Today the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy (which has just launched its own blog) is hosting a community forum at the Google campus (“Googleplex”) in Mountain View, CA. It’s just started, you can watch the live webcast.
Here’s the setup: “Are Silicon Valley citizens getting the information they need in order to solve community problems, coordinate civic activity, maintain public accountability, and foster the human connectedness that is the backbone of both community and democracy?”
I’m glad that the Knight Foundation is asking basic questions about what kinds of information people need support community and democracy. However, I question the Commission’s strong focus on geographically defined local communities. It seems to me that with the way the media landscape has been evolving, geographically defined local communities are becoming steadily less crucial from an information perspective. I suspect that defining communities by other kinds of commonalities (age, economic status/class, interests, social circles, etc.) would be far more relevant to more people — although more complex to define.
I suspect that clinging reflexively to “local” as the paramount criteria for “relevant” reflects a newspaper perspective that was never a good fit for most people, and that never really served most people’s information needs well.
I’m not saying local doesn’t matter. Local is important. It’s especially important for people who are newcomers to communities. It’s especially important for identifying accessible resources and services that people might need in their daily lives. But in many senses, “local” is just one set of ripples on the lake of information — especially when it comes to “news.” And for many people, it’s not even the biggest or most important set of ripples.
So my question for Knight is: Why do you assume that geographically defined local communities should be the paramount focus of people’s informational diet, or even to support democracy? Did you seriously consider any other perspectives? Today, you’re at Google — where folks are used to viewing people’s information needs as a complex mosaic, where no one filter is paramount for everyone. I hope you take advantage of their insight.
