Under Pressure, FCC Stops Asking Questions About Media Diversity

by Carla Murphy
Friday, March 14 2014, 7:00 AM EST.
This article is part of topic: Media

Late last month, the Federal Communications Commission announced the end of its “Critical Information Needs” (CIN) pilot study. The study, which was supposed to have been field-tested in “ethnically diverse” Columbia, S.C., was going to explore whether local news outlets were meeting the information needs of their communities—in particular, people of color and women. The CIN instead met a “quiet” end as FCC watchers described it, following a raucous blitz.

Changes at The Times-Picayune lay bare the roots of a national trend

From The Lens, a report on the role of media deregulation at the FCC and it's implications for the Times-Picayune.

Changes at The Times-Picayune lay bare the roots of a national trend:

The recent changes at the Times-Picayune to stop publishing a daily paper and instead publish three days a week are unfortunate for the residents of the city and surrounding areas.  However, it was only a matter of time before this or something similar happened given what’s been happening to newspapers across the country for the past couple decades.  Lots of people claim that this is a result of the growing popularity of online news and the glut of information in general available on the internet, or of not enough people subscribing to the paper and paying for content.  While this is partly true, it’s important to see this change in its broader context. There are two other, very important things to note that help explain what happened to the TP: changes in policies relaxing media ownership regulations and the cost of producing and distributing news.  Once we take these into consideration, we can better understand the role of consumption patterns and the internet in the changing news industry and the likely consequences of current policy decisions.