Welcome to the Free Press blog! We post several times a week on everything from Internet access to free speech to media mergers, so check back often to see what we’re up to.
Bill Densmore is Vice President, Director & Co-Founder, CircLabs Inc. The following is an excerpt of his remarks delivered at the Federal Trade Commission’s “News Media Workshop” held on December 1 and 2, 2009.
The defining challenge for news organizations in the 21st century is no longer managing proprietary information, but helping the public manage our attention to ubiquitous information. In less than a decade, we have moved from a world of relative information scarcity -- access restricted by a variety of technical choke points -- such as presses -- to a world of such information abundance that the average user's challenge is not how to access information, or even how find it, but how to personalize and make sense of it.
Andrew Jay Schwartzman is President & Chief Executive Officer of the Media Access Project. The following is an excerpt of his remarks delivered at the Federal Trade Commission’s “News Media Workshop” held on December 1 and 2, 2009. Read his full FTC comments here.
The Internet is neither the problem nor the solution, but it is a central part of the future of journalism. Cutbacks in journalism predate the Internet, and have been driven by the incessant demands of Wall Street for short-term results and ever-greater rates of return.
While Comcast and industry groups want us to think that their mega-media merger is good for business, we’re reminding everyone that it’s a bad deal for consumers.
The Federal Trade Commission’s two-day workshop on the future of news, “How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?” brought together an incredibly wide range of commentators, including publishers, nonprofit journalists, media reformers, academics, bloggers, foundations, online game developers, programmers and others. The workshops touched on many of the core issues at the heart of the debate around the future of journalism.
We are gathering many of the remarks, presentations and speeches delivered at the event so that we can continue the conversation online and engage those who couldn’t be in the room or online for the event. Below is a (growing) list of all of the documents we have collected thus far. Check back often for new content and join the conversation in the comments section of each post.
Bryan Monroe is a visiting professor at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. He was the former president of The National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ), editorial director of Ebony and Jet magazines and assistant vice president/news at Knight Ridder. These are his remarks from the Federal Trade Commission’s News Media Workshop held on December 1 and 2, 2009. They were originally published on the Huffington Post.
Media giants like Rupert Murdoch and Arianna Huffington will likely slug it out on pay walls, copyrights and the prospect of Microsoft buying its way into the search world.
Mark MacCarthy is a professor at Georgetown University’s Communications, Culture and Technology program. The following are his remarks delivered at the Federal Trade Commission’s “News Media Workshop” held on December 1 and 2, 2009. Read an expanded version of these remarks in his earlier guest blog post here.
I want to develop the idea that public funding is a necessary part of the mix of support mechanisms for the journalism of the future.
Why? The Internet has undermined the advertising and bundling mechanisms that subsidized news production.
Eric Newton is vice president of the journalism program at the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The following are his remarks delivered at the Federal Trade Commission’s “News Media Workshop” held on December 1 and 2, 2009:
I’d like to talk about Cicero.
When Cicero was sent to the provinces, he was quite unhappy with the commercial news packets coming from Rome.
He wrote back complaining that what he needed to know were the votes of the senate but instead he was getting weird stories about Gladiators and ostriches.
The Honorable Henry Waxman is Representative of the 30th Congressional District in California and Chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. The following is an excerpt of his remarks delivered at the Federal Trade Commission’s “News Media Workshop” held on December 1 and 2, 2009:
A vigorous free press and a vigorous democracy have been inextricably linked. We are here today because of these bonds and what they mean. This is why this conference is so important. We cannot risk the loss of an informed public and all that means because of a “market failure.”
Leonard Downie Jr. is vice president at large and former executive editor of The Washington Post. He is the author, along with Michael Schudson, of "The Reconstruction of American Journalism." The following are notes from his remarks delivered at the Federal Trade Commission’s “News Media Workshop” held on December 1 and 2, 2009:
The Columbia University Journalism School Report: The Reconstruction of American Journalism details the transformational moment in American journalism, in which era of domination of newspaper and television news is rapidly giving way to a new era of journalism in which the gathering and distribution of news is more widely dispersed.
