Media

We don’t normally address questions of media policy abroad on this blog, but the situation in Italy seems worthy of highlighting.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has been increasingly critical of the media, recently giving public voice to a cause that is apparently very close to his heart: “Italian citizens, please go on strike. Stop buying newspapers for a while. They only tell lies. They totally disinform. They give an upside down view of reality.”

He got a strike, but not the one that he intended.

It might not seem all that exciting on the surface, but the Federal Communications Commission’s recently announced Data Innovation Initiative may be one of the Commission’s most significant efforts in recent years. The initiative is intended to modernize and streamline how the Commission collects, uses, and disseminates data.

As promised when we first published our information community case study on Seattle, we've revisited our research with fresh eyes and new feedback since issuing version 1.0 back in May. Thank you to all who graciously offered input on the paper--in its multiple iterations--and took time to speak with us about trends on the ground in Seattle; the research process was certainly a collaborative effort.

From The New York Times to the Council on Foreign Relations, news producers come in all shapes and sizes these days. An increasing number hail from the nonprofit sector, and the journalistic legitimacy of such news organizations has been a popular topic of debate recently. On one hand, columns from Howard Kurtz in The Washington Post and Jim Barnett at Nieman Journalism Lab last week argued that at least some of these organizations provide accurate, useful journalism about the particular subjects they cover and fill gaps left in mainstream news providers’ coverage. On the other hand, despite all of this chatter, the role of nonprofit news organizations in the landscape of modern media remains a largely unanswered question.

On June 15, the Federal Trade Commission hosted the final workshop in a series of three that tackled the question "How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?" Comments from the assembled experts and observers ran a by-now-familiar gamut of pleading special cases and offering standalone solutions.

One of the benefits of events like Digital Capital Week is hearing news straight from the source. Tuesday's DC Week sessions were dedicated to the evolution of the media. The audience heard from representatives from both new and traditional news outlets around the city. Panelists provided insight into real world examples of reader engagement and social media strategies: what worked, what failed and what has potential for the future.

The Federal Trade Commission's final workshop on changes in the media business, “How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?," ended with the sense that only limited policy recommendations would come out of the session, at least in terms of recommendations by the FTC.

Citizen journalism is no longer a hot new trend; anyone can start up a Word Press blog on their neighborhood news, capture cell phone photos that trickle up to mainstream media, or spread news internationally over Twitter. But while the multimedia tools for increasing citizen engagement have proliferated in recent years, there’s still no definitive answer for how best to employ them to effect actual change. Personal blogs or those with low readership still trail established news outlets in the “long tail” of Internet traffic, and the majority of government agencies and elected officials are still figuring out how to open up a dialogue with their constituents online. (Just see our comments on Twitter’s latest job posting for evidence of that.)

A deep libertarian streak might be the only bridge uniting the perpetually feuding tribes of journalists and bloggers.