The Stories Not Told: A Case Study of the Information Needs of Siler City, North Carolina

Both the lamentations and the optimism about the Internet's impact on journalism tend to focus on national media. Yet it is local communities and local democracy that most suffer from the dwindling press. Information may be more ubiquitous than ever, but local news reporting is getting harder to find. In fact, many local communities were never well served by the institutions of media, and those institutions that do serve local community information needs may not be well positioned to adapt to changes in technology. The result is a shortage of reliable, factual information necessary for meaningful public debate. The consequence is that local communities risk becoming ever more divided and ill-equipped to solve community problems. The policy tools available to government to intervene on media issues are limited but evolving. They include better provision of public information through open government, regulations of broadcasting and cable television, funding for public media, direct or indirect government subsidies (such as postal subsidies, public notice advertising, and tax exemption for nonprofit news organizations), and telecommunications policies promoting Internet access. The Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy provides a set of fifteen broad recommendations that do not target specific policy-making bodies so much as frame solutions to