Jon McTaggart is chief operating officer at American Public Media. The following are his remarks delivered at the Federal Trade Commission’s “News Media Workshop” held on December 1 and 2, 2009:

In his remarks to open this conference, Chairman Leibowitz emphasized the importance of journalism to a functioning democracy.

Then, for the remainder of the first day, we listened to more than 30 presenters and panelists talk about the “business of news” and the need to better serve consumers.

At American Public Media, we don’t think about it that way.

For American Public Media, journalism is not a business. It is a public service. It is our mission. American Public Media does not serve shareholders or consumers. We serve citizens and communities. In his opening remarks, Chairman Leibowitz also reminded us that “markets for public goods may work imperfectly.” And a few minutes ago, Representative Waxman referred to “market failure.”

As a civil society, we do not trust only the free market to ensure our public safety. Nor do we trust only the free market to provide for public education, or to protect our public health. American Public Media believes that we should not trust only the free market to ensure that citizens will have access to the public information we need to make informed choices and to govern ourselves.

For more than 40 years, the Federal government has invested in building the infrastructure and capacity for free and universal access to public media. Through the funds distributed by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, virtually every American taxpayer now has free access to public radio and public television stations and related internet sites that reach and serve every city, town, village and citizen in the country.
Today, public media attracts large, loyal and growing audiences. Thirty million Americans tune in to at least one public radio station, every week.

Public media has a sustainable business model with diverse revenue sources, including significant support from individuals, corporations and foundations in the communities we serve.

Public media is far ahead of digital start-ups, including new journalism start-ups. These well-intentioned ventures must build new infrastructure, create new and compelling content, find new revenue, and invest in finding new sustainable models for their fledgling services. We wish them well.

American Public Media believes that continued and expanded public funding will strengthen local news capacities within public media organizations, and will improve access to critical information that will serve communities and citizens, and our democracy, even better than we do now.

We are not making a case for public media being the only news organizations in our communities. American Public Media believes in diverse voices, multiple sources and many providers for news. We believe our communities can best be served when both public media and commercial media are viable and engaged in serving audiences.

At the recent Future of News conference sponsored by American Public Media and Minnesota Public Radio, the publisher of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Mike Sweeney, said that he expected Minnesota Public Radio to be the most significant competitor to his newspaper over the next 10 years. He also said that the Star Tribune was making investments in its own future through innovation and use of new technology. We expect the Star Tribune to be viable for many years to come.

American Public Media has always been an innovator, taking informed risks to extend our public service to new audiences. Nearly 45 years ago, when our organization was founded in central Minnesota, we took a risk by investing in FM radio at a time when AM radio was the dominant platform. That has worked out well for us, and for our audiences.

We have been providing innovative public service ever since, and our commitment to innovation continues today. One of our current investments in news innovation is what we call Public Insight Journalism. PIJ is based on the simple premise that someone in our audience knows more about the stories that we are reporting than we do. PIJ works to engage these experts in a trusted relationship with our newsroom, believing that when these experts share what they know with our analysts and editors and reporters, our journalism is better informed and our audiences benefit.

Over the past five years, 80,000 people have joined our Public Insight Network and voluntarily share their knowledge, expertise and insights with us. Now, with a major grant from the Knight Foundation, we are sharing the PIJ concept and tools with a growing group of news organizations across the country — partners who share our commitment to news innovation and to engaging audiences in this new way.

Public media is strong and well positioned to move forward. We are ready and able partners in our communities, and we are gathering, verifying and distributing the vital information our citizens need.

I will end by “re-tweeting” a phrase Mark Contreras used, yesterday, when he underscored the need for “sustainable servants of our communities.” Public media already has all the parts and pieces in place, and we are already serving our communities in sustainable ways.

Thank you for inviting me to this workshop.