What's the Future of Public Media? Think Integration.

Ground Report March 05, 2009

What's next for America's far-reaching public media networks? Jessica Clark is happy to offer a few suggestions.

Clark is Director of the Future of Public Media Project at the Center for Social Media, something of a digital media authority run through American University. She just published Public Media 2.0: Dynamic, Engaged Publics, a study that lays out 'an expanded vision' for opportunities in public media.

The project doesn't look at funding--though Clark admits that "there's definitely a money crisis in the system"-- focusing instead on structural paradigm shifts that can help bring public media into the 21st century, and make it more relevant to more Americans.

One roadblock is the lack of centralized integration of the thousands of public media entities. This is a byproduct of the original conception of American public media, says Clark. The system was designed not to be integrated because "localism was being stressed." Now the challenge is to maintain that localism, while linking together these disparate nodes on a national scale, something Clark said is already part of the "ambitious" plans of National Public Radio's (NPR) new President and CEO Vivian Schiller.

She points to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) as a model for this integration, and said that the internet makes the monumental task of integration much more feasible. Clark adds that "there's a lot of opportunities for collaboration across sectors that might not have worked together before."

It all comes back to supporting the original purpose of public media, says Clark: creating "media that informs and mobilizes publics so they can act as engaged citizens in a democracy." But before public media can make these changes, they'll have to cut through the bureaucracy.

And are her subjects, the leaders of public media, receptive to her suggestions?

Clark smiles, "Here and there."

To stay relevant, they may need to be.