Sam Gill is vice president of communities and impact at Knight Foundation. A strong democracy requires access to information. America’s founders believed that, and so did Knight Foundation benefactors Jack and Jim Knight, who led what was, at one time, the largest American newspaper company. The American founders and the Knights also understood that we […]
Article · December 13, 2018 by Sam Gill
Concerns about the spread of misinformation online have raced into crisis mode. The European Commission has convened a working group dedicated to studying the issue and making recommendations. Major social media companies now routinely provide public updates on their efforts to combat the spread of “fake news” through their services. Just last week, Twitter announced […]
Article · October 11, 2018 by Sam Gill
Strong democracies depend on freedom of expression and access to accurate information about community and public affairs. This is as true today as when freedom of the press was enshrined by the framers of the U.S. Constitution in the first correction they made to the governing principles of our country — what we call the […]
Article · October 1, 2018 by Sam Gill
In the two years since the 2016 election, the role major social media and technology companies like Facebook, Google and Twitter play in enabling (or corroding) an informed society has become an issue of increasing concern. It is well known at this stage that these platforms are a key destination for news. They regularly make […]
Article · August 15, 2018 by Sam Gill
Building stronger democracies starts with local communities. It is at the local level where we make the decisions that have the most immediate impact on our lives — what our neighborhoods look like; the kinds of roads and transit we use; the libraries and community centers we build; how to keep our streets clean and […]
Article · August 9, 2018 by Sam Gill
In the wake of revelations that political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica improperly used Facebook data to influence the 2016 election, scrutiny of the social media giant continues. In the past month, Facebook has been hit with information requests from an alphabet soup of federal agencies — the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Federal Bureau of […]
Article · July 30, 2018 by Sam Gill
Sam Gill is Knight Foundation vice president for communities and learning. In 2016, Knight Foundation, the Newseum Institute and Gallup surveyed more than 3,000 students at colleges and universities around the country (including a special look at students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities) to understand their evolving views of the First Amendment. Our interest […]
Article · March 12, 2018 by Sam Gill
Knight Foundation has made significant investments in vibrant public spaces and places that can bring people in communities together. So it was hard not to take notice last summer when image and after image popped up on our Twitter feeds showing crowds of people—around the world—swarming public places at all hours. As we quickly learned, […]
Article · May 4, 2017 by Sam Gill
Social change is messy and complicated, and it can take a long time to come to fruition, typically by way of a winding, sometimes meandering, path. Such a context requires patience, comfort with complexity, and the humility to recognize that bets are just that—guesses about what might work over time. Certainly, monitoring and evaluation have […]
Article · February 27, 2017 by Sam Gill
Beginning in late 2015, Knight Foundation began a journey to get a better handle on how the conditions surrounding our work could change. We started by asking: “How will people be informed and engaged in our democracy between now and 2026?” We were not trying to predict the future. Rather, we sought to develop plausible […]
Article · January 19, 2017 by Sam Gill
What is the state of the First Amendment on college campuses? In the past year, this question has been one of significant interest to Knight Foundation, and to observers around the country. As a private foundation with its roots in the newspaper business, we have a longstanding commitment to the First Amendment. For this reason, […]
Article · September 22, 2016 by Sam Gill