Those of us who work professionally at a public TV or radio station have been grounded in an environment shaped by the prerogatives of broadcasting. We understand ourselves as trustees of an invaluable and limited public resource, namely the airwaves licensed to us by the federal government for the purpose of serving the ‘public interest, convenience and necessity.’
Public broadcasting in the United States was founded officially with the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, so we’re coming up on our Semicentennial in 2017. But in the longer sweep, use of the electromagnetic spectrum by non-profit broadcasters for community and educational purposes is as old as the first audion tube .
I’m convinced that public broadcasting has been a spectacular success. PBS and NPR are the most trusted U.S. media organizations by a wide margin, and local public TV and radio stations are valued in local communities as essential public institutions, like public libraries and public schools. Local stations increasingly fill the news void left by the collapse of local journalism at newspapers and commercial radio and television. Local public TV and radio stations provide arts and cultural programming by producers who know their community. Public television produces some of the best educational media content available to schools, and education coordinators at local stations provide training and support essential to teachers.
But now we’re coming to the end of the era when broadcasting was the dominant form of media. Public broadcasting is becoming public media. We can (and do) argue about at what point the Internet, mobile, and social media become the primary ways most people consume (and share) media. For the millennial generation and younger, that point has already passed.
To suggest that the shift from broadcast to digital distribution has important implications for local public TV and radio stations would be a vast understatement. For one thing, talking only about distribution misses key differences in the media technologies of the digital age: It’s increasingly about people sharing and engaging with media in their social networks. And it’s about all of us telling our own stories.
This should be good news for public media
We say we want this kind of engagement. But it’ll challenge us to the extent that we don’t quite totally mean it. Yes there is good evidence to support our claims that we are deeply engaged in our communities and care about diversity. And yet…we decide what is valid use of our airwaves, whose voices are heard and which stories are told. Voices we deem as less credible, and stories we see as too marginal, don’t make it onto the air. We decide how the stories should be told.
This is exactly how we should manage the scarce and limited public resource that is our slice of the broadcast spectrum. But now we are moving beyond broadcasting into digital networks, and that scarcity and limitation is increasingly an artifact of the past. There is room in digital space for more voices and more stories, and for different ways of telling stories.
This was the focus of the April 27th workshop sponsored by PBS and Detroit Public Television, and facilitated by Columbia University’s Learn Do Share Center. But this wasn’t your normal PBS/local station meetup. I found myself in a room of people from just about every walk of community life: teachers, filmmakers, technologists, public health workers, and artists. About half the attendees were from public TV and radio stations, and the rest were simply people who care about Detroit.
At one point I was at a table with six other people, none of whom work for public media, in a deep conversation about how public media could extend its impact. They were so enthusiastic about helping public media serve their community, and about joining forces in a way that could serve our mission. They were there to collaborate with us in creating the public media of the future.
What does a future public media station look like?
People both inside and outside of public broadcasting are asking this question. If you’re on the inside, it’s often easier to hear the question from someone on the outside. Lance Weiler of Columbia’s Learn Do Share Center led us through a series of exercises to consider new ways to configure storytelling.
How might we go about this? As the day passed I heard more and more voices speaking to these ideas: Collaborations between public media stations, community talent, and local organizations to innovate new forms of storytelling. Working with a broader pool of artists and storytellers to develop their own voices and skills. Opening the physical and virtual doors to the full range of community concerns and interests, and offer the people most affected new opportunities to tell their own stories.
Open the doors without undermining the floor
Among my colleagues, there is an objection to opening our doors to broader community participation in producing content for public media. I share this objection, and here it is: Trust is our core value to our communities. If we simply throw open our physical and virtual doors and invite anyone to create content associated with us, we risk undermining that trust.
This is a really important concern, but here’s my qualification: No one is suggesting we simply throw open the doors. There are probably hundreds of ways to invite broader participation by people “outside” of public media without violating our public trust. The people around that table in Detroit weren’t looking to tell us what we must do for them, they were looking for us to lead them. They were at the table to find ways to help us better serve their community. They came to sit with us because of their trust in us.
Many of them trust us despite the fact that there’s no one like them on our air. They still see public media as the last, best hope of communities getting shut out, ignored, or grossly mischaracterized by the commercial media sectors. They’re looking for us to innovate on behalf of our communities as we move from broadcasting to digital media.
Digital space is the primary growth arena for audiences of the future, including younger people who consume the vast majority of their media online. If we could figure out how to facilitate the intelligence, passion, and talent in our communities, we could transform public media, especially in digital space. We could also develop a more diverse talent pool for our limited broadcast channels, with a new model of facilitation and cultivation.
How this could work, Version 1
Let’s admit we don’t have the perfect blueprint right now. What we need is some informed experimentation. We know many people in our communities want to contribute to our mission. Many of these people have deep insight into large and small issues and interests. Some of them have amazing skills, and some don’t have skills but are motivated to learn.
Imagine a team of five or six people. One is the storyteller, one is a producer, one is a web developer, two are researchers, and you need a coach or project manager who could also be a staff member of the station. This team is invited to work in the physical space of the station, and they will have access to certain production resources. The team will determine how best to do the storytelling, on what kind of platform, and in what time frame.
Station support may initially look like training. Staff can be brought in to teach specific skills, or to advise on aspects of the team project. Student interns could play a role, and for stations embedded in universities there could be involvement by faculty from journalism, community informatics, computer science, etc.
The above might be way too complicated, or not complicated enough. Maybe there needs to be specific editorial controls, attention to rights clearances, and other forms of due diligence important to the station and the context of the project. Each station could of course develop their own model of how the pieces fit.
Storytelling projects like this could also benefit from new models of public media membership being developed by Melody Joy Kramer. Many people love public media, and many of them have skills and perspectives that would make us better. In the public media of the future, surely we can find ways to include them as volunteers, collaborators, and members.
Foundations are looking to fund ideas like this. The Knight Foundation just awarded more than $700,000 to technology projects focused on storytelling, data, and community building. Many of these projects involve public media stations and community partnerships. Localore has opened applications for its Finding America grants for storytelling projects and innovation in public media.
I just wrote a small grant proposal to build a Digital Story Lab, to explore new forms of digital storytelling with students, faculty, and staff at WILL and the University of Illinois College of Media. I think we are just beginning to realize the range of possibilities for digital media and social networks to communicate, explain, reveal, and connect. In this environment, experiments are called for. I hope to expand this project and learn as we roll forward, then feed back what we learn into the journalism curriculum.
Setting expectations
Public media should be about the full range of stories and perspectives representing our communities. We should help facilitate the voices that can best tell those stories. But we must be clear that we will not violate the trust we’ve earned over decades of public broadcasting.
To these ends, we will cultivate and facilitate an open public media culture that is deeply collaborative with our communities. We will work to develop and curate new forms of storytelling in digital space. As broadcasting remains a scarce and limited public space, with specific regulatory and logistical demands, we’ll continue to be the decider about what content goes on the air.
For content in digital space, we’ll continue to maintain standards of credibility and trust as well. But the beauty of digital space is that it’s virtually unlimited. We are free to experiment and find new forms, and chances are we’ll develop more diverse voices along with way. Hopefully we’ll develop new audiences as well.
This is what I hope we can tell the people in our communities. Can we agree on these expectations?
A diverse public media
The communication technologies of the day have always been essential for communities working to understand and solve their problems, and to improve community life. Public broadcasting came along at a time when broadcast technologies were a mature but limited resource. Because broadcasting was limited, only certain people got to be broadcasters.
In the media system now emerging, the only meaningful limits are peoples’ time and attention. We say we want a diverse public media whose faces, voices, and perspectives reflect the people in our communities. But we haven’t yet solved the lack of diversity in our staffing and programming.
I think it’s time to recognize that we can best serve the public interest of the full range of people in our communities by including more of them in our new definition of public media.
And if we fail, it shouldn’t be for lack of trying.
At the end of the Detroit storytelling workshop, we were invited to summarize our most resonant takeaway on a single card and throw it on the floor. There was enough conversation by this time to make it clear we had a consensus: the future of public media is about community collaboration.
We’re in this together, so let’s figure out all the ways that can work.