• On the Road at WGN-TV

    Josh Stearns
    August 13, 2012
    I flew to Chicago to visit WGN-TV, a Tribune-owned station. Armed with a MacBook Air and an Epson scanner — try clearing that with Transportation Security Administration officials — I headed to the station to review WGN's political file.

  • Seeking Political Ad Sleuths!

    Josh Stearns
    August 10, 2012

    Today we’re launching the next phase of our ongoing work to shine much-needed sunlight on this year’s unprecedented political ad spending.

    We’re announcing the Political Ad Sleuths: Campus Challenge, a nationwide effort in which Free Press and allied organizations will work with college faculty and students to find out who’s behind all the political ads dominating our airwaves.

  • What's the Answer to Outsourced News?

    Josh Stearns
    July 24, 2012

    When it comes to outsourcing news, says Ernie Smith of the ShortFormBlog, “Journatic is just the tip of the iceberg.”

  • Not Again: House Subcommittee Moves to End Public Media Funding

    Josh Stearns
    July 18, 2012

    There’s a new plan in the U.S. House to cut funding for public media in the United States. In the newest version of the spending bill that funds the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a House subcommittee has proposed three major cuts over the next three years. These cuts would leave local NPR and PBS stations with no federal funding by 2015.

  • Justice Department: Political Ads Threaten Public Media's Character

    Josh Stearns
    July 10, 2012

    In April, in what seemed at first to be an April Fool’s joke, a federal appeals court in California ruled that noncommercial public broadcasting stations should be allowed to air political ads. The ruling struck down a longstanding ban on such ads, arguing that it infringed on free speech. The court upheld the ban on commercial ads. 

  • 10 Ways to Tell Whether Your Local News Has Been Outsourced

    Josh Stearns
    July 3, 2012

    Who produces the local news you read, see and hear? Has it been outsourced to people in another state, or maybe even another country? How can you tell?

  • New Report: Cutting Public Media Funding 'Risks Collapse of the System'

    Josh Stearns
    June 21, 2012

    According to a new independent analysis of funding sources for public media released Wednesday, “the loss of federal support for public broadcasting risks the collapse of the system.” Here at Free Press we’ve long made this same case about the crucial need for federal funding, but this report provides striking new evidence of just how bad it would be if this money were cut.

  • Newsrooms Need to Do More to Reach Out to Communities

    Josh Stearns
    June 15, 2012

    The media landscape is shifting and becoming more participatory, and people want to do more than just read the news. They want to be co-creators, collaborators and distributors.

    While newsrooms have invested in various forms of community engagement — from mobilizing local bloggers into coordinated networks to using robust social media strategies to organizing community events — there is still a lot we don’t know about how to assess and measure the impact of this work.

  • NYPD Tries to Rewrite History

    Josh Stearns
    June 8, 2012

    After becoming the epicenter for press suppression and journalist arrests over the last nine months, the NYPD is trying to rewrite history and pretend like nothing ever happened.

  • The Future of News in New Orleans

    Josh Stearns
    June 8, 2012

    Last week’s announcement that the New Orleans Times-Picayune would be slashing its staff and cutting its print run to just three days a week has sparked a new round of debates about the future of news. But one piece has been missing in this discussion: the role of media policy.

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