“It would be better to have a society with newspapers and no government, than one with government and no newspapers.” - Thomas Jefferson.
Robert McChesney and John Nichols are two people that have taught me alot about how the global media works and doesn’t work. Their writing has accompanied me throughout my journey as the independent and admittedly unorthodox type of journalist that I try to be. So when they talk, I take it seriously. Last week they were guests on Radio Open Source to talk about their vision of the future of journalism in a digital age. I’m now listening to this program for the third time, still trying to decide what they’re telling us and how I feel about that vision.
Ultimately I recommend anyone and everyone out there listen to the program so you get the details directly from them and not from me translating it the way I understand it. But I’ll just go over the part I like best and I feel its close to the “third way” of funding journalism in the future, that I’ve been looking for.
According to McChesney and Nichols, the idea is that a free press will not just happen naturally, if there is no funding for citizen and community media, the government should take steps to make sure it can exist and compete with commercial or any other media. To do so, they envision every citizen getting 200$ (in the US case) in federal money to put towards a non-profit non-commercial media outlet of their choosing, every year.
http://citizenreporter.org/2010/02/more-on-journalism-in-digital-times/
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