to younger, more diverse listeners; across new digital platforms; in terms of tone and style; in quality and quantity of local reporting.

Several of these discussions were convened by the Association of Independents in Radio (AIR), for which I now serve as the media strategist. AIR executive Sue Schardt worked with PRPC organizers to both invite independent producers to attend, and develop relevant sessions that would bring them face-to-face with station programmers and funders. With support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), AIR also provided "New Voices" scholarships to up-and-coming producers from around the country.

Schardt herself served as the moderator for a panel titled "Beyond Age, Color, Creed: A New Public Radio Conversation." While the panel brought together a range of perspectives, several speakers and audience members of color spoke frankly about how they were leery to tell friends they worked for public broadcasting because they didn't feel it represented their communities. Panelist Jasmin Garsd, of NPR's Alt.Latino, noted that when her boyfriend wore an NPR T-shirt she gave him, his friends joked that it stood for "Not Puerto Rican."

While the line garnered laughs, similar themes about representation and exclusion were echoed in a panel about how to appeal to millennials. You can start, said Snap Judgment host Glynn Washington, by "not calling them millennials," and by paying them to produce content with a new sound and for new platforms.

Enter Localore

So where might support for such innovation come from? At the conference, AIR offered one answer by launching Localore, a project designed to support 10 independent-minded radio, TV or digital producers to work with 10 public stations across the country. The goal? To increase their capacity for innovation in ways that will connect them more deeply to their communities.

During Thursday's launch event, CPB CEO Patricia Harrison announced a $1.25 million grant for Localore, much of which will go directly to the producers and their collaborative teams to support 9- to 12-month projects that go outside of traditional platforms and storytelling routines, and create new public media life forms. Localore -- also funded by the MacArthur and Wyncote foundations and the NEA -- builds upon the successes of AIR's earlier MQ2 project.

In her remarks in Baltimore, Harrison spoke of producers who will, as part of the "public media family," mine for "stories that are hidden treasures of insight, edginess, compassion, anger, humor, understanding, and in the process connect us to neighbors and neighborhoods beyond our own."

The videos submitted to Localore's Station Runway are already painting a vivid picture of diverse communities from coast to coast:

Producers and Stations: Apply for AIR's Localore Initiative from AIR on Vimeo.

Both stations and producers are encouraged to apply by Nov. 10; more than 20 stations have already committed to submit a 3- to 5-minute piece of media to Localore's Station Runway. (A webinar on the project happened at 1:00 ET today; catch the replay.)

A National Groundswell

The odds that Localore producers can succeed in developing new and spreadable models of public media storytelling are bolstered by the growing network of makers, funders, and outlets striving to re-envision local news.

The project's name is a play on the term "locavore" -- someone committed to eating fresh, regionally produced and flavorful foods. And just as is the case with the local food movement, there's a national groundswell to forge new chains of production and distribution, and meaningful connections between news producers and consumers. Localore aims to inspire a similar taste for reporting that's sourced from nearby, prepared carefully and consciously, and good for both mind and community.

Supporters of such bottom-up, tech-enabled approaches to public media transformation were in full force at the PRPC conference -- leaders from the Third Coast Festival, PRX, Mozilla, the Public Insight Network, the National Center for Media Engagement, and others, including veteran independent producer Jay Allison, who gave the closing "benediction."

As befitting a sermon, Allison promised to offer equal parts chiding and inspiration, and to ultimately send attendees away with a sense of redemption. He praised many public radio makers' and programmers' commitment to mission, but noted that it was easy to "get lazy" when audience numbers and money become the key goals. His advice? Hire a person who scares you, and "do something too creative."

"Listeners like us for our news, but they love us for our heart," Allison said. "All of this is utopian of course, but so what? We don't have to succeed in building a utopia; we just need to get closer."

Jessica Clark is the Media Strategist for AIR, and a Senior Fellow at American University's Center for Social Media. She is the co-author, with Tracy Van Slyke, of Beyond the Echo Chamber (New Press, 2010).

The 465-page report (see full report, embedded below) is the result of 600-plus interviews, hearings and reams of research conducted over 18 months. It represents the most ambitious attempt yet to come to terms with the consequences of the current media transformation. It's a synthetic and comprehensive look at the entire ecosystem -- commercial, non-commercial and user-generated; across print, broadcast, online and mobile -- making it a tremendous resource for advocates, journalists, entrepreneurs and media educators.

Steven Waldman, journalist, editor and digital news entrepreneur, was lead author for this project and worked with a distinguished team of experts from across the country to compile both capsule histories of each sector and an atlas of current facts and figures. See the gallery of graphs from the report below, assembled by Josh Stearns of the media reform organization Free Press, for a sense of the range and depth of the research. (Overwhelmed? A two-page summary of findings and recommendations is also available here.)

Trouble for Local Reporting

The primary conclusion echoes that of many recent reports: Amid vibrant experimentation by a broad range of news producers, local reporting is in the biggest trouble. There are less ad dollars for newspapers, fewer reporters on the beat for both print and broadcast, fewer enterprise investigations, and more "hamsterized" reporters, all resulting in a gap in the ability to hold governments and corporations to account.

The report also represents an unprecedented effort by the FCC to take stock of the results of previous policy decisions supporting non-commercial and community media. Rather than focusing solely on public broadcasting as the answer to commercial news woes, as many recent analyses have, this report acknowledges the growth and dynamism of a broader non-profit news sector:

More accurate than "public broadcasting," the term "non-profit media" better captures the full range of not-for-profit news and media organizations. Some non-profit media groups are affiliated with public broadcasting, some not; some receive government funds, most do not. But what these groups have in common is this: they plow excess revenue back into the organization, and they have public-interest missions that involve aspirations toward independent journalism.

The report's authors see the growth and vigor in this sector as promising, and even have some kind words to say about public access stations, often dismissed or left entirely out of the local news equation. However, they also confirm that news production by non-commercial outlets is still not sufficient to fill the yawning gap in local reporting that has opened up over the past decade.

What's more, stable business models for such outlets have not yet emerged, and the federal funding that undergirds the largest swath of non-commercial outlets, public broadcasters, is under political threat. Corporation for Public Broadcasting funds that were supporting digital innovation were slashed this year, as were funds earmarked for buildout of new station infrastructure.

To add insult to injury, Waldman & Co. note, public interest obligations for commercial stations have been defanged, offering no way to ensure diverse or high-quality local public affairs coverage. Those requirements that remain are rarely enforced.

No Bold Solutions

Yet, bafflingly, despite identifying these clear market gaps, the report stops short of offering bold solutions, perhaps in reaction to the currently charged political and funding climate. Instead, as several commentaries -- such as this piece in GigaOm -- note, the resounding message to the media industry is "don't look to us, we can't help you." GigaOm's Matthew Ingram writes:

One of the biggest trends that the FCC flags as important in the report is the loss of what it calls "accountability" journalism, in which news outlets on a local and/or national level cover the government and thereby act as a check on power. As more than one person has noted, this conclusion isn't exactly a news flash that required government funding and two years of research to unearth, but is arguably still worth highlighting, since it's a gap that has yet to be filled. And what does the FCC think can be done to fill it? Not much.

Commissioner Michael J. Copps objected emphatically to this laissez-faire approach at the report's release; he was the first to observe that "the policy recommendations ... don't track the diagnosis."

For some conservatives and the entrepreneurially minded, that's just fine. "I think I'm relieved that, on first scan, the FCC report on journalism recommends little," tweeted CUNY's director of interactive journalism Jeff Jarvis. As Waldman explained at the release event, a primary goal of the report's recommendations was to protect the First Amendment, a priority that sits well with libertarian commentator Adam Thieirer. He blogged his initial reaction at the Technology Liberation Front site:

For those of us who care about the First Amendment, media freedom, and free-market experimentation with new media business models, it feels like we've dodged a major bullet. The report does not recommend sweeping regulatory actions that might have seen Washington inserting itself into the affairs of the press or bailing out dying business models.

Spurring Conversation

So, what kind of remedies should the report have offered? Of course, I have my own ideas about how taxpayer dollars can best support civic engagement and innovation -- many of which I've reported on in the pages of MediaShift. I also have my own stake in this report, which cites research that I've conducted with colleagues at the Center for Social Media and the New America Foundation -- see the annotations in the embedded version of the report below for some highlights.

But, as several observers noted, the report will do its job if it spurs broader conversation about how best to support the evolution of news. That process has already begun.

Read more:

Using Storify, I've compiled reactions currently being shared via Twitter.

And, you can read the full document here:

Jessica Clark is a Senior Fellow at American University's Center for Social Media, a Knight Media Policy Fellow at the New America Foundation, and is currently consulting with the Association of Independents in Radio on a forthcoming initiative.

Given the toxic tone of the debate over the last few weeks, neither public media leaders nor station staff are eager to go on the record with their concerns. But behind the scenes, they fret that the most vulnerable dollars are those funding cross-platform, mobile and participatory public media experiments.

Stations have begun to hunker down and trim back in anticipation of not just federal but state cuts, as the national drive to pull funds has given courage to local legislators eager to slash spending. Additional federal funding that had been dedicated to supporting stations' transitions from analog to digital broadcast has more recently been used to fuel both forward-looking news projects and cross-system infrastructure-building for networked public media. Now it's on the chopping block. Current and immediate appropriations -- also still under threat in the budget debate -- have no money explicitly earmarked for either.

Conservatives' (and even some progressives') ideological objections to public broadcasting -- that it's too elitist, too liberal, too centralized, too vulnerable to government pressures -- could prompt legislators to decide that future taxpayer funding will focus on maintaining the pipes, rather than supporting what flows through them. This means certain kinds of innovation, including cross-platform, digitization of archives, creation of metadata and interconnection schemes, could continue unscathed. But this would still leave stations and national players scrambling for production support from users, foundations and underwriters, each already squeezed by the economic climate and carrying their own risks of biases. This would radically shrink resources for a different, riskier form of innovation: crafting new forms of expression and engagement practices that reach publics not currently well served by either commercial or public media.

New Experiments

It is exactly public media's mandate to inform and involve the whole public -- not just targeted partisan clusters or market niches -- that drives such content innovation. Beloved shows such as "Sesame Street" and "This American Life" broke new ground in terms of voice, aesthetics and inclusion of differing perspectives. They served new waves of users, influencing commercial formats in the process.

A new generation of such experiments was on display at last weekend's IMA-SXSW confab. There was Glynn Washington's fun and edgy Snap Judgment ("storytelling with a beat") to the user-informed Public Insight Network, to Frontline's multiplatform and collaborative investigative documentaries, to the Public Media Corps, which we're incubating at the Center for Social Media.

It's not yet clear if or how these and other related projects might enrich and influence our media ecosystem. But if they lose support, the country will lose the chance to find out.

Such losses could mean sure and slow (or maybe not-so-slow) death for the sector. They'll drive a brain-drain of younger, more creative and wired staffers just at the point when Boomers are beginning to retire in droves out of stations and national networks. They'll choke off funding for independent radio, film and online producers. They'll disgust foundations and major donors who have poured millions into trying to jump-start the shift from public broadcasting into public media 2.0. What's more, they'll render public media mute in a national conversation that is increasingly 24-7 and cross-platform.

Producing for radio and TV is still important, but is no longer the center of gravity when it comes to democratic deliberation.

Wide-Ranging, Vociferous Debate

The debate over defunding itself demonstrates the speed and fluidity with which advocates and newsmakers harness new technologies to cover issues and score political points. James O'Keefe's "sting" videos didn't break on a national news source -- they started on a conservative website and migrated into newspaper and broadcast coverage.

Over the past month, much of the commentary and analysis of defunding proposals and NPR controversies has been taking place on blogs and in the digital pages of print and online magazines. Print may be dead, but text is alive and well -- spirited coverage by sources including the Atlantic, Slate, and multiple independent weeklies across the country -- have all been aggregated and shared on the fly by public media supporters and opponents alike. (I've been tracking many of them here.)

Twitter in particular has been on fire with posts related to NPR. Streaming non-stop through my TweetDeck are snarky comments, deep analysis from experts, links to all manner of media, and questions from perplexed audience members. The very fact that you're reading this piece on the PBS site suggests your own engagement in this contemporary public sphere, and the need for touchstones in a sea of conflicting and variably sourced claims.

Reflecting and grappling productively with this wide-ranging and vociferous debate -- previously streamlined and managed by gatekeepers but now visible to anyone with access to a search engine -- requires not just new platforms, but new skills. As Jay Rosen suggested in the wake of the NPR sting video, public media makers may need to learn to practice pluralism and transparency rather than lay claim to an impossible "view from nowhere" stance.

For many legislators, less-plugged-in users, and station managers, however, this expansive, contested and lively public sphere is still invisible. For them, the public broadcasting debate hinges on other factors: taxpayer cost, objectivity, educational content. They often fail to see the overarching function of public media, regardless of platform, to provide spaces, perspectives and facts that help Americans flourish and self-govern. The need for such a function becomes most visible in crisis conditions, as with the revolt in Egypt. As this example suggests, next-generation public media shouldn't just bring content to citizens, but help them learn to filter and interpret the glut of information they encounter each day, and to make their own contributions to key civic deliberations, unencumbered by either commercial or government imperatives.

Change the Conversation

It's time to change the conversation about public media from one of scarcity to one of abundance. We still have incredible, unprecedented access to low-cost tools for production, distribution, and connection. How can nearly half a century of public investment in media content and infrastructure be retooled to direct such rich resources to address pressing public concerns?

At the Center for Social Media, we've been exploring such questions for several years, and with support from the Ford Foundation, have worked with Ellen Goodman of the Rutgers Institute for Information Policy and Law to create a video imagining how different members of an imaginary family might better use public media:

Other proposals for reforming the system have been making the rounds. For example, see Stephen Hill's paper, Funding the Future of Public Media. "The goal is a comprehensive, tiered public media service that serves the end user the way they like best, on any screen or digital platform, wherever they are," he writes. "In practice this means a range of interactivity, from passive listening on fully programmed channels, to customized on-demand service, to intensive interaction for high level user requirements."

But building such next-generation networks will require not just money, or innovators, but full public participation and buy-in to a new vision. What do you wish public media could do for you, your family, and your community? Join the dialogue with your own comments, below, or on Twitter at #pubmedia.

Jessica Clark directs the Future of Public Media Project at American University's Center for Social Media, and is a Knight Media Policy Fellow at the New America Foundation.

Inside the Austin Convention Center, where most of the conference was staged, pillars are baroquely barnacled with multiple generations of posters, flyers, and business cards -- many of which sport cryptic QR codes designed to lead smartphones to promotional sites.

Outside, "booth babes" in skintight leggings shill for digital scavenger hunts, iPad drawings, and Axe Body Spray. Barkers on one street corner offer free Monster energy drinks; on another corner, free coffee with branded mugs; and a third, free shots of premium whiskey.

Sunday night, looped on free drinks and rebuffed from attending the Mashable party, I stop to buy a hot dog from a street vendor before heading back to my hotel. Before I can eat it, a photographer asks me to pose with it, displaying the "Appkin" it's wrapped in, embossed with yet another QR code (see image below).

Paper, online, and mobile versions of the schedule tout a staggering array of panels, screenings and parties dissecting the latest interactive trends, from the sublime, to the ridiculous, right on into the dumb. Memes abound -- Charlie Sheen is a notably popular target -- and everyone I hang with makes jokes about having an "app for that."

Casino-Like Exhibit Hall

Sick of tweeting speakers' every utterance, I wander through the exhibition hall, tricked out like a high-tech casino. There, George Dy, the co-founder of GetContactInfo, offers to sign me up for a service that will track the analytics of how my electronic business card spreads.

I decline, only to encounter numerous other pleas to give up a bit too much of my personal info. BurdaStyle, an online sewing community, provides a postcard for me to record my body measurements.

BodyMedia.com offers temporary tattoos of their wristband device, which will "change your life" by tracking various biometrics; another company named Biosensus offers a blood alcohol content estimator app for iDevices. A project called Appthropology.com offers to tell you "what your apps say about you!"

Some companies just provide TMI (too much information) about themselves -- like Moodboard, an app for collaborative design which claims to have "wild sex with the cloud."

Tucked modestly into the corner, an American Civil Liberties Union table offers white papers and postcards warning of the privacy dangers of all this data mining. I join up in exchange for a T-shirt exhorting "Demand Your DotRights." Then I quickly disregard their warnings and go back to compulsively checking my phone for news of that evening's parties.

But it isn't just the ACLU expressing some apprehension about the encroachment of digital media on our personal space. I soon run into the British news organization the Guardian. They were at the festival with both a big booth and a paper newspaper (yes, on newsprint!), which offered yet another gloss on "the end of the Internet" -- this time, in the form of the merging of the digital and the physical through augmented reality, "gamification," and biomimicry.

Guardian reporter Oliver Burkeman seems more than a bit skeptical of these buzzwords, describing gaming-for-good darling Jane McGonigal's remarks as not just "cringe-inducing" but also embarrassing and "a little sad."

Setting Boundaries

And even at SXSWi there's some boundary-setting going on. In the screening for Page One -- a beautifully shot and nuanced portrait of New York Times media reporters -- I check my phone for an incoming text, only to be chastised by the viewer sitting next to me: "Put that away please, Jesus!"

The film itself is a love letter to long-form, in-depth, paid reporting; the outreach campaign will urge viewers to "check your sources."

In a session on "Social Media as Sci-Fi," ever-wired moderator and io9 editor Annalee Newitz refuses to present anything on-screen, instead saying "we'll talk like human beings."

Panelist Molly Crabapple expresses her dystopian fear that all this gamification will abolish any real work, reducing us to earning through contests like the "Wal-Mart box-stacking challenge."

To my left I spot noted sci-fi author and futurist Bruce Sterling jotting down a few notes -- in a lined notebook. A trend?

What does SXSWi have to tell us about our shared future? Back in the exhibition hall, I check with the fortune-teller automaton set up at one of the booths for insight, but don't learn much except for my lucky color.

Still, it's hard to be totally pessimistic after seeing speakers like Ze Frank, whose "Songs You Already Know" project demonstrates simple, gorgeous lessons about empathy and tech-enabled human connection. Walking through sunny Austin to meet some friends, I hum his chillout song, an "audio hug" written for a woman feeling dark and anxious, and recorded by multiple online volunteers.

"Just breathe," the song advises. My migraine begins to ease.

Jessica Clark directs the Future of Public Media Project at American University's Center for Social Media, and is a Knight Media Policy Fellow at the New America Foundation.

Fueling excitement was a new collaboration: The IMA preceded and then flowed into the interactive track of the SXSW festival on the 12th. Attendees at a Knight Foundation-supported array of SXSWi panels on news innovation and content strategy joined the mix.

Despite looming cuts and recent controversies, participants seemed eager both to learn about a raft of recent public media experiments and collaborations, and to meet their online friends and followers in the flesh. This annual public media conference, IMA, has recently been revitalized with new leadership and strategy, and felt much hipper and more cohesive than the last iteration of the conference in 2009.

But don't just take my word for it. Here's a glimpse at the conversations through the eyes of attendees -- noted in bold -- and my own running Twitter coverage at @beyondbroadcast. You can follow a larger discussion of both conferences by going to the #imaconf and #sxsw hashtags on Twitter.

The run-up

Geez -- pack for IMA or glue myself to the screen to track blowback on Schiller's resignation? #pubmedia, I can't keep up!

@rbole (Robert Bole, CPB): Getting in the shute: first #imaconf re: #pubmedia analytics, then #SXSW on open APIs and finally #mediafuturenow on digital journalism

@nextgenradio (Doug Mitchell) : @beyondbroadcast Plenty to talk about amongst the faithful at SXSWi. Leaving today for Austin.

Opening panel: Innovation Anxiety

@martineric (Eric Michael Martin) : RT @LCKnapp: Jeannie Ericson encourages #pubmedia to adopt some Texas swagger while @ #sxsw2011 & #imaconf in Austin

@aschweig (Adam Schweigert, WOSU) : @joaquinalvarado: public service media seeks to identify need and engage with communities to solve problems

PBS and NPR Local/National Strategies

Kinsey Wilson (of NPR) at IMA conf: "I am here to tell you that NPR will keep moving forward."

PBS incubation lab is building directory of station tech staff for collab projects.

At #iMAConf, #pubcorps is announcing "America's Next Top Public Media Model" contest.

Learn more about these Top Model projects and the Kindred collaboration platform at publicmediacorps.org.

Latoya [Peterson] from #pubcorps says that "at this moment, #pubmedia needs drastic action if it's going to survive."

@rbole: @timolsonsf (Tim Olson, KQED) sending picture of Next Top Model at #imaconf

Beyond the Stream: Mobile Apps that Matter

mobile apps panel: Andrew Kuklewicz of PRX (@kookster), Colleen Wilson, Seth Lind, Demian Perry on which/how/why

Wilson: Interesting question re. geolocation app: "How can we get people lost?" Give people rich locative experience

Wilson: PBS/NPR already have streaming apps -- station apps need to take advantage of local assets/engagement

Seth Lind of This American Life: Exciting to be able to feature individual stories on iPad app, offer live content

Lind: "Thinking about mobile has pushed us to think about users way more actively, and it's just been great."

@kookster: Mobile is not as forgiving; you have to think about every pixel and what the user is seeing.

@kookster: variability of both networks and devices makes mobile development trickier than web by an order of magnitude.

@kookster: "people feel entitled to have amazing things in their pockets," & will tell you loudly if you fail to deliver

Lind: Users find push notifications offensive, especially when they are asking for donations

Wilson: proximity is key--finding what's near you now: discounts, stories, members

Lunchtime Keynote

@mediaengage Top 10 #pubmedia Tech Trends, courtesy of @webbmedia at @IntMediaAssn #imaConf http://wp.me/pUN9X-a4

Re-thinking public TV

On the platform: Chris Hastings (@chrishast) and Bob Lyons from WGBH re. "Re-thinking Public TV" | http://www.worldcompass.org

Lyons: World is a national digital TV channel that is serving as a platform for independent and international #pubmedia makers

#worldchan website has a different take/voice than the channel -- younger, multicultural, multiplatform, participatory #pubmedia

#worldchan is arranged thematically, organizing a variety of content on the channel and online. Sample theme: Skin You're In #pubmedia

WorldCompass site just got redesigned for the 3rd time in 6 months; will rebrand again/ iterating on the fly #pubmedia #worldchan

(PBS MediaShift recently covered the redesign of WorldCompass.org.)

#worldchan is demonstrating multiplatform branding and cross-silo collaboration in #pubmedia; example: live video from The Takeaway on site

Lyons: the "visual vocabulary" of seeing the reporter unshaven and on the beat at 6:00 in the morning was exciting

Lyons: show's audio morphing into other things: audio slideshows, Snap Judgement multiplatform/animated storytelling, #pubmedia #worldchan

Lyons: #worldchan offering periodic "callouts" for public content. @chrishast elaborates. Goals: Incubate & support new creators #pubmedia

@chrishast: More goals for #worldchan--innovate new production models, bottom-up storytelling, solution-based civic discourse #pubmedia

@chrishast: Will be doing public callouts via WGBH Lab (lab.wgbh.org) to populate #worldchan #pubmedia

@chrishast current call is for videos re. gay rights, inspired by Stonewall anniversary #worldchan #pubmedia

@chrishast "In some ways we're creating a pipeline for independent makers that doesn't exist, in addition to PBS" #worldchan #pubmedia

@chrishast "It's not just about creating a platform for discourse, it's about solution-based discourse...not the rant" #pubmedia

@MediaFunders: Is it enough 4 public media 2 ask content makers to preformed mold? How can public truly enter the space?

@martineric: blog coverage of Re-Thinking Public TV: The World Channel from #SXSW Interactive http://worldcompass.org/blog

Open Wide: New Models for Public Media

Back at #SXSW -- at a panel on new models in #pubmedia, with Orlando Bagwell, Sue Schardt, Jacquie Jones and Greg Pak. How to innovate?

Bagwell: How to reinvent public service for a multiplatform environment?
Jones: describing trajectory of NBPC (National Black Programming Consortium)

Jones: every year that she's been at NBPC, there's been "a watershed event that galvanized an African-American public"

Jones: Began by supporting diverse producers, but then realized #pubmedia wasn't reaching minority audiences; how to create relationship?

Jones: realized there was no dedicated producer corps within #pubmedia creating content relevant to minority communities -- how to address?

Jones: next step was to create the #pubcorps in order to build linkages and skills among young producers and community/#pubmedia orgs

Learn more about the #pubcorps at publicmediacorps.org

Jones: "There's still a lot of opportunity to engage new voices and have a real impact in #pubmedia...even though we're in dicey times"

Jones: #pubmedia produced by young people may look very different: games, citizen journalism training, etc. Need to be reflected in content

Bagwell: Is there a possibility for young ideas to lead the future of #pubmedia? Jones: Yes, but it's really challenging, different process

Jones: "We learned that we have a lot more to learn"

Bagwell: a recurring issue in #pubmedia now is "how do you find the public where they are"

Sue Schardt (@Schardt) from Association of Independents in Radio (@AIRmedia) talking about vibrant, diversified universe of makers/content

@Schardt: "How in #pubmedia can we harness this invention and energy" of indy producers? MQ2 project: demo project exploring this

@Schardt: #pubmedia #sxsw You have to balance structure with creativity. Learn more about MQ2 here: http://bit.ly/Spreading_the_Zing

@Schardt: We don't throw out the existing infrastructure, but we have to reflect humanity in a relevant, meaningful way

@Schardt: It's a tremendous challege to produce authentic #pubmedia at this moment when many institutions are risk-averse

@Schardt: Every one of the MQ2 projects took themselves outside of the structure to deep into communities. #pubmedia led us there

Jay Rosen: Bloggers vs. Journalists Redux

Listening to @jayrosen_nyu deconstruct the psychology of journalists and bloggers & why they love to hate each other

@jayrosen_nyu: the "fantasy of replacement" is a phantom of journalists' fears re. waning business model.

@jayrosen_nyu: journalists dismiss bloggers as "compulsive," "random"--displaced anger at a public that doesn't value journalism

@jayrosen_nyu: what do journalists have against basements, anyway? pajamas? flies in the face of intrepid journalist stereotypes

@jayrosen_nyu: if it were self-evident that commercial model is better, drawing contrasts w/bloggers would be uneccessary, yes?

I always marvel at the skill with which @jayrosen_nyu brands himself and revisits his own crusades to clever effect

@jayrosen_nyu: bloggers turn critique around to claim that big media should be responsible so they can slack off. but press is us

@jayrosen_nyu: "discarded parts [of old news habits] live on in the subconscious...and have come roaring back with blogging"

@jayrosen_nyu: i.e.--Bloggers are the return of the repressed

@jayrosen_nyu: voice is what you take out of modern professional journalism--if you succeed you might one day earn a column

@jayrosen_nyu: "Bloggers disrupt the moral hierarchy" by jumping straight to voice without the discipline of flat reporting

@jayrosen_nyu: It's time for some psychiatry with journalists--to "get them to tell a better story" about themselves & the world

@jayrosen_nyu prescription: bloggers, learn some basic standards. journalists: get flexible. "mutualization"

@jayrosen_nyu: In psychology, you don't get over the things that have wounded you; instead you can open up space for motion

@jayrosen_nyu: "freedom of the press is a public possession," the right for citizens to print their opinions

@jayrosen_nyu Wants NPR to drop ideology of "view from nowhere" and replace it with pluralism & transparency

Editors' note: Read Jay Rosen's discussion of the attempts to defund public media.

@jayrosen_nyu: "so-called objectivity is a very expensive system to maintain" b/c anything that pierces it threatens outlet

@jayrosen_nyu: The only place we actuallly define journalists is via shield laws and velvet ropes

How PBS and NPR Can Support Local Journalism

Reporting from #sxswlocal panel on future of local w/ @kdando @tgdavidson @janjlab @amyshaw9net Photo: http://yfrog.com/gzfkcksj h/t @jlab

Last #pubmedia panel of the day: On what PBS/NPR are doing in the local news space. @janjlab talking about variety in news ecosystem

@janjlab: lots of news innovation happening in silos; not networked in a way that can amplify news/info

Amy Shaw from the Nine Network in St. Louis talking about Homeland project, which we covered here: http://to.pbs.org/9Q6Ja0

Shaw: "I wish there was a more holistic perspective" about how to work in an community news ecosystem

Shaw: people need to "tuck their peacock feathers in at the door" and think about what's good for engaging community

Shaw: people need to be nudged around creating dialogue around stalled, intractable issues

RT @PatNarciso: Nine Network on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/STL9Network

@amyshaw9net: the master narrative about immigration is demonization and polarization of "undocumented"--wanted to deepen issue

@amyshaw9net: they are training people how to use flip cameras: young people get tech but not story; older folks the opposite

@pubmlicmic: Schaffer: Need to end mentality that once funding is over, project is over

@mediaengage: Great wisdom shared by @janjlab @kdando @amyshaw9net & @tgdavidson (and @nicolehollway!) at today's #SXSWlocal #pubmedia session

@jacklerner: "#pubmedia can help local news by being a hub, a partner, or an innovator." - @JLab's @janjlab #SXSWlocal #sxsw

And onwards...

@CJERICSON: Video or audio of #imaconf coming soon. Audio this weekend. Video next week. For all attendees & members.

@g5member: Great to meet so many of public media's creative and dedicated minds at #imaconf. Now, #sxsw time!

Full disclosure: In my role as the director of the Ford Foundation-funded Future of Public Media Project, I am working with the National Black Programing Consortium to incubate their Public Media Corps project via the Center for Social Media, and have also worked with PBS/NPR on the PubCamps and Association of Independents in Radio on a study of their MQ2 project. More details on all of these here: futureofpublicmedia.net.

CORRECTION: One of the tweets above has been corrected to reflect that it was blogger Latoya Peterson -- not singer Latoya Jackson -- who participated in the Public Media Corps judging panel for the next Top Public Media Model. Apologies!

Jessica Clark directs the Future of Public Media Project at American University's Center for Social Media, and is a Knight Media Policy Fellow at the New America Foundation.

Such cheek-to-jowl contradictions are common in Brazil, where income disparities are among the highest in the world, and megacities like São Paulo compete for national resources with tiny towns tucked deep in the rainforest. That reality makes it a challenge for the country's strapped public broadcasting outlets to create content to serve such a wide range of publics. This was the topic of an early December conference, TV Pública: Forum Internacional de Conteúdo, held in Belém's state-of-the-art Hangar Convention Center.

Public Broadcasting Coalesces

Public broadcasting is relatively young in Brazil. While TV Cultura, a private, foundation-funded channel offering arts, kids, documentary and sports programming has been around since the '60s, it was only in late 2007 that the government launched TV Brasil, a federally funded public broadcasting network. It airs Brazilian films, regional and educational programming, and sports. The channel's national over-the-air reach is limited, but it is available via cable, satellite and online.

Locally, public stations perform a variety of functions -- such as providing access to legislative proceedings, educational content and community outreach -- but they are not networked together via shared programming, as PBS member stations are. Nor they are centrally administered, as in the case of the BBC. This lack of coordination, and the limited resources allotted these stations via local government funds, will soon be compounded further as the country undertakes the switch from analog to digital broadcast.

The conference, organized by the Brazilian Association of Public, Educational and Cultural Broadcasters, explored these challenges from a variety of perspectives, including content, program coordination and scheduling, infrastructure, funding, management, unwelcome government interference in program choices, and training of a new generation of public media makers. One key question is how stations might possibly hope to fill the four digital channels they will soon acquire in exchange for their one analog signal.

While some independent and non-profit content is broadly available from sources such as
Itaú Cultural, a cultural institute which subsidizes the distribution of regional arts and music programming to stations, few syndication or rights-sharing arrangements have been developed. Many of the attendees had been to previous conferences to tackle these issues, but this was the first international gathering designed to bring perspectives in from other countries about how to manage such a thorny transition.

Digital Disruption

Simultaneously, Brazilian communications and cultural authorities are working to figure out how to harness online and mobile technologies for the public good. Just weeks before, the Digital Culture conference issued a "declaration of Internet rights," which asserted "diversity and freedom are the foundation [of] democratic communication. Internet access is a fundamental right." At the TV Pública conference, one speaker described NavegaPara, a project to provide Internet access in the state of Pará, including remote areas of the Amazon.

Questions about how to use the pending digital broadcast signal to provide interactivity or web access via TV dogged the conference. The digital divide is much wider in Brazil than the U.S. While nearly 95 percent of Brazilians have access to television, high taxes and low incomes make electronic device purchases steep; wiring this large and sometimes rugged country has so far proven difficult.

Of course, none of this has stopped citizen reporters from putting the latest technologies to work. As Global Voices reported:

Young residents in the Complexo do Alemão favelas in Rio de Janeiro have begun using social and citizen media to chronicle the recent wave of violence spreading through the city. Seventeen-year-old aspiring journalist Rene Silva has set up a Twitter account, @vozdacomunidade (voice of the community), to monitor the police occupation of the favela complex, with the related hashtag, #vozdacomunidade, already beginning to trend. Meanwhile, @Igorcomunidade is also offering updates of what he calls "a guerra do alemão" (Alemão's War), and another group of young locals has started streaming footage of the occupation.

As in the U.S., producers with one foot in the old and new media worlds are growing a bit weary of discussing the myriad transitions, and are now eager to start building multi-platform public media models that can thrive. Francisco Belda, the director of a local newspaper near São Paulo that is considering ways to transition from print to digital is also a professor at São Paulo State University. He led a workshop at the TV Pública conference on how to create a new programming grid for public stations. We discussed his impatience with the pace of both industry and policy change.

"I'm tired of all this talk," he told me. "We are ready for action."

Jessica Clark directs the Future of Public Media Project at American University's Center for Social Media, and is a Knight Media Policy Fellow at the New America Foundation.

The Public Media 2.0 series on MediaShift is sponsored by American University's Center for Social Media (CSM) through a grant from the Ford Foundation. Learn more about CSM's research on emerging public media trends and standards at futureofpublicmedia.net.

"Here is what I still don't get," wrote NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen in response to my November 18 article, "how can public media develop a strategy or simply a coherent response to the culture war in which it is entangled if it cannot admit to itself or reason publicly with the fact that only one side in the culture war wants to destroy it... and the other one doesn't? What is public media's culture war strategy? Not to have one?"

Rosen's comment prompted a few thoughtful answers, first on MediaShift in the comments, and then at an impromptu session at Sunday's Public Media Camp.

"I don't think it's the place of public media to 'take sides in the culture war," wrote MediaShift executive editor Mark Glaser. "I think it's public media's role to provide a forum for different opinions on the culture war, and give space for diverse opinions on it. That doesn't mean that individuals who are a part of public media can't give their opinions, and they should. The 'view from nowhere' only goes so far. But should NPR, PBS, etc try to out-dittohead the dittoheads? That doesn't make sense either." Instead, he suggested, the already-existing fan base for public broadcasting brands should be rallied. "There are already millions of people who support public media financially through donations, so maybe it takes a grassroots effort by those people to counter all the attacks."

Station manager Anthony Hunt suggested that a workable strategy might be to "develop allies that have much better armor than we do, or certainly don't want to see us change our attempts to remain value neutral because this fight won't be going away anytime soon." He suggests that public-media makers need help because they're under-resourced, and "bring a tote-bag to a knife fight" -- a phrase that echoed a quip by Jon Stewart in response to conservative comments about the Juan Williams flap.

Peter Corbett of iStrategy Labs, who helped to organize the PubCamp, suggested going on the offensive by developing "a 50 state strategy that includes gathering your troops (biggest fans) and preparing to mobilize them for war," and, somewhat jokingly, "taking a page out of cereal/fast food marketers' playbooks: go after their kids early and often, and then turn them on their parents."

Jauvan Moradi, who works at NPR Digital Media, suggested that rather than a "culture war" strategy, what's needed is a better business strategy, to deal with the possibilities of reduced funding.

"There are certainly tensions today," he wrote, "progressive vs. conservative, public values vs. private interest, urban vs. rural, new economy vs. old -- arguably reaching a pinnacle not seen in prior decades. But public media has never been a monoculture of us vs. them. Every local market has a different flavor that reflects the interests and diversity of its audience. The national content producers strive for a sort of neutrality that not only reflects our journalistic sensibilities but also allows for a sort of universality that works with the local flavors in hundreds of towns and cities. It's not our place to take a side amidst cultural tension."

Rosen disagreed. "I think culture war is precisely the right word for that is happening, and for the dynamic I am pointing out. The attempt to de-fund NPR -- an actual vote in the House of Representatives -- because of what happened with Juan Williams has no other logic than culture war logic...Now if the people in public media come to the conclusion: 'There's nothing we can do; it's up to people outside the system to make our case. We're not a participant in these so-called culture wars. We're just the victim, the target....' I can understand that, too, but they should at least arrive at that conclusion after thinking it through."

Rosen Appears via Skype

In order to think it through some more, Rosen joined Public Media Camp attendees via Skype for a discussion of strategies and obstacles. Here are a few highlights from the discussion:

• Andy Carvin of NPR noted that the organization's government affairs office is firewalled from the editorial side of the house, which allows it to advocate. On the digital strategy end, the big question is "Can NPR mobilize people?" Right now, ethics and social media rules prevent that.

• Several attendees noted that there's a tremendous amount of misinformation being circulated about the structure and funding of public broadcasting, and debated whether members of the public might respond to a campaign to clarify the issues, or simply ignore it.

• Threaded throughout the discussion were comments that any battle to save or expand public media could not be waged on only one side of the partisan divide. Core supporters in past fights have been rural Republicans, whose constituents depend heavily on public broadcasting for news and educational resources in otherwise weak media markets.

• Maxie Jackson, president and CEO of the National Federation for Community Broadcasters, suggested that NPR is now "toxic," and that organizing efforts should focus on the services that public stations provide to users in their communities. He noted that the stations that serve Native Americans provide a stark example of how much local service is crucial to underserved populations.

• Corbett suggested a viral "I [heart] NPR" day, to mobilize and inspire fans who might then be primed to respond politically when the time came.

Rosen warned that advocates for public broadcasting need to appeal not just to facts, but to pay heed to frames. There's a tendency, he noted, to think "we're not communicating clearly -- sometimes that's true, but in a culture war, there's 'systematically distorted communication.' It's not a messaging problem, it's that there are actors who profit from this distortion. It's important to know when you're in this situation -- the goal is to engage those who aren't engaged in systematically distorted communication and discredit and shame those who distort."

Jessica Clark directs the Future of Public Media Project at American University's Center for Social Media, and is a Knight Media Policy Fellow at the New America Foundation.

The Public Media 2.0 series on MediaShift is sponsored by American University's Center for Social Media (CSM) through a grant from the Ford Foundation. Learn more about CSM's research on emerging public media trends and standards at futureofpublicmedia.net.

The Public Media 2.0 series on MediaShift is sponsored by American University's Center for Social Media (CSM) through a grant from the Ford Foundation. Learn more about CSM's research on emerging public media trends and standards at futureofpublicmedia.net.

About this Series

How are public media makers and outlets evolving in the digital, participatory age? Stories in this week's special package examine how various players are rising to this challenge, from public stations, to community access projects, to citizen journalists. MediaShift contributors will report back from this weekend's national Public Media Camp in D.C., where developers and community members will join public broadcasting staffers to brainstorm digital projects and engagement strategies. Kim Fox of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation will offer crowdsourcing and citizen journalism lessons learned from its coverage of the G20. And we'll take a look at what viral public broadcasting spoofs tell us about what still needs work.

The entire series is linked below.

Check Out All the Posts

> 5 Emerging Trends That Give Hope for Public Media 2.0 by Jessica Clark

> Public Media Experiments Show Promise, Need to Involve Public by Katie Donnelly

> How Public Access TV Evolved into Community Media Centers by Colin Rhinesmith

> A Viral Video Takedown of Public Radio by Todd Beiber

> NPR, PBS Try to Tame Controversy, Embrace Tech at PubCamp by Corbin Hiar

> How Should Public Media Respond to Efforts to Defund It? by Jessica Clark

> The Business of Public Radio - WNYC Bulks Up, Builds Out by Dorian Benkoil

> Innovative Projects at Public Media Camp 2010 by Amanda Hirsch

> 5Across - What's Next for Public Media?, a video roundtable discussion hosted by Mark Glaser

> 8 Key Lessons Learned Working with Citizen Journos by Kim Fox

Your Feedback

What do you think about our series? How could it be improved? Are there other series you'd like to see MediaShift tackle in the coming months? We'd like to hear from you either in the comments below or via our Feedback form.

The Public Media 2.0 series on MediaShift is sponsored by American University's Center for Social Media (CSM) through a grant from the Ford Foundation. Learn more about CSM's research on emerging public media trends and standards at futureofpublicmedia.net.

The Public Media 2.0 series on MediaShift is sponsored by American University's Center for Social Media (CSM) through a grant from the Ford Foundation. Learn more about CSM's research on emerging public media trends and standards at futureofpublicmedia.net.

Public media is facing the same pressures as commercial media when it comes to digital: How can they transition to a new age of social media, collaboration and audience interaction? From today until Thanksgiving, MediaShift will have a special in-depth report on Public Media 2.0, with analysis, case studies, a 5Across video roundtable and coverage of this weekend's national PubCamp in Washington, DC.

Public broadcasters have been facing intense heat this fall, from dodging flak after the Juan Williams firing to rebutting calls to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, to defending the diversity of their news programming. But the negative coverage often misses a deeper story -- of the transition of this sector to a more innovative and varied set of Public Media 2.0 organizations that are finding fresh ways to network with users, partners and one another.

Over the past year here in the Public MediaShift section, Center for Social Media researchers and practitioners from the field have been covering varied public media experiments -- including youth media, government transparency tools, community-level collaboration and a converged national newsroom. These explorations reveal five emerging trends that are helping to reshape and broaden the public media sector so that it can better inform and engage users.

1) Learning to COPE

Adopting a COPE strategy -- "create once, publish everywhere" -- is making public media more modular and flexible.

"I don't know about you," CPB's vice president of digital strategy Rob Bole told the audience at a FedTalks event in mid-October, "but my life is split between my home, the train, work, meetings, going back on the train, playing with my kids, paying bills, and actually trying to spend some time and converse with my wife. So, I need a public media that is built for me -- that continues to be essential, to help me navigate through troubled times, to be interesting and surprising, but built for my somewhat crazy life."

Here's a video of Bole's talk:

Bole went on to explain how public broadcasting organizations are repurposing content for distribution across multiple mobile and digital platforms to reach people where they are.

Breaking content into portable digital pieces is in turn powering other capabilities. For example, the newly redesigned PBS site offers greater visibility for local content by providing a shared platform for video exchange between stations and national producers.

In the long run, aggregating locally produced content online will increase users' access to a rich supply of diverse stories and perspectives, along with cultural and historical gems that rarely appear on commercial broadcast outlets. "There's something there for everyone," Bole said.

Similarly, public access TV centers are developing the Community Media Distribution Network, which allows for content sharing and archiving of citizen and independent productions -- an often-overlooked source of grassroots public media. If all goes as planned, both independent media and public broadcasting from previous decades will also be made available to both users and outlets through the American Archive project -- a sort of COPE-retrieval mission.

This is a complex and daunting multi-year undertaking that will involve hundreds of stations and digitization of materials across both analog and digital platforms. An analysis of the scope for the project, released in June, laid out the steps and related challenges.

2) Sharing Knowledge with Peers

Registration now is maxed out for this weekend's second annual Public Media Camp, which the Center for Social Media is organizing with NPR, PBS and iStrategy Labs. Organized by their attendees, PubCamps are designed to help public broadcasters, tech developers and public media users share best practices and work together on community engagement projects.

Several local PubCamps have taken place at stations around the country since last October. The gatherings are proving to be valuable opportunities for trend-spotting within the field, and venues for introducing stations to national platforms, tools, and funding sources. Proposed sessions so far address tips for sustainable collaboration, previews of coming apps, such as the one from PBS' "Antiques Road Show," and suggestions for what public media makers can learn from anime fandom.

NPR senior strategist Andy Carvin, who has been central to organizing the events, said more than 300 people have registered for this weekend, representing 40 different public media organizations.

"Public media has a long tradition of public support, especially in terms of people making donations to their local station," Carvin told me. "With PubCamp, we're working with stations to develop new ways for them to engage people who want to become even more involved, donating their expertise to help strengthen the station's role in the community. I'm most excited about the fact that the majority of attendees won't be staff -- they'll be people around the country who simply care a lot about public media, and are willing to donate their time to help us in one way or another."

The PubCamps reflect a broader surge in journalism-related unconferences, such as the Media Consortium's Independent Media Mobile Hackathon, or the numerous participatory meetings hosted by Journalism That Matters. These events incubate new projects by connecting attendees first face-to-face and then through an array of social networking tools. The flow of participants across the various gatherings and platforms is bringing fresh approaches and constructive critique to a previously cloistered sector.

3) Boosting Community Engagement

Peer learning has proven to be particularly popular in the area of engagement -- a fast-growing but controversial priority for public media makers still adjusting to expectations for greater participation and interaction set by social media. Public engagement has been built into the DNA of community access centers for decades, through production training and ascertainment processes designed to figure out communities' information needs. But public broadcasting stations often feel trapped in a double bind: They are simultaneously expected to provide "balanced" news and analysis, and to actively involve users in civic issues.

To the rescue comes the CPB-funded National Center for Media Engagement (NCME), which has been hosting a series of webinars that bring producers, station staff and online innovators together to discuss engagement experiments and opportunities. Accompanied by lively sidebar chats among attendees, the webinars offer real-time snapshots of effective projects in process.

For example, one featured the Wisconsin Public Television's Vietnam veterans "welcome home" event, a multi-platform model for engaging tens of thousands of local veterans who felt alienated by their stateside reception. The project grew from veterans' strong responses to a documentary, War Stories, and now several other stations have hosted or plan to host related events. Portraits and oral histories from the veterans are available here along with transcripts, related maps, educational resources, the full documentary, excerpts from the companion book, and a digital honor roll of Wisconsin vets who died in Vietnam.

By capturing and analyzing the stories of such successful engagement projects, the NCME hopes to provide both inspiration and concrete prototypes. They offer a related guide, along with training and fundraising resources, to support public media outlets in such efforts. Staffers are actively reaching out to producers from other sectors for lessons and models; they recently announced that they'd partner with the Integrated Media Association, which is hosting a track at the next South by Southwest Interactive Festival for public media makers.

4) Building Strategic Partnerships

"Collaboration" is a rising buzzword in public media circles, but finding successful ways to match projects, capacity and strategies is not always easy. In a December MediaShift piece, Amanda Hirsch laid out some of the complexities, including getting buy-in from top managers at each partner organization, assigning staff to the collaboration project itself, and establishing formal communication channels.

"Don't assume that working together means saving time -- that's not the value proposition of collaboration," she wrote. "The value proposition is about quality."

For these reasons, it's often easier to start with time-limited collaborations with clearly defined outcomes. In Philadelphia, such an approach will be tested via the Philadelphia Enterprise Reporting Awards. Announced in late October, the awards are supported by the William Penn Foundation and administered by J-Lab. Fourteen projects received grants of $5,000 each, designed to both support in-depth reporting projects and to explore whether it's possible to connect the "silos of journalism throughout the city." The idea is to provide more entry points to expose news consumers to public affairs content and "create a 'knowledge network' among the region's news initiatives, so they can add to, amplify, link to or broadcast news that is being created but that their niche audiences might not otherwise come across," according to the Awards site.

Public broadcasting station WHYY is involved in three of these projects -- Anatomy of a School Turnaround, in conjunction with the Philadelphia Public School Notebook; the Power Map of Philadelphia, in conjunction with the Philadelphia Daily News, Philly.com and an institute at the University of Pennsylvania; and ArtBlog Radio, in conjunction with theartblog.org. Two of the collaborations intersect with WHYY's newly launched NewsWorks project (more on that in tomorrow's piece on public broadcasting news experiments). Community media producers, including cable access station PhillyCam and media training center Scribe Video are also grantees, as well as digital citizen news projects such as Phawker.com and Metropolis.

Besides being interesting in their own right, this array of projects highlights the strengths and goals of various nodes in Philadelphia's news ecosystem, suggesting how non-commercial public media might help to fill key gaps.

5) Paying Attention to Policy

Historically, public broadcasters have lacked the resources, expertise or coordination to regularly track and intervene in the policy-making that supports them.

Public broadcasting ignores most media policy research, whether it originates in academia, think tanks or federal agencies, and it often seems out of touch with major national policy deliberations until too late. That disengagement is highly dangerous because it allows others to set the national legal and regulatory agenda for communications without assuring adequate policy attention to public-service, non-commercial and educational goals. Such policy initiatives also can negatively affect the funding and operating conditions of every public licensee.

However, two countervailing trends are now capturing the attention of both public broadcasters and the broader public media sector. On the one hand, a series of high-profile reports and agency hearings have proposed reforming public media and expanding funding as a corrective to the loss of reporting capacity across the country.

On the other hand, calls to cut or abolish public broadcasting are on the rise, both from members of the soon-to-be-Republican House and from President Obama's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (the commission on reducing the deficit).

Productive reform will be complex and contentious, but not impossible. As Steve Coll, the president of the New America Foundation, observed in the cover story of the current issue of Columbia Journalism Review:

The problem is that the media policies that govern us in 2010 -- a patchwork stitched from the ideas of Calvin Coolidge's Republican Party, Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, and Ronald Reagan's deregulatory wave -- have been overtaken by technological change.

From the country's founding, American media and journalism have been continually remade by technological innovation. Political pamphlets made room for industrially printed newspapers, which made room for the telegraph, which made room for radio, which made room for broadcast television, which made room for cable and satellite services, which made room for the World Wide Web, which is making room even as we read this for the Kindle, iPad, and mobile phone applications.

When such technological, industrial, and economic changes dislodge the assumptions underlying public policy, the smart response is to update and adjust policy in order to protect the public interest. And politically plausible reforms that would clearly serve the public are within reach. It is time to reboot the system.

These myriad political pressures are driving public media to a tipping point, in which the case for a new social contract with the public will either be made or will fail to convince. While the non-commercial and digital public media sector is larger than the public broadcasters, the broadcasters are the most well-funded and visible players. As Rowland suggests, it is time for them to step up, demonstrate vision, and tell their own story of the shift to Public Media 2.0.

Jessica Clark directs the Future of Public Media Project at American University's Center for Social Media, and is a Knight Media Policy Fellow at the New America Foundation.

The Public Media 2.0 series on MediaShift is sponsored by American University's Center for Social Media (CSM) through a grant from the Ford Foundation. Learn more about CSM's research on emerging public media trends and standards at futureofpublicmedia.net.

Networked Content

Content networks are nothing new to public broadcasters -- NPR and PBS serve as closed and centralized hubs of content aggregation and distribution to member stations, and PRX has demonstrated the benefits of a more open, digital conduit between producers, stations and the public. But the June announcement that NPR would lead a coalition of such distributors in developing a joint Public Media Platform (PMP) upped the ante. A prototype, slated to be done by the end of the year, will build upon NPR's successful API and related experiments, which have powered a variety of mobile and iPad apps, allowed local station sites to feature national content, and enabled external viral distribution of public radio content via data mashups.

If it works, the PMP will expand the audience for and utility of public broadcasting content. It will also serve as a point of entry for new public media contributors, most immediately from non-commercial and hyper-local news projects. And it will create new opportunities for content to flow across public media silos, making collaboration much easier. This would encourage curated cross-platform projects like WGBH's new World Compass site, and targeted aggregation on public broadcasting sites, such as the "Public Media Resources" section on the site of the PBS NewsHour. Plus, as the graphic below suggests, the PMP would support entirely new uses of content by developers, educational institutions, and non-profits.

(You can see a larger version of the image here)

Although it represents a much needed (and much discussed) integration of content, the project is not without its tensions. There are many rights issues to be worked out, and public stations are leery that products built via the PMP will pull audiences and dollars away from them. But as Eliot Van Buskirk notes on Wired's Epicenter blog, "Ultimately, the upside to all of this sharing, repackaging and distribution will likely be bigger than the downside, so far as the public is concerned. This Public Media Platform will bring competition to member stations that didn't exist before, and should result in a large number of apps, sites and publications over the coming years, if things go as planned."

What's more, NPR's Kinsey Wilson told Poynter that the PMP could serve as an "engine of innovation" for journalism, powering reporting experiments like NPR's new Project Argo.

Networked Outlets and Producers

Creating a big content repository is just one step in the process of building a vibrant public media network. Both public broadcasting outlets and independent makers need help understanding how best to curate and package digital content, and how to attract networked users [PDF] to it.

Over the last several decades, trade organizations have emerged in the public broadcasting sector to represent the interests of and provide services to discrete groups of outlets and makers, including the Association of Public Television Stations, Public Radio News Directors Incorporated, the Association of Independents in Radio and others. But while most of these are organized according to platform, innovators working in cross-platform, digital and mobile production don't have a central hub to share success and failures and hash out new standards.

While the Integrated Media Association has served this role, currently it's in a transition phase; as a result, the organization will not hold a 2010 conference. In its absence, a number of less formal networks have sprung up to connect stations, makers and developers.

MediaShift has reported before on two of these rising networks: the Public Media Chat (#pubmedia) on Twitter, which is organized by a revolving group of volunteers, and the Public Media Camps, jointly organized by NPR and PBS. (Full disclosure: I've been involved in hosting both, including the next national PubCamp, slated for November 20.)

The PubCamps and #pubmedia chats have been growing and deepening over the past few months, in part because both provide openings for new thinkers and doers from outside of traditional public broadcasting to participate. The chats encourage this interaction because they take place on an open platform, and overlap with other networks of Twitter users focused on the future of news and community media. The Public Media Camps are explicitly designed to bring developers and community members together with both stations and national public broadcasting organizations to brainstorm new projects and apps.

With support from CPB, the pace of local PubCamps picked up over the summer. But even stations who haven't received any hosting funds have started to organize their own camps. These events not only foster the creation of local networks, and feed into the emerging national network of PubCamp participants, who are connected across a variety of social media platforms. Take a look at this presentation from the North Carolina PubCamp to get a sense of how this works.

While such social media-driven exchanges may seem chaotic to those used to more traditional nametag-and-plenary style conferences, they can produce surprisingly effective results. For example, a recent #pubmedia chat prompted WGBH's Chris Beers to whip up an archive of public broadcasting web sites over the course of a few days. Such a resource -- potentially a valuable tool for stations, developers and policymakers -- could have cost thousands of dollars and wasted numerous agonizing hours in planning meetings. But because Beers is operating from an open source perspective, he built this tool with the expectation that the community would use it, contribute to it, and improve it in the process. A similar spirit is on display on the PubMedia Commons site, which archives the chats and offers a shared code repository.

The chats and PubCamps also serve as generative spaces for exchanges between media makers who may share similar goals goals but don't usually interact. For example, this weekend's PubCamp in Champaign-Urbana promises to bring both public and community broadcasters together with open source developers and staff from CU-CitizenAccess, a civic engagement project based at the University of Illinois, designed to both report on and develop solutions with locals living in poverty.

As Jason Pramas of Open Media Boston writes, "we had public media staffers, community media staff, and independent producers involved in planning PubMediaCamp Boston from the get-go ... [with an] overarching goal of holding an event that would help network people from all these communities and encourage collaboration."

He said that his session spawned yet another small network, "a FuturePublicMedia email list where all kinds of public media supporters from the communities represented at PubMediaCamp Boston can talk about the public media system we want to build, and how we might advocate for it."

Networked Publics

Networked content and outlets alone aren't guaranteed to attract new audiences. The real growth area lies in the ability of public media organizations to use digital platforms to meaningfully connect with users around issues, communities and events. This involves both reaching out on existing social media platforms where they already congregate, and creating more specialized networks of users around particular goals.

For many stations and public broadcasting programs, this is still very much a trial-and-error process. They start Twitter accounts, post Facebook pages, and then wonder disconsolately why no one is friending them. Or, perhaps worse, they approach these two-way platforms with one-way expectations borrowed from PR and broadcast, only to discover that their users have more than enough to discuss with them.

Mississippi Public Broadcasting learned this lesson the hard way when it canceled the broadcast of Fresh Air after Terri Gross interviewed controversial comic Louis C.K. The station's Facebook page quickly became a rallying point for protesters, and the crusade has continued on a dedicated page titled "Bring Fresh Air Back to Mississippi."

Beyond interacting with users as content consumers, public broadcasters are learning how to interact with them as sources, and even in some cases as content producers. What's more, they're developing both online and offline contexts that allow publics to form their own networks around shared interests or cultural gatherings such as The Moth, a storytelling slam and radio hour. The National Center for Media Engagement has been cataloging such promising engagement efforts on its Pipeline page and in a series of peer webinars.

American Public Media's Public Insight Network(PIN) has been one of the most tenacious and creative hubs for building effective public media user networks. Now, in the middle of a three-year, $2.95 million grant from the Knight Foundation, PIN is aggressively expanding to new cities and adding new partners and capabilities as it goes.

Joaquin Alvarado, APM's senior vice president for digital innovation, calls PIN an "engagement platform" for public media. Users are recruited as sources with particular expertise, and tapped by journalists in partner newsrooms for interviews, focus groups and story suggestions. Alvarado explains that PIN developers are now working on a Drupal-based ecosystem of tools that will both make it easier for reporters to find relevant sources and networks for their stories, and allow users to track how their own contributions are making their way into coverage. The bet is that seeing themselves as part of the network might increase sources' already impressive response rate to PIN email inquiries.

PIN is broadening the network of public media entities by serving as a conduit for stations to partner up with local commercial and nonprofit news outlets. Take Miami, where WLRN is working with the Miami Herald to recruit local sources; as a result, PIN developers are working on a Spanish-language version of the network's tools, which can then be deployed elsewhere.

Beyond that, however, PIN is uncovering the power of tapping sources' own personal networks. For example, a query to the network about Lutherans' response to a vote allowing gay pastors to serve as clergy yielded a huge response: More than 2500 new sources joined the network to weigh in.

"Every community contains within it fault lines that can, under the right conditions, break open into chasms," reflected PIN Editor Andrew Haeg on the MPR site. "We agree, sometimes silently, to disagree -- or at least not to address our split for fear of upsetting the status quo. Our inquiry became a sort of social Richter scale revealing a community rocked by a temblor that the rest of us hardly felt."

Building New Models of Networked Public Media

Against the backdrop of widespread public experimentation with social media platforms like Wikipedia, Twitter and Facebook, these efforts by public broadcasters may seem like too little too late. But what's notable is that all of these networks have been built without policy support, earmarked funds, or consistent collaboration designed to link them together. Right now, taxpayer, underwriter and member dollars are still mostly dedicated to supporting broadcast stations and content. Imagine what would happen if that equation shifted?

Center for Social Media Fellow Ellen Goodman makes that imaginative leap in a forthcoming article for the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology. Goodman, a professor at Rutgers University School of Law at Camden, worked with University of Pennsylvania research fellow Anne Chen to develop a new model for making public media policy based on a layered structure borrowed from the Internet's own architecture. Right now, they point out, the primary focus of policy and funding is the broadcast station. Future policymaking designed to support a public media network, however, could be focused on four discrete layers of function: Transmission infrastructure, creation of content and applications, curation of public media content and archives, and connection to the public. Note that these layers roughly mirror the emerging networks described above.

Dedicated digital infrastructure, more flexible funding, and a renewed emphasis on connection could work to knit public broadcasting's currently fragmented and resource-starved networks into a powerful national platform for learning, public dialogue, and problem solving. This would not require centralizing operations at the coasts; instead it would involve constructing a network of networks, connected via shared protocols and standards. Such a network could also support the capacity for local reporting, encouraging civic engagement on the ground and feeding diverse content and conversations back up to national programs and sites. It could foster local and national connections with other noncommercial partners who share a public mission.

"Public media has the potential to meet some of the nation's most critical information
needs," write Goodman and Chen, "but only if public media networks are reconfigured for more collaboration, innovation, and service in a networked environment."

In order to be most viable, such a public media network would need to be developed in concert with a series of larger policy efforts: to extend broadband access to all Americans, maintain net neutrality across both wired and wireless broadband services, create network linkages between noncommercial "anchor institutions" in communities, and subsidize new equipment and hosting costs for public media producers. In a March article in Current, APM's Alvarado offered a complementary model for understanding these various needs, as depicted below.

Alvarado urges public broadcasters and regulators to act boldly, citing education and journalism as two major areas for beta-testing the power of new network functions. "The gaps in our current business model will widen quickly as broadband develops nationally," he writes. "We can address them only by radically shifting what we and the public expect from the system and from our individual organizations. Incremental steps will not concentrate enough resources to leapfrog the compounding limitations in resources, ambition and effectiveness."

Jessica Clark directs the Center for Social Media's Future of Public Media Project , and is a Knight Media Policy Fellow at the New America Foundation.

Farai Chideya -- a high-profile public affairs reporter, novelist, and the former host of NPR's late and lamented African-American current events program "News & Notes" -- began the Pop and Politics site 15 years ago when she was working at CNN as a political analyst. The project, she said, has evolved through "a few different lifecycles" -- from a multi-author blog covering issues of race and culture, to a student journalism training organization, to its latest, a multi-platform radio show.

"I decided that now was the time," Chideya said. "There have been so many times that I have been a part of 'converged media' but it was too soon or didn't quite work. Now, all of the market conditions are right."

She described the project as more of a "media ecosystem as anything else," comprised of a broadcast, podcast, social media feeds, and mobile content -- all under the Pop and Politics brand.

Election Plans

On air, the program -- formally titled "Pop and Politics Radio With Farai Chideya" -- will launch in a pilot version just before the midterm election. It will be a series of hour-long broadcasts recorded live-to-tape from spots around the country where there are critical races. The goal is to feature perspectives that aren't always highlighted in national election coverage.

"All politics is local, life is local," Chideya said. "I want to meet people where they are, to be respectful of the fact that not everyone lives in a big city, that not everyone thinks the same way that I do."

She plans to work with American Public Media's Public Insight Network to uncover local sources for stories. Click on the video below to hear her describe the show's format.

Click To Play

News + Entertainment

A mixture of reporting, a panel of guests, interviews and live performance, Pop and Politics Radio draws inspiration from popular late-night comedy programs by mixing news and entertainment.

"I want to enjoy the act of making media, and I want people to enjoy the media I produce," Chideya said. But instead of just relying on celebrities and politicians to comment on the day's events, she'll draw in independent producers and reporters to contribute fresh content.

Her program targets a demographic that isn't young exactly -- around 35 -- but younger than the usual boomer-generation NPR fan, as well as hipper and more multicultural. Online, Chideya notes, with search, peer recommendation, streaming audio and podcasting, it's now possible to find audiences for public radio content, "even among those who don't consider themselves public radio listeners."

The show will be produced out of WNYC, the New York-based NPR station that is also home to such innovative shows as Radiolab and The Takeaway.

Fans of News & Notes -- who launched an online campaign protesting that show's cancellation -- will be excited to tune in. But they still have awhile to wait. "It's going to be a bit of a slow bake," Chideya said. Right now, she's focused on revamping the Pop and Politics site for its latest incarnation.

Jessica Clark directs the Center for Social Media's Future of Public Media Project , and is a Knight Media Policy Fellow at the New America Foundation.

This spring, National Public Radio launched Go Figure, a new blog authored by members of its Audience Insight and Research Group. In an April 1 post, blogger Vince Lampone wrote, "Nearly all listeners have been moved to take action by NPR at some point in their lives. For instance, two in three have done further research into a topic, most have visited a website, and nearly 25% have become involved with a local or national political issue as a result of listening."

As Lampone's post suggests, NPR is just one of many media outlets, researchers, and funders that are currently struggling to answer the pressing question: "How do you know if your media matters?"

Impact Summits

To gather answers, American University's Center for Social Media (CSM) and The Media Consortium (TMC) organized a series of Impact Summits in seven cities throughout the first quarter of 2010. (In February, I wrote about these Summits for MediaShift as they were just ramping up.)

Hosted with allied organizations in Chicago, New York, Miami, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Boston, they drew together dozens of leading public and independent media makers, funders and researchers, representing "public interest media projects." These projects range from hyper-local to national, and represent a variety of practices, including investigative journalism, advocacy journalism, documentary film, public and community broadcasting, gaming for change, citizen reporting, and building access and media tools for diverse communities.

These Summits resulted in a new report coauthored by CSM and TMC, Investing in Impact, which outlines the major arguments for assessing impact, synthesizes the five top impact evaluation needs, and proposes five new tools for public interest media assessment. What follows is a summary of that report.

Currently, there is no consensus around what constitutes impact for public interest media. In fact, the very topic can lead to heated exchanges between media producers looking to have clear goals and outcomes in a new media environment, and traditional journalists who suggest that evaluation will threaten their objectivity and limit the focus of their reporting.

The truth is that the field cannot advance without tackling the question of impact head on. To be clear, effectiveness is not synonymous with advocacy. Traditional journalistic values include holding the powerful to account, engaging users in dialogue about issues, and delivering timely, relevant information. These are all trackable outcomes.

Five Needs

What do public interest media need in order to evaluate their impact? We've outlined five needs below.

1. Getting on the same page: Developing shared categories of impact assessment
   In order to make meaningful comparisons across projects and inform strategic planning, media makers, funders and project leaders need common rubrics to structure evaluation. Shared benchmarks can also serve as a basis for collaboration or healthy competition among organizations who share common goals.
2. Following the story: Tracking the movement of content and frames across platforms and over time
   For many Summit attendees, influencing the public discourse surrounding a particular issue, perspective or policy is a critical component of their project's mission. While there may be occasional flashpoints of exposure that are easier to identify, several attendees expressed concern that few tools exist to monitor the "slow burn" of coverage that might not be hot in the moment, but gathers attention and urgency over months or even years.
3. Contextualizing the anecdotal: Refining methods for analyzing shifts in public awareness, deliberation and behavior
   Many Summit attendees offered tantalizing anecdotes about user reaction to their content, but were frustrated in their efforts to connect these accounts with broader trends or concrete outcomes. Few have the funds to conduct surveys or focus groups before and after a project's distribution, or to dedicate staff hours to tracking down data about users' contributions, conversations and next steps.
4. Understanding our users: Creating more sophisticated profiles of audience demographics, habits and concerns
   Even many of the largest public interest media projects lack access to high-quality demographic research and user models that would help them to build sophisticated content, distribution and outreach strategies. Attendees at the Los Angeles Summit noted that, in addition to better and deeper information about their current users, they need data about how those users fit into the larger universe of potential audience members.
5. Moving beyond market assumptions: Defining the uses and limitations of commercial metrics schemes for assessing public interest media
   While many Summit attendees are using commercial tools and services to track reach, engagement and relevance, the usefulness of these tools in this arena is limited by their focus on delivering audiences to advertisers. Public interest media makers want to know how users are applying news and information in their personal and civic lives, not just whether they're purchasing something as a result of exposure to a product.

Five Tools

After we discussed needs, we asked Summit attendees to think creatively about the tools that could really help them understand and communicate their projects' impact. We then synthesized these ideas and suggestions into five recommended tools:

1. Putting it all in one place: Building a unified social media dashboard
   Many summit attendees expressed frustration with the inconsistency of current social media analysis schemes. "Dashboards" -- which combine and analyze a range of data points on one screen -- are in wide use across the online media environment. By developing or adapting a unified dashboard that integrates not only site-level metrics, but commonly tracked social media metrics, public interest media makers could develop their own comparative indices. In addition, public interest media makers could work together to develop tailored dashboard categories related to public engagement.
2. Chasing the frame: Building a social issue buzz tracker
   As noted above, many public interest media makers are seeking better ways to track both coverage on specific issues and the movement of their content across various platforms. They hope to pinpoint the "aha" moment, when a story or notion moves from merely interesting to spreadable. A few specialized tools have also been purpose-built for the public interest media sector. For example, Linkfluence tracks the movement of issues across ideologically similar blogospheres to compare how they are trending; the Media Cloud project helps users compare how certain topics are being covered across major news sources. More investment in building a social issue buzz tracker that combines visualizations, traditional public relations tracking, and social media metrics could yield significant new insights and a tighter integration between experiments, evaluation, and strategy.
3. Telling your story of impact: Developing model formats and processes for strategically communicating outcomes
   Ironically, while many public interest media makers are trained and experienced storytellers, they are often at a loss at telling the story of their own impact. Collecting and consolidating creative and effective ways to identify and substantiate impact could help the field to standardize this important process. For example, the American Independent News Network requires its reporters to demonstrate four "impacts" per year -- substantive, trackable outcomes such as shifts in policy that follow on the heels of an investigative report, or exposure and trial of corrupt officials. While not all media projects will have such tangible outcomes, public interest media makers could still work together to share templates for reporting impact to funders and users, as well as to capture that information for internal decision making.
4. Asking the right questions: Creating common survey tools for evaluation and audience assessment
   Summit attendees suggested that they would be interested in developing two types of joint survey questions. The first were questions addressed to users of their own projects about impact; the second were questions appended to annual, national polls that could shed better light on media consumption habits and preferences. Within the field, expertise in designing high-quality survey instruments is limited. Partnering with a university or a marketing firm might be one way for media makers and outlets to jointly develop valid surveys to see how their work is engaging users. Contracting with large polling firms is a more expensive and complex prospect; more research is needed to suggest how best to work with them, and what kinds of questions might yield useful data.
5. Identifying networks: Creating a suite of tools that track the growth, health and effectiveness of networks
   While many of the summit attendees are still producing content for legacy platforms, the most cutting-edge projects are eager to develop evaluation tools that measure the growth of networks around their content or platforms. For example, the Public Insight Network is currently seeking evaluators to help them learn more about how their network of citizen sources is changing newsroom habits, providing a more diverse base of sources for stories, and creating community-level impacts tied to coverage. A first step in better understanding this emerging field might be a project to share best practices.

Funding: The Killer App

Based on an analysis of these summits, it seems that the immediate next step is to embark on a set of tool-building projects that will involve multiple funders and outlets. Building tools iteratively and collaboratively will help to surface which shared categories of assessment are most important.

For public interest media impact assessment to advance, however, the field's foundations and investors are going to need to dedicate more funds to evaluation when funding production. Across the board, Summit attendees identified the need for more support to hire evaluators, purchase access to commercial tracking services, obtain evaluation training, and share best practices.

In addition, several attendees affirmed the need for the field as a whole to work on the sorts of joint frameworks and tools identified in a 2009 report published by FSG Social Impact Advisors, Breakthroughs in Shared Measurement and Social Impact. This would require unprecedented collaboration and resources. As that report warns:

The barriers to developing these systems, however, are formidable. They require a far-reaching vision, millions of dollars in investment, and years of effort by large coalitions of independent organizations.

But such an investment of time and money is worth it, if it helps to productively clarify the relationships between media funding, media production, and social impacts.

Jessica Clark directs the Center for Social Media's Future of Public Media Project, and is a Knight Media Policy Fellow at the New America Foundation. Tracy Van Slyke is the Project Director of The Media Consortium and was recently named one of "30 Women Making History" by the Women's Media Center. Together, they are the co-authors of Beyond the Echo Chamber: Reshaping Politics Through Networked Progressive Media, published in February by the New Press. The authors would like to thank the Ford Foundation and The Media Consortium for their support in conducting the summits and associated research.

Panel Discussion III: New Platforms, Approaches and Structures

Maxie Jackson III, President and CEO, National Federation of Community
Broadcasters
Says when he thinks of the future, he wants to stress "independence and impact," in the transition from public broadcasting to public service media. Community engagement and relevance are particularly important. Public media organizations should be "outward-facing," and map their communities in order to make sure they are relevant to them. He suggests "low-res, high immersion" production, that captures a greater diversity of voice and perspective. Stations can serve as curators, conveners, educators--providing "utility media" that really serves communities. Funding mechanisms need to be preserved and strengthened. "We can't devide the pie into many more pieces" to serve the range of different communities. Also urges FCC to collect data about race and gender in station ownership and staff, but data collection needs to be simple and streamlined.

Jake Shapiro, Executive Director, Public Radio Exchange (PRX)
"Who needs public broadcasting in an age of YouTube?" asks Shapiro. Should we "declare victory and hand over the spectrum?" Online, Wikipedia and other public service sources show the real potential of public media to serve a broader public, and to become a "network of networks." PRX is public media's "born digital" project; serving as a marketplace for independent content, an innovation lab, and an entrepreneurial nonprofit.

"This is the kind of hybrid approach we'll need more of," he says. Cites the Public Media Player as the kind of innovation that's needed, but points out that Apple continues to block donations through apps. Strong local stations are both crucial local hubs and sites for innvation, but not the only entities that should be funded. Also it might be time to think about having a "public media cloud." We can't declare victory yet, because there's no guarantee that private sites like YouTube will remain open, transparent and free. "Perhaps public service media will create the next YouTube."

Joaquin Alvarado, Senior Vice President for Digital Innovation, American Public
Media
Soon, most Americans will belong to social networks, use mobile phones, and use the Web to find public information. That future is being shaped right now by computer scientists and network engineers; they care that the network is ubiquitous, persistent and transactional. This is the underpinning for a new public media, which will be shaped by user experience. The Public Insight Network demonstrates the opportunity. The "human network" of PIN membeers are a resource, when used by the network of public stations, results in better journalism. Southern Public Radio did a series on the Chino prison riot using input from PIN, for example. "Diversity is not a vitamin that you are forced to take...it is instead a practice." PIN directly links newsrooms to the communities to have them be a part of the process. They are developing a comprehensive open-source platform to allow public media to think about the future of the Web in a way that's practical. Semantic web technologies will support accountability journalism in the future, allowing public media "to do better, and do more." This can be helped by early and smart adoption.

Bill Buzenberg, Executive Director, The Center for Public Integrity
He explains that he represents a nonprofit investigative news organization that is part of an emerging news ecology that is networked and collaborative. "It's really amazing what is happening; if you can create good, solid content it can go anywhere." They pioneered this work through developing an international network of investigative journalists, learning how to work together and distribute content across institutions, platforms and borders. Now they've begun to create the Investigative News Network, combining a number of nonprofit journalism startups. Already seeing the promise, moving to hire an Executive Director. Using FOIA to acquire various federal databases and analyze them; working with private outlets like the Wall Street Journal to mine content, as well as providing access to data to noncommercial reporters.

Nan Rubin, Chairperson of the Board, Prometheus Radio Project
She is advocating for net neutrality, community radio as a site for innovation on new spectrum space. Describes history of KPFA as a previous site for new forms of journalism--"we don't know where innovation might come from." Grassroots groups can serve unpredictable roles, and should not be discounted, but encouraged. Promoting local culture is also a key role for small, grassroots media projects such as LPFM stations. This works because volunteer programmers "love making media," and their passion can lead to scoops, awards and more. Public media need to "nurture unconventional uses of technology," and "expand the platforms." Access centers can also serve as performance spaces, libraries, ISPs and more. New services can be carved out of slivers of unused spectrum. Bottom up, not top-down evolution can't be forced, but should be given incentives. Community media should also be encouraged to partner with other public media entities.

Discussant: Kinsey Wilson, SVP and General Manager NPR Digital Media
Describes the Public Media platform. Notes that public broadcasting has been strengthened not only by local control and independence, but by being able to network in order to share content.

In the networked environment, code serves as the linking mechanism, as well as a shared backend. NPR's open API is open to stations, qualifying not-for-profit organizations--serves up NPR content but increasingly adding in station content, and other actors will be added in. The first iPhone app was created by an NPR fan in a garage; NPR created their own branded app using the API as well. Also launched a web version for other mobile phones based on API, and as member stations and other public broadcasting entities start putting content into the repository, it will become available. This allows people "completely independent of the formal institutions of public media" to use content in new ways. WBUR has also begun mixing NPR content with local content to power station web site in new ways--resulting in higher traffic to the site. Also launched an iPad app recently.

Goodman: Asks how copyright factors into making content available for public use.

Wilson: Asking producers to determine the rights associated with their content, but this can get very messy. So, there is a need for broad agreement and rights clearance.

Rubin: Creating a package that specifies both broadcast and online usage in a noncommercial setting could really simplify things a lot.

Goodman: Identifies another paradox in public media. Jackson encourages nourishing low-res media; if it's cheap, where's the market failure? Shapiro notes that it's hard to resource journalistic coverage; are there ways that technology can bring costs down?

Jackson: Stations can serve as a central convener for issues that are bubbling up. Low-res tools are a way to serve these needs.

Shapiro: We're not talking about "low-res journalism," we're talking about low-res tech. Good journalism still takes resources. Crowdfunding and crowdsourcing can help to bring down costs; these are emerging practices. Donation and support should translate from broadcast to web, but this process is still in formation--cites This American Life app developed by PRX as a new stream of revenue.

Goodman: We haven't talked about PEG yet, but it seems like some of these new functions are converging with PEG functions. Should public broadcasting be working with PEG? Is PEG now obsolete if access is no longer the problem?

Alvarado: PEG is very complex from a regulatory standpoint and has suffered many losses recently. Access is still very important, and we need to reconsider it in the broadband environment. Neither PEG nor Public Media will be able to give people access to broadband distribution if the cost of serving up that content doesn't go down. The FCC needs to consider how to resource a public interest "cloud."

Goodman: Does that mean that the FCC's focus needs to shift to broadband?

Alvarado: We should ask that there always be capacity for public functions within new bandwidth capability.

Rubin: It's not just about access; it's a question of where the gatekeepers are now. Public broadcasting and PEG both need to be recontextualized; how can they do that together?

Waldman: Is there a stronger constituency for public support around infrastructure than content? What would really help in creating a platform that would help public media to blossom?

Alvarado: There is a spectrum of needs: on one end is the human capital question. On the other end is the question is if there's enough network capacity. The answer is: absolutely no. The research and education organizations have already built national high-speed networks; we need federal guidance to do the same.

Shapiro: Having a coordinated investment in infrastructure can make a huge difference; we've seen this previously with the construction of the satellite interconnection system. Creating dedicated pipes, along with storage capacity in the cloud...could maybe buy from commercial providers but that begs the question of long-term public service broadband needs.

Waldman: Can you describe in a more "lay" fashion?

Alvarado: Public broadcasting stations have built great new high-speed content but shouldn't be expected to take on the project or costs of serving that content up. Should be a national-level investment.

Wilson: There's no existing funding mechanism in place; cobbling together support from funders and CPB but more dedicated funds are needed. They are trying to move in incremental steps rather than building a giant solution that serves everyone.

Waldman: When will the nonprofit news sites start to be brought into API?

Wilson: Very quickly, we will be as inclusive and reach out to as diverse a group of participants as possible.

Alvarado: Invited in four Knight News Challenge Winners to shadow process.

Waldman: What's the criteria for inviting people in?

Wilson: We have a planning grant now to put that question out about how you define boundaries for what kinds of news organizations can bring their content in.

Shapiro: Notes that distribution model is radically open on the outbound side; predicts that there will be a lot of time spent talking about how to bing producers and projects in. PRX already represents a diverse bank of independent producers.

Rubin: Wants to bring in question of governance. Suggests a co-op model to help facilitate participation by diverse actors. Also notes struggle of LPFM stations to get more licenses; impact of having a "truly local voice."

Goodman asks: How can noncommercial strictures be addressed when bringing new players into the mix?

Alvarado: Traditional underwriting is going to place strictures on online distribution, which could limit the creation of new monetization models.

Shapiro: There's been a lot of healthy self-policing happening around the questions of what it means for public content to appear next to ads in external contexts. Important to ensure certain principals: that access isn't through paid walls, that editorial integrity isn't compromised.

Wilson: This is "an incredibly fast-moving space," as advertisers also struggle to adapt to online environment. Hard to predict how things are going to evolve; difficult to regulate via policy because of that. But public broadcasting has been self-policing, in part because level of trust that users have is based in part on the lack of intrusive sponsorship.

Waldman: So, it's not so much self-policing as guided by existing FCC policy?

Wilson: FCC doesn't specify re. banner ads. Hard to get advertisers to conform to strictures.

Goodman: Asking Buzenberg about the role of database journalism in driving down reporting costs. Do local stations have the capacity to "crunch the numbers?" Is it the role for public media to develop database tools and talent?

Buzenberg: Absolutely--they've worked with Sunlight to identify databases they'd like access to, but "it takes some curation and it takes work." Want to be able to ask stations to localize it, have a local impact on a state-by-state basis. Looking at a current project called a Corruption Risk Index to compare state-to-state how corrupt various states are across a series of factors. Can point to 24 states that have new ethnics laws based on giving states an "F".

Goodman: "Well, this panel gets an 'A.'"

Panel Discussion IV: New Strategies for Supporting Public and Noncommercial Media

Steve Coll, President, New America Foundation
Offering a "strawman" framework for thinking about the goals of the various ideas being discussed. His assumption: first we have to identify a market gap, and then identify why policy is the solution. More economic research needed, but he proposes that we're moving to an understanding that local news is a big gap. (He cites the Knight Commission report on information needs in communities, which notes that local stations haven't adjusted to digital yet.)

He also suggests that legacy institutions provide a good position from which to address the issue geographically--a physical infrastructure is already well distributed. Moreover, the best rationale for new ideas lies in the "inherited public policy complex around public media." So, what "suites of policies" are needed? New ideas are out there to fund this production and he suggested using existing public media framework to feed new products--i.e., rationing off existing public media spectrum to resource new products. The more difficult problem is to incentivize production of local news in the digital environment.

Lee Bollinger, President, Columbia University
We are moving from a universe in which we have a "national public forum to one in which we have a global public forum." New technology facilitates this, but also the opening up of markets around the world. The movement of ideas should mirror the movement of capital. But problems are emerging. One is censorship--this is cropping up in various spots. Another is that the journalism crisis is robbing resources from international coverage. Other countries are also moving into the global forum to try to influence international debate. Al Jezeera represents one such new player. This poses "a set of issues for this country and for the world generally."

This is not a new problem--much of the 20th century was spent building a flourishing national journalism system; now it's "time to do it on a global scale." How can we transition our anachronistic, Cold War public broadcasting system? One way is to look to examples like BBC World--global services. VOA and Radio Free Europe have journalism in them, but will always be thought of as propaganda. These broadcasts can't even come back into the U.S. for fear of influencing U.S. citizens with propaganda--"nonsense" now in our distributed system. U.S. needs public institutions to contribute to the international marketplace of ideas.

(Note: You can learn more about Bollinger's ideas in his recent book, Uninhibited, Robust, and Wide-Open: A Free Press for a New Century)

Dean Baker, Co-Director, Center for Economic and Policy Research
Proposing an individual tax credit that allows individuals to support the outlet of their choice. Similar to nonprofit tax deductions, but instead is a credit of say $100 per adult, to go to a variety of news outlets across platforms. Protections put in to keep people from posing as outlets. This would generate a lot of money; maybe only do it every 5 years, or broaden the scope. Could add other categories of creative work--art, music--as recipients. Copyright could pose another problem; perhaps work funded this way should be in the public domain? Maybe even under a "copyleft" regime. "I'm a strong believer that we should only pay for things once," and if this is subsidized content, the taxpayers have already supported it.

Craig Aaron, Managing Director, Free Press
Out of adversity comes opportunity, and we've got a huge opportunity now. Lots of big media's problems are "self-created...but whereever you point the blame, there is no longer enough private capital to support the breadth and depth of news reporting that our communities need." The need for public media couldn't be bigger, but we're spending far too little.

How to bring more money in?
1) Spectrum fees
2) Spectrum auctions
3) Public Media Trust
4) Change tax code to reduce deductions for advertising
5) Consumer electronics tax

Need to take this conversation "outside the Beltway," and engage the public in coming up with ways to help support public media.

Eric Newton, Vice President for Journalism Program, Knight Foundation
Foundation saw the news crisis building; in response has funded four experimental rounds of funding designed to encourage the development of new forms of community news. Traditional public broadcasters have for the most part been absent from these competitions. Also, $15 million in nonproft reporting projects, very few of which existed five years ago, and almost none are partnering with existing public broadcasting systems. Then, reached out to traditional public broadcasters. Some are "ready to reform," and are innovating. PBS Engage, NPR's Argo, the Public Insight network--all new developments.

"The issue here is how are you going to deal with the fact that this is a new digital age?" How to help existing public broadcasters transform but also help all of the new startups doing "some fantastic things"? These organizations, now just a few years old, have started winning top awards in journalism; I don't seee how we can ignore that." There are a lot of ways that Washington can approach the problems in local news. A content-neutral technological fund would be one way to support both the old and the new.

Waldman: Asks Bollinger to expound on his idea of shifting Broadcast Board of Govenerners funding to public broadcasting

Bollinger: Offers up NSF as an alternative model of funding mechanism for journalistic content, as opposed to the current situation of Congressional appropriation. "Every single system has its risks of improper control." Advertisers nix content, foundations have an agenda..."there is no system that is free of this, it is in the ways that you approach it, the mix of systems, and the trust you have in the professional culture involved."

Waldman: Asks Coll to question Baker about voucher idea

Coll: Asks what's distinctive about this idea for media in particular?

Baker: That's the argument for broadening the scope, to make sure that everyone gets value back somehow. "We do intervene now"--copyright is an intervention. The voucher is more efficient.

Waldman: Couldn't you argue that while the firewall system that's currently in place has worked somewhat well, if public media is being asked to fund journalism on a local level, doesn't that make the potential pressures in the current structure "irrepressable."

Coll: Where has the firewall has been successfully preserved in the past? Content-neutral investments in infrastructure is one place; governance mechanisms have also worked. The governance structure might also be strengthened further. Peer review, independence, transparency are all critical. Having well-constructed boards is also critical.

Waldman: On the voucher question, what would your response be to nonprofit organizations about why the government is supporting news and the arts disproportionately?

Baker: We are already doing that through copyright--they should already be upset about that. Also, government already supporting nonprofits through tax deductions. Plus, media hasn't done such a great job--look at the reporting on the housing bubble.

Waldman: How would voucher have helped?

Baker: We don't know, but we need to open up the gates and let more people try.

Waldman: Asks Aaron about taxing advertising when news crisis has been precipitating by diminshed advertising--doesn't that make it worse?

Aaron: You could exempt smaller organizations, but advertising is still pervasive, hard to accept the argument that it has been reduced overall. Notes that this is a business tax rather than one on individuals, thinks people would get behind it if they thought it would support quality content.

Waldman: Asks Newton--why do we do any of this, doesn't Knight have it under control?

Newton: Problem is "too many of these experiments are working out." More succeeded than anticipated, and now there are scores of new projects needing support. They need help with governance, business models, tech, and "no one foundation can pay for all of that." Disputes voucher idea--notes that the current system allows people to choose what media they support, or not at all. Reiterates need for a technology fund that would support the creation of more choices of public media to consume.

Waldman: Why can't the successful projects stand alone?

Newton: Eventually they will scale up, but are we willing to go the 10 to 20 years it'll take for new models to solidify? We are entering an era of "continuous change," and public media projects may need continual funds to keep up.

Goodman: Asks Coll to talk a bit more about the kinds of strings that need to be attached to public funding.

Coll: Peer-to-peer community review borrowed from the model of peer-reviewed science is a promising model.

Goodman: Some say that all we need is broadband, but there's another piece, and that piece gets tricky.

Waldman: Schaffer suggested another idea related to the voucher--offering a double charitable deduction associated with media and culture donations.

Baker: It's a good idea compared to where we are today, but voucher system will create more participation, because many people don't itemize.

[Waldman and Bollinger then have an exchange around the legal niceties of protecting free speech that I am loath to summarize.]

Bollinger notes that "the risks of public control need to be weighed against the magnitude of problem we're facing." Very few correspondents are now covering Africa, China--many foreign bureaus have closed. "We have a tendancy to be a provincial society--this is a very grave problem." Plus, we're in a competitive global marketplace of ideas, and American journalism needs to respond.

Goodman: Asking Aaron about imposing a spectrum fee on commercial broadcasters; wouldn't this further endanger their ability to do local news?

Aaron: Broadcasters have used the public spectrum to make money for years; "we've been subsidizing them for a long time, and there's some great local news being done, but there are also communities where local news isn't being done." Greater social good of supporting public broadcasting outweighs interest of broadcasters in this case. Tradeoff for licences was supposed to be meeting public interest obligations, which are no longer being met in a meaningful way.

By going out into the communities and trying out these different proposals mentioned earlier, he suggests, it'd be possible to identify which revenue streams could be politically viable. "What do we need, and how are we going to pay for it? That's what we're trying to get to with these options."

Newton: Wants to question the assumptions that commercial media is always bad and public media is always good, that placing foreign correspondents is the best way to get international news....we are not done experimenting, which is why a technology innovation fund can generate new options and new experiments.

Panel Discussion V: Communications and Regulatory Policy

Ken Ikeda, Executive Director, Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC)
PEG community very diverse; gathering data now about its successes and activities, and asking for FCC's assistance. Important to note that PEG is community-driven, non-gatekkeeper function; an important distinction. BAVC a new entrant into PEG system; experienced in training first-time storytellers to produce content. PEG is a space "in which citizens find their voice, discover their communities," part of a complex ecosystem. Many PEG operators struggle to maintain their channels' place in the cable lineup.

Urges the FCC not to consider the future of PEG as an either/or proposition; instead need to combine online and broadcast. PEG should work with public service broadcasting to redefine public service on the community level. New opportunities available re. municipal fiber for content sharing. Can aggregate live content in real time, simulcast debates, and other possibilities; experimenting with these new functions in San Francisco. Creates a "public service infrastructure" that can be used for health, workforce development and more.

Rod Bates, General Manager, Nebraska Educational Telecommunications
Nebraska's network operates statewide public TV & radio network. Variation in population across Nebraska means that state network is more viable than local station support. They have 9 transmitters and various transponders to provide service from a central location. Invested $46 million in conversion to digital; state support for public broadcasters is waning around the country. State networks provide some of the only access to news on state government. In Nebraska, brought multimedia technology into state capital--now live streaming access to various government proceedings.

They are also archiving this coverage and allowing commercial news providers to use it. Only by pooling their resources have they been able to maintain this level of service. Less than 12 percent of their funding comes from a federal level; this is not enough, especially if there is going to be a broadband buildout. The foundation of public television is education--this includes providing trusted news and information source, but education is their strategic priority. "We are now redefining public media," with partners, providing users with access on demand.

Bill Kling, President & CEO, American Public Media
Most concerned about the polarization of audiences by commercial media, and the corresponding declines in reporting. "Polarized content makes big money. That isn't going to change, we can't change it, and the regulatory system encourages it." Notes though that while tabloids are also strong in the UK, public media system is strong, offering fact-based, centrist journalism. Public broadcasting is "vastly underperforming, and many of us are facilitating that underperformance." There's no definition for public broadcasting other than noncommercial nature of station. CPB did not set tough standards for community service. Congress misread public media as a threat rather than seeing it as "their best hope" for a rational public sphere.

What can we do now? NPR is a great success, and it's now time to focus on local communities. Create a number of philanthropically supported public media demonstration models to demonstrate best practices in content development, governance, structural efficiency and leadership. These experiments could help to inform other communities. Additional vision and regulatory change will be needed to extend the lessons of those models. CPB licensees should be required to demonstrate more impact, and the standards for eligibility should simultaneously be raised. One way to raise the standards would be to require more full-time staff.

In Congress, a caucus is needed to understand the relationship between public media, news production and civil discourse. "There has never been a moment of greater opportunty or challenge for our nation's media."

Craig L. Parshall, Senior Vice President & General Counsel, National Religious
Broadcasters
Wants to keep the doors open for dissemination of the gospel of Christ. Many of their members are nonprofit; Christian Broadcasting Network is a member, and covers regional, national and global news. Total Living Network, based in Chicago, has a nationwide reach and was recently awarded an Emmy for a documentary--they do a nice job of bridging the gap, he says, between secular and faith-based broadcasting. Most of their member broadcasters in radio have 5 employes or fewer; "if we had additional sources of revenue we'd be able to do a lot more." There's distrust out there about "what we are all about," which limits their ability to participate in the information ecology.

Christian media is not synonymous with right-wing media, he says. While PBS is most trusted by 40 percent of the population, "what about the other 60 percent?" he asks. Suggests that if we "fertilize" the media landscape, rather than subsidizing it, then that will allow for better freedom of the press. Noncommercial broadcasters are an untapped avenue for increased news and information. Suggests that the FCC reduce limitations on noncommercial stations on fundraising for other nonprofits--suggests 1 percent of time. This will "create a synergy between nonprofits and broadcasters." Also suggests that FCC reconsider underwriting rules, which restrict noncommercial stations' ability to raise funds.

Susan Harmon, Managing Director, Public Radio Capital
Describing ways in which stations can consolidate functions and consider new markets in order to become more viable. Acquiring and financing public stations has made them "deeply confident in the value of radio going forward." It's wrong, however, to focus on standalone stations. Scale of combining multiple stations under a single infrastructure will help to spur growth. Unifying stations in major markets will create market solutions. What are the policy implications? There will be joint ventures between non-profits, between noncommercial and commercial entities--policies need to facilitate this. Underwriting needs to be revisited; lease management agreements as well.

One of the greatest challenges that noncommercial radio faces is access to capital. Need to look at opportunities within the federal government, like making small business loans available to nonprofits. Also want FCC to take the idea of repurposing radio spectrum off the table--a different animal than TV, "very strong and robust." Connection between radio and other platforms is going to be of tremendous service in coming years.

Terry Clifford, Co-CEO, SRG/ Station Resource Group
SRG's roots are in public radio; they recently released a CPB-supported study on the future of public radio. Her recommendations to the FCC:

1) Pay attention to infrastructure;
2) Make platform-specific policies with an eye towards cross-platform possibilities;
3) FCC, CPB and Congress need to act "in sync";
4) Public media is underresourced; the FCC can do something about it--create a fund for public service media administered by the CPB, as many have suggested.

Goodman: Asks Parshall if he'd like his members to be CPB-funded

Parshall: The economic climate is tough, and we're surviving, but we'd like to be able to do this on our own with some incentives such as the ones he's mentioned. Not interested in direct subsidy.

Goodman: Asks Harmon to talk more specifically about the consequences of liberalizing underwriting.

Harmon: If you have good values and are governed well, and know what your mission is, you can liberalize underwriting rules. "Part of this is grounded in governance and the way nonprofits are set up as a whole."

Kling: Temporary Commission on Alternate Financing was a previous exploration of these kinds of questions; the debate ended with "enhanced underwriting," which we have now. Advises FCC to take another look at that, review negatives that had surfaced.

Waldman: Is the solution research, tightening or clarity?

Clifford: This is not really perceived as a problem in the field.

Parshall: Maybe they shouldn't be applied to public broadcasting in the same way as religious broadcasting, which doesn't receive CPB funds.

Goodman: Asks Kling what standards should be applied to new nonprofit news projects

Kling: CPB needs to come along with new carrots and sticks to create incentives for more news production. Starts with staffing requirements--4 minimum-wage employees can't run a major urban public station. Congress has defended these low standards as a way of protecting their local stations. If the standards are raised requiring stations to have a news department, there are two choices--the first is to fight it, the second is for those stations to go to local funders and try to meet the obligation.

Goodman asks Ikeda: What if such a mandate forced partnerships as way to meet the obligation? How would that play out?

Ikeda: The way in which innovation happens has changed radically--small boutique shops can now innovate. Such a mandate would force stations to partner in order to innovate, and "I'm all for it."

Goodman: Should there be a menu of obligations to meet different communties' nees?

Bates: There's a lot of value in partnerships, but also the risk of "diluting the brand." There are things you can do to partner with local nonprofits, though, and that's different from asking viewers to give them money. Says he's "skittish" about new mandates because they are always underfunded.

William D. Freedman, Associate Chief Media Bureau, FCC asks Kling what metrics for local public news production would be, what would happen if they failed to meet the obligation, and how would this affect other licensing decisions?

Kling agrees with Freedman's assessment that the "devil is always in the details," but suggests that the failure to provide standards from the get-go for noncommercial stations might have been the initial mistake. "We haven't set up the incentives to improve it...sooner or later, we've got to start somewhere."

Waldman pulls out a few areas for standards: news, local programming--what else?

Kling: Public broadcasting is the last, best chance for saving news. We need to avoid "media chaos." Suggests ascertainment of community needs--"everybody hated public ascertainment," but that's where the best ideas come from, it's the way to get to know minority communities. Use a 2010 version, not a 1970 version--suggests that the Public Insight Network is a massive version of this.

Parshall: The noncommercial religious broadcasting world does ascertainment, but doesn't want mandates, and would be opposed to mandates being placed on them.

Harmon: For carrots, but not sticks--doesn't think sticks will work.

Bates: The definition of local service varies from community to community. "It's really hard to set a regulation" that defines local service. Create rewards, as Harmon says.

Ikeda: There is a movement right now arounds social metrics, like dashboards--these will help to reveal efficiencies in cost for small organizations vs. large ones. It's now possible to create much more content with fewer staff members using social media.

Waldman: What about online disclosure of certain metrics? Would this create a market pressure towards improvement? What sort of metrics should be considered?

Ikeda: Need new methodologies, even cause-based definitions. For example, the Not in Our Town project leads to real-world engagement: marching, petition signing, etc. Hopes that there's some self-organizing, different roles might arise within the ecosystem.

Kling: On the license renewal process: "If you're not going to set standards, why do it?" Also notes that it's more expensive to serve audiences with content via broadband--economics are different from setting up a transmitter. This needs to be subsidized.

Goodman asks: How does consolidation in the noncommercial space compare to consolidation in the commercial space?

Harmon: Consolidation can create more resources for local content, which is a different dynamic than in the commerical arena.

Waldman: The National Broadband Plan suggested that if any public station gave up spectrum, 100 percent of the proceeds could go back into public media. Does this idea have any traction?

Kling: The money needs to go back to the station, not to the industry at large.

Waldman: Future of Media project is tasked with making that proposal more concrete. "Now is the time to summon up the devil to provide the details...sorry, Craig."

[The room cracks up]

The conversation continued on for a few more minutes about the details of how best to provide support for both incumbents and new noncommercial players, but both the room and the panel was winding down. Waldman encouraged everyone to think about the conversation, and "go to the next detail," and to submit comments in this final week of the Future of Media project. "Everything is on the table, so this ought to be a moment for real creativity," he concluded.

Jessica Clark is director of the Center for Social Media's Future of Public Media project, a Knight Media Policy Fellow at the New America Foundation, and the co-author of Beyond the Echo Chamber: Reshaping Politics Through Networked Progressive Media.

Welcome and Opening Remarks

Chairman Julius Genachowski
Says that he's excited to see "energy and enthusiasm around this important topic," and hearkens back to the mid-1940s, when the noncommercial broadband system was established: "If we hadn't made those simple but bold decisions then...our society, our democracy would have been uncalculably poorer." Now we are again at a moment of "seismic shifts" that offer both challenges and opportunities. Genachowski notes that the noncommercial community is no longer saying "public broadcasting," but "public media," and that thousands of web sites and mobile projects are now operating with a public media mission, but not yet recognized as public media.

"This is not about preserving an industry, or about preserving journalists' paychecks, though that wouldn't be so bad," he says. Instead, it's about preserving the vigilance and accountability of journalism for citizens. It's also about finding new ways to help parents helping to struggle with their children's media consumption, and giving them new forms of educational content.

Notes that there is tremendous creativity both in the leadership and in the grassroots organizations. He notes that the organizations are working together more, and urges them to "keep it up." Wants to make sure the public media spectrum truly serves the public, providing access to "vibrant, diverse" sources of news and information. Policymakers create the "platform for free speech" used by journalists and creative trailblazers to "enlighten us all."

FCC Commissioner Michal J. Copps
"The subject at hand could not be more timely...doing something about journalism is at the top of my bucket list," says Copps, who has demonstrated particular interest in the role of public media over the years. Citizens need "an information infrastructure" that tells them what they need to know to serve as informed citizens. This challenge has been with us since the founding fathers, who decided to subsidize postal rates in order to facilitate the flow of news. "Newspapers were the information infrastructure of that era...the technology and the lingo may change, but the small-d democratic challenge remains and always will," says Copps. Media literacy is part of the toolset, teaching people how to distinguish "truth from fact," and to not only know how to use media, but "how media can use them."

Praises public media makers for their impressive work given the embarrassingly low national investment in public broadcasting, even while noting that there are still things to fix. "It seems that with each finger that's plugged into the dike, 15-20 more leaks spring up." Journalism is still in trouble, and many conversations around the country need to address this issue. Of course, he notes, cable and radio commentators may dismiss this as "Maoism or whatever else," but "we need to get off the defense and on the offense," says Copps. We need more substance--what we have right now is "a bad case of substance abuse." Notes that Bill Moyers is broadcasting his last show today, and "can think of no journalist now or at any time who has contributed more to our democracy," and asks the crowd for a round of applause

Framing Presentation: A 1967 Moment... A Vision for Public Media

Luis Ubiñas, President, Ford Foundation
In a taped address, Ubiñas describes Ford's historic investments in public broadcasting, but notes that public media "must find new relevance." How to create a cross-platform system that includes interactivity and user-generated content? Notes that the Carnegie Commission set the vision for 50 years; now our charge is to "ensure access and engage all Americans to create a new kind of public square." Notes that now we need to "take risks," to create "dynamic media" and create "the space and access required to encourage innovation." Ford, he says looks forward to investing in a "new generation of public media pioneers."

Ernest Wilson, Chair, Corporation for Public Broadcasting
"This is a critical moment in the life of public service media," says Wilson, and the challenge is to move "beyond public broadcasting." We are "beyond the old and the new, and have to challenge ourselves with creativity and energy" to harness the tools that we now have. But "tools are not enough," we need the "wisdom to use those tools wisely," as well as courage to discard old practices, attitudes and institutions that don't serve a new vision of public service media. If we succeed, democracy will be stronger.

In terms of education, he wonders, will Americans--especially the poor among us--have the tools they need to navigate the new digital ecosystem? How will journalists be trained or retrained? Notes that a number of journalism schools are addressing these challenges through the Carnegie-Knight initiative.

Turns to the mission of the CPB: commitment to "innovate for the American people," not to be wedded to a particular platform or institution. NPR and PBS are at the core of the noncommercial media ecology, and are "sprinting rapidly" to adapt to the new platforms. But some legacy institutions aren't "sprinting," but strolling, and CPB is trying to help them catch up in this turbulent environment. This is a moment for change, and CPB has commited itself to the values of "digital," dialogue," and "diversity." Institutions nimble enough to succeed using the three "d's" will be rewarded with a fourth "d": dollars.

Right now, not quite a "public service media" but no longer just "public broadcasting" either--somewhere in between. Moving forward, the challenge is to welcome the future as an opportunity. "The time to act is now."

Waldman asks: How can you measure success in this new arena?

Wilson: A set of measurements has to emerge in conversation with people in this room and at the stations. But "it's not rocket science." Diversity can be measured by the number of people of color at the local stations or in leadership, by audience share, content type--we need to set the standards and incremental money will follow.

Waldman asks: What is public broadcasting's approach to local news and information?

Wilson: This is at the core of what we do, especially as the quality of commercial local media declines. In some communities, public broadcasters are the only source of local news. Our obligations are becoming even more important, but it's going to be a challenge to embrace new technologies at the local level. Production values are in question--is it worth sending out local reporters with Flip cameras in order to increase local coverage? "We're not doing enough, and we need to do more. One of the challenges is to save money inside the system...so that we can buttress local reporting."

Panel Discussion I: Varieties of Public and Noncommercial Media

Ellen P. Goodman, Rutgers University School of Law, Camden and Distinguished Visiting Scholar, Future of Media Project, is moderating this panel and introduces the panelists

Patricia Harrison, President and CEO, Corporation for Public Broadcasting
Public media is "the real Homeland Security," Harrison says, noting that CPB was created to serve as a firewall between the government and public media, and "this is the trust equation" that allows the public to rely on public broadcasting for news and information. "We've always been underfunded but have always overperformed on a shoestring...but that string is running out." Journalism is shrinking, and CPB is struggling to respond. Notes investment in Project Argo and the Local Journalism Centers as a start, and will soon be announcing another $10 million investment in investigative journalism. "These are all components of a dynamic public media," collaborative and diverse. "This turbocharges our transformation in the digital age." Great companies that grow cannot be wedded to the status quo, she says.

Vivian Schiller, President & CEO, NPR (Via Remote Video)
Points to the State of the News Media report, and likens it to "a blow to the head by a 2×4." The report begins with two words, she says, "What now?" NPR has been somewhat insulated from the wild swings in journalism, and listening to public radio is at an all-time high--more than the paid circulation of the top 100 newspapers combined. NPR stations are also some of the only locally owned and operated stations in the country. She sees the report as a call to action. "Public media has many of the answers to the growing void"; those answers involve innovation and partnership. Local accountability journalism is a signature focus of their new efforts. Diversity of listeners is also key--assessed by age, race, and other factors. Moving onto new platforms is also growing the audience for public radio: iPhones, iPads, and other. "We will always be free to the consumer on every platform." Digital technologies also offer the chance of reinventing distribution through the creation of a "public media platform." Goal is to make all public media available on a common platform, plus content from other nonprofits, archival material, and more. She anticipates that developers "in their pajamas in their basement" will be able to help repackage and innovate with this information--a new benchmark in access. So, "what now?" All public media outlets must commit to partner, to innovate, and to spur innovation inside and outside of their ranks.

Jan Schaffer, Executive Director, J-Lab, The Institute for Interactive Journalism
Thinks it's critical to expand the definition of public media to include nonprofit news experiments popping up on the local level. Newcomers more than "bloggers in their pajamas." They include hyperlocal sites, metro-area sites with paid staff, and "soft advocacy" organizations like Sunlight, which demonstrate "journalistic DNA." They are accomplishing this with bare-bones support from funders and donors, but need more support. All are experimenting with hybrid models of support; philanthropic support can jump-start them, but it's not enough. J-Lab has funded 52 startups, but has received more than 2000 applications. Policymakers should incentivize opportunities to be publicly engaged. CPB should be refocused as the Corporation for Public Media; and a Public Media Participation fund should be funded by taxes on cellphone and laptop purchases, with a matching contribution by these manufacturers; tax credits could be given to civic media producers, and more. Increased transparency, Shaffer notes, is key to support for these new news organizations.

Hari Sreenivasan, Correspondent, PBS NewsHour
Sreenivasan describes "the public making media in its most raw and simple form," by exchanging information about an event across platforms and screens. "We are telling our own stories now without waiting for a TV network to squeeze us down into a 20-second soundbyte." It's in this "impatient environment" that NewsHour is reinventing itself. Trying to serve viewers who are tired of the coarseness and acrimony of cable news, but are also expecting to be able to participate, contribute, comment. NewsHour also working to partner with more public media projects on the local level to feed local content up to the national level. Using new technologies to facilitate this reporting and share it, without using older, more expensive satellite technologies. Jim Leher is Skyping in from his book tour, now signing his emails "geeky Jim." Focus of NewsHour is on delivery of necessary information, not the most titillating tidbits. "My job isn't to tell you that the glass is half full or half empty, it's to tell you that it's a 16-ounce container with fluid in it."

Jose Luis Rodriguez, Founder & CEO, Hispanic Information and
Telecommunications Network (HITN)
HITN fills a gap by providing information and educational content to the Latino community. They are also working on an initiative to connect community organizations, libraries and schools via a broadband network to create a learning environment. The public interest set-aside policy for DBS satellite has allowed this network to grow, but obtaining cable distribution is daunting, and they are segregated into a "ghetto," which requires that users subscribe to them. He's recommending the creation of a national public interest cable tier. HITN should be "part of the public broadcasting familiy." He urges the commission to make digital channels available to independent educational broadcasters. "Is there any place at all for small, minority broadcasters in a rapidly consolidating landscape?" Such providers can add to the diversity of available content.

Sue Schardt, President, Association of Independents in Radio
Showing a video from the Makers Quest 2.0 project, designed to help lead public radio into the transition to public media. The video features the Mapping Main Street project, a collaborative, multiplatform documentary designed to help people map and document the more than 10,000 main streets across the U.S. Educators have been particularly interested in adapting the project to help students engage with their communities. The projects demonstrate the "bold, entrepreneurial spirit" of independent producers, and, Schardt says, "we are committed to building a bottom-up network," that will allow public media to " follow where they lead us."

Goodman asks Schaffer: If CPB got a "big pot of dough" for local journalism, how should they spend it?

Schaffer: Need to beef up editorial chops, create partnerships with regional experiments.

Goodman: How to choose where money goes?

Schaffer: Not all of these sites are objective in a traditional way, but you can look at the track record of the sites, their involvement in the community

Harrison: There will be increasing investment in the local journalism centers. But we can't operate on a shoestring anymore. "The increase in what we're getting as an overmediated nation is not quality." But to respond to this problem, more money is needed.

Waldman: Won't questions of bias become more acute if CPB funds accountability journalism that holds local officials' feet to the fire?

Harrison: "I hope that's the outcome." Hopes that local journalism centers do "speak truth to power." Wants members of Congress calling in; "that would mean we're doing a good job...I'd welcome those phone calls and do receive them from both sides of the aisle." Leadership takes courage, she says, and public broadcasting "has a mission." This is why it's crucial to have "a funded, independent public media network."

Waldman: What about people who feel that Bill Moyers isn't a hero, but an ideologue.

Harrison: All kinds of perspectives are aired on public broadcasting, just listen. "I want to attract to public media the brightest, most creative people who are interested in ideas."

Goodman: What will it mean to have local stations serve as a "community hub"? Will reaching outside of public broadcasting complicate the objectivity issue?

Schiller: "It's a good tension." You have to choose partners wisely, though. Notes that it will be a case-by-case negotiation for stations to work with journalism experiments. Values of independence and balance are central to journalism.

Jamila Bess Johnson of the FCC asks: How do you bring people from other communities into the mix?

Schaffer: Micro-grant programs are good for bringing people out of the woodwork; notes that many J-Lab applicants have been women.

Harrison: Local journalism centers, as part of grant process, there's a requirement to connect with NAHJ, NABJ, etc. for recruiting. "There are ways to shape inclusion and increase diversity." As diversity increases in the country, we can't afford to "have the same people tell the same stories."

Wilson adds that by not recruiting more broadly, public broadcasting is "leaving a lot of talent on the table," especially as boomers start retiring. "I think it's going to be fun and important," to bring more diverse young talent in.

Goodman asks: What would you tell Congress about why they should fund shows like the NewsHour or stations like HITN?

Sreeivasan: "We provide context," and commercial media doesn't have the time for that, sometimes to the detriment of their editorial integrity. "I'm one of the few people in my peer group who hasn't had to go out and cover Tiger Woods over the past few months." NewsHour serves as an explainer about important issues.

Rodriguez: HITN has provided programs that teach Latino students and their parents how to prepare to go to college, interactive call-in programs with experts that explores topics like postpartum depression, the housing crisis, and immigration issues; you don't see these kinds of programs on commercial TV.

Panel Discussion II: Purposes of Public and Noncommercial Media

James O'Shea, Editor & Co-Founder, Chicago News Cooperative
Explains that he's been a journalist for 40 years, including editor of the Los Angeles Times. There are gaps in journalism now. What is public service journalism? "It's like pornography: you know it when you see it." Describes impactful reporting on the death penalty in Chicago, a corrupt hospital in Watts. These strories weren't flashy; they were the "dividends paid" by regular, patient reporting. "Many newspapers today practice reporting by ROI," serving as "content machines." The Chicago News Cooperative, among others, is a nonprofit news experiment that is thinly capitalized, but trying to retain traditional news values. Says he's skeptical of government intervention in journalism, but urges government to incentivize these new types of organizations for the sake of democracy.

Paula Kerger, President, Public Broadcasting Service
PBS was created to do what commercial providers cannot: to use media for teaching and learning, to "serve the people, not to sell them." PBS has pioneered educational television, supported news documentary, and supported cultural performances. She talks in more detail about the role that various programs have served, and notes that PBS is developing popular online educational content, iPhone apps and content for smart boards online games, and more. A new digital channel will also launch devoted to the performing arts.

David Fanning, Executive Producer, Frontline
Notes that documentary journalists have been experimenting with online platforms since 1995, and that Frontline has had significant success in providing content online, including Bush' War, which has been downloaded more than 6 million times. They use the web to provide better access to long-form interviews, background material and more. "Every Frontline lives in a matrix of curated content." They identify "bright lines of narrative," that travel out into the world with all of their content attached so that people can refer back. Frontline is reaching beyond U.S. borders, partnering with online journalism organizations like the Tehran Bureau. Worked with ProPublica and the Times Picayune on a documentary about Hurricane Katrina. "What's most exciting about this activity is that it's all so true to the public mission...this work is the serious and profound obligation to the public commons." In the end, more resources will be needed to support "a robust digital infrastructure...to pay for the pipes," so that public media doesn't have to rely on advertisers to support distribution.

James T. Hamilton, Professor, Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University
Public media fills the gap between what people need and want to know to function as voters and citizens. For most people they don't see the benefit in investing time in politics--a state economists call "rational ignorance." Duty, diversion and drama play a role in voters' interst in public media--they feel obligated to be interested in politics, they find it entertaining, they are engaged by colorful characters or controversy. But public affairs reporting is expensive. This combination of cost and lack of general interest in this kind of reporting means that it's often devalued. But such journalism can save lives, save public money, and more. It's hard to monetize this value, but there is another value system to consider: the public good. Even if readers aren't consuming advocacy journalism, they benefit from its production. "It's hard to do well and do good at the same time," but what's the cost of stories not told? They are highly valuable to society.

Randolph J. May, President, The Free State Foundation
The abundance of media today calls into question the need for public media funding. Tensions inevitably arise between role of government in supporting journalism and the first amendment. "Government's involvement exacerbates public tensions in a way that makes civil discourse difficult." Perhaps if there was widespread agreement that gaps exist, government funding would be more acceptable. But, given the national debt and budgetary demands facing the country, maybe instead an "exit strategy" might be set for funding public broadcasting at all. Cites Goodman's comments that the scarce resource today is not content, but "attention," and that public media should serve a curatorial and filtering purpose. He disagrees, and says that government-supported media shouldn't serve as a filter or a megaphone, and cites the significant differences of the coverage of the Tea Party as an example of the range of views across the ideological spectrum. There are significant differences of opinion about what needs more coverage, and the market should provide as much "quality" as the market demands. He emphasizes now is the time to reduce or diminish funding, not expand it.

Goodman: There's a difference between funding content and funding capabilities. New capabilities such as streaming are not in the current mandate of CPB. Asks O'Shea how he partners with public broadcasting without fear of influence.

O'Shea: They partner with both the New York Times and the local public station, WTTW. Partnering with WTTW allows them to have a tax-exempt status; eventually they will become their own nonprofit. They share a reporter; it's a collaboration, and no one can tell them what to do. "As long as you maintain that independence," it works.

Waldman: Asks May if marketplace is providing a sufficent amount of accountability journalism.

May: Says he understands and appreciates role of accountability journalism in democracy, and that the country is undergoing a transition that affects newspapers and other news organizations. Suggests that more original reporting is cropping up, and that models will evolve to ensure more accountability journalism. Fundamentally, he believes that the government shouldn't be involved in media, and that the private media should supply accountability journalism.

Waldman: How do you respond to the model that O'Shea describes?

May: "The more attenuated direct goverment support is, the more comfortable I am." Also more supportive of government funds for infrastructure rather than content.

O'Shea: Notes that they don't get money from WTTW.

Waldman: Asks Kerger to expand on the idea that noncommercial broadcasting spun off formats like reality TV, cooking programs; is that role still necessary given the proliferation of new platforms?

Kerger: Notes that only 15 percent of public broadcasting funding comes from the government. Public media needs to survey for market gaps. Arts programming pioneered on PBS also spun off into commercial channels--Bravo and A&E--but they have now backed off from this kind of programming because it's not commercially viable, so PBS is stepping back in. "Where the marketplace serves well," it should, when it can't "that's the role of public media."

Waldman: Notes that high-quality long-form investigative work is expensive; given the crisis wouldn't money be better spent on re-employing reporters?

Fanning: In a noisy information ecosystem, progamming that provides context is very rare. "It is the great gap, both in terms of the investigative work that is necessary to ask the hard questions of our political instiutions, and more imoprtantly, to try to frame up the larger questions." There are times when this kind of work really matters, and "if anything we need more of it."

Goodman: If there's one point of agreement on this panel, it's that public media should fill market gaps. But "here's the rub." If consumers are "rationally ignorant," but we want public media to "grow its audience," how can we expect public media to do that when we're asking it to provide information that people supposedly don't want? Puzzlingly, some public media programs do have a large audience--how to explain?

Hamilton: The largest gap is local and state accountability reporting, but right now that's not heavily represented in public media. There are things that public media can do to lower the cost of discovering stories. "Impact" is not tantamount to audience--once the story is uncovered, it can be distributed through various channels. You can also tell a story that has public impact in an entertaining way.

Fanning: Frontline had 25 million page views on its site over the last 6 months--long-form documentary actually is popular. Why should we keep paying for this kind of journalism? There are so few places that actualy do it. ProPublica, Center for Public Integrity, Investigative Reporting Workshop--all talking with Frontline about how to work together to leverage and amplify one another's work.

May: Says he sees a contradiction in Fanning's assertion; that there are enough places creating long-form journalism, and that if there's more public demand, more will be produced. When the government funds such projects, there's a "tendency to displace private support." Support will come if government withdraws.

Fanning: Networks no longer support long-form investigation; have scaled back to "hidden camera" journalism and other less hard-nosed forms of news.

Kerger: Says public broadcasting's ROI is different; they're delivering against a second bottom line of service to the American people. Now, they're also not only delivering programs for broadcast and public media sites, but content that can be distributed elsewhere, on other sites, in the classroom. "Within public media there is a clairion call to create content of the highest integrity," but also to create content that generates demand for more.

Waldman: Asks Kerger--why is there more news on public radio than public TV?

Kerger: There's a lot of local programming on public TV--public affairs, convenings, town hall, cultural coverage. There is more news on radio, and "the reason is a simple one: money." That's why more support for local news--which allows for collaboration between radio and TV--is important.

Johnson: Wondering if there's a role for public broadcasting to serve niche audiences.

Kerger: Yes, there is a role, and that's where the use of new platforms is going to be important. They are developing more content for children and teens specifically online.

Waldman: Is the distinction between international, national and local journalism important? Where are the real gaps?

O'Shea: What's really disappearing is the systematic, daily reporting conducted by newspapers. Statehouse reporting in particular has been "hit hard"--"that's really bad. I come from Illinois and I can guarantee that's not what we need." Systematic investigation of civic, governmental, private organizations is what's needed.

Hamilton: Difficult to mass up on the local level to support beat reporting. Cites a laundry list of reporters local to him who had been on various beat and had been laid off. "Those beats are gone."

And...scene. Time for lunch, back with more in a bit.

To follow the live-blog from the second day of the FCC Workshop, go here.

Jessica Clark is director of the Center for Social Media's Future of Public Media project, a Knight Media Policy Fellow at the New America Foundation, and the co-author of Beyond the Echo Chamber: Reshaping Politics Through Networked Progressive Media.