Journalism and Mass Communications, College of

 

Authors

Date of this Version

2011

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The 40-minute interview is attached (below) as an additional file.

Abstract

Citizens today have access to more news outlets than ever — but perhaps not more news. The shift away from traditional mass media toward digital information outlets has made a difference in how people get local news and how much of it they get. Steve Waldman, the author of a Federal Communications Commission report that addresses this situation, discusses "Information Needs" on 90.3 KRNU. Campus Voices is a public affairs program produced by the College of Journalism and Mass Communications that airs every Sunday at 10 a.m. The report, titled "Information Needs of Communities," was produced by the bipartisan Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy and released in June 2011. In late 2009, Waldman became senior adviser to the chairman of the FCC and was assigned to lead an agency-wide effort to assess the state of media and make recommendations designed to help ensure a vibrant media landscape. Waldman is the co-founder, CEO and editor-in-chief of Beliefnet.com, a spirituality website, founded in 1999. Beliefnet has won top editorial awards on the Internet, including the General Excellence Award from the Online News Association and the National Magazine Award for General Excellence Online. Waldman, who will join Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism as a visiting senior media policy scholar and a Knight Foundation fellow, will "study emerging media issues and explore implementation strategies for the report's recommendations." Before creating Beliefnet, Waldman served as National Editor of US News & World Report and was National Correspondent for Newsweek. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller "Founding Faith: Providence, Politics, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America." He also served as senior adviser to the CEO of the Corporation for National Service in the 1990s. Waldman's work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, National Review Online, Huffington Post, The Atlantic, ChristianityToday.com, The Washington Monthly and Slate. He has been a regular commentator on national television and radio programs including Fox & Friends, Fox Business, Good Morning America, The Today Show, CNN, ABC World News, NPR's All Things Considered and On the Media and many others. In 2000, Waldman was named a "Spiritual Innovator" by Time magazine as part of its "100: The Next Wave" series. He is a 1984 graduate of Columbia University, where he was editor-in-chief of the Columbia Daily Spectator.

Waldman.mp3 (55766 kB)
40-minute interview

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