Reed Hundt, above, former chairman of the FCC, is among the leaders interviewed for “The Digital Revolution & Democracy.” The 21st Century’s digital explosion of information and interactivity floods our lives with new media and new opportunity. Yet we know this digital renaissance isn’t serving communities equally or democracy fully. And we don’t know whether […]
Article · September 30, 2011 by Eric Newton
Eric Newton By Eric Newton, senior adviser to the president, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation A new study shows that local news ecosystems are far more complex than is commonly understood. The digital transformation of news is causing us to mix and match content with media in new ways – and in […]
Article · September 26, 2011 by Eric Newton
Credit: Column Five Media Media Advisory: Virtual press conference will take place at noon, EST, Sept. 16. To participate: www.knightfoundation.org/fofachat 2011 Report: Future of the First Amendment Download full report in PDF format. Eric Newton, Special Adviser to the President at Knight Foundation: See also previous years of FoFA research: 2007 Report | 2006 Report | 2004 Report. Each year, […]
Article · September 16, 2011 by Eric Newton
Download the Queen’s University Knight Master Plan as a PDF document In 2010, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation announced a transformative $5.75 million gift to Queens University, to endow the James L. Knight School of Communication. On August 19, 2011, Zenzele Barnes and Sophia Newman will walk through the doorway of the […]
Article · August 30, 2011 by Eric Newton
Starting Nov. 2, the newspaper I once edited, the Oakland Tribune, will be officially dead, its remains combined with several other papers under the name East Bay Tribune. This may make Oakland the largest city in the United States without a daily newspaper all its own. But what does that mean? As the managing editor […]
Article · August 25, 2011 by Eric Newton
Today’s Miami Herald has a piece I wrote on the dangers of “Comfort News.” Here’s how it starts: “We the people are fat. So much so medical experts have declared an epidemic and declared costs to this nation of untold billions. But there’s an even bigger epidemic out there, less obvious but no less dangerous. […]
Article · August 14, 2011 by Eric Newton
Today in St. Louis at the conference of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, leading journalism schools shared the lessons of their transformation in a new book detailing the successes of the Carnegie-Knight Initiative on the Future of Journalism Education. The 132-page report, produced by the Joan Shorenstein Center at Harvard, details major changes at the initiative’s 12 […]
Article · August 10, 2011 by Eric Newton
It is no secret that the news industry is struggling in the midst of our digital revolution. But what exactly is happening? How are these changes affecting our communities? And what should be done to make sure that people are getting the information they need? This summer, four different reports that address these questions have […]
Article · August 8, 2011 by Eric Newton
What four qualities does a media business model need to succeed? In this interview, Eric Newton, senior adviser to the president at Knight Foundation, explains the four “C”s of Community Media and the new skills required to succeed as a “media maker” today. The interview, conducted by Michelle Foster, was done for the newest edition of “Empowering […]
Article · August 4, 2011 by Eric Newton
When the fellow pictured here on the right, dean Gary Kebbel, emailed me about the Economist series on the news industry, I asked him what he thought of it. This is our usual sequence of doing things. Gary, now dean of the University of Nebraska college of journalism and mass communications, was the journalism program director at Knight […]
Article · August 3, 2011 by Eric Newton
Above: Steven Waldman’s report to the FCC on the information needs of communities makes recommendations Knight will pursue with new projects announced today. Eric Newton is the Senior Adviser to the President at Knight. Today, Knight Foundation and our partners in the field are announcing two new research projects that will help philanthropy increase its […]
Article · June 15, 2011 by Eric Newton