Matching Democracy to Media Reach

Knight Foundation President and CEO Alberto Ibarguen's comments to the WeMedia conference just made my hair stand on end. 

He pointed out that there is, for the first time, a disconnect between media reach and where democracy happens. While local newspapers and radio are disppearing, online media is worldwide.  Anyone anywhere can participate and share news and information.  But we elect our representatives from a geographically defined communities.  The Knight Foundation has been exploring this growing disconnect with its grantmaking.

"If you can’t bend the virtual experience to the local or the geographically defined space, then we need to start a second phase of our work."  And that phase, he said,  will ask, How do you structure democracy in a virtual way that is not rooted to geography?

That is a provocative question, for sure.  But underlying the question is the assumption that face-to-face contact doesn't matter (which, btw, calls into question this gathering at the University of Miami). 

Can the Knight Foundation really believe that local communities don't matter?  That just because media is or can be national or international scope, that online communities can be international, that our government must be, also?

Again, it's a fascinating thought experiment, but I sure hope he doesn't believe the underlying assumption.

Update:  I was able to ask Alberto more about his comment, and he explained that he believes strongly that information and commonly shared information (and definitions) are fundamental to democracy.  Therefore, media that delivers information must somehow match to the geography of democracy.  I completely agree that good information and shared information are essential to good decision making of any sort.  But I don't know that because the reach of media is broad it cannot still be matched to the information needs of local democracy.

(Alberto is also making the case that newspapers that aren't profitable should be converted to nonprofit status and owned by the community.  Now that I completely agree with.)

  

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