News Fix #54: Why civic media?

I'm back with your weekly news fix, and I'm happy we're in this together. If you're new here, welcome! Get in touch anytime; I'd love to hear from you.

I really appreciated your responses about the conversations you're most interested in having here. I loved getting your emails, and they have already generated some new ideas and connections. And…there was a clear winner:

Our other two choices, the news' relationship to empathy and attention will get some attention later this summer. If you have stray thoughts about those topics, jot them down for me and send them my way.

This exploration of civic media will run as occasional series, in the interest of keeping these posts short(er). First I'll explore how though civic media shares many ideas and practices with news, it is defined by more expansive ideas about value and purpose.

A note here about my complete lack of impartiality on this subject. I'm deeply invested in a lot of the ideas and people associated with civic media. Even so, my ideas about civic media are not at all fixed. As both a concept and field in progress, civic media will be what we make it.

Civic media is and is not news

Reporting out the origins of civic media would almost certainly be an incomplete story, and not a project I'm interested in undertaking. It is enough to say that the antecedents to civic media are everywhere; from gossip sharing amongst neighbors in ancient town squares and taverns to the “grapevine telegraph” Booker T. Washington described as a crucial information network for enslaved people during the Civil War to church bulletins, ham radio and public access channels. Civic media, as a phrase describing an innovative news practice, has been bouncing around the internet since the early 2000s.

A few years ago, the Roadmap for Local News took a shot at defining civic information as “high-quality, verifiable information that enables people to respond to collective needs by enhancing local coordination, problem-solving, systems of public accountability and connectedness.” Civic media then was, “any practice that produces civic information as its primary focus.”

I checked in with Darryl Holliday, one of the authors of that report, to confirm that he still uses this definition, which is more than good enough for me. Like the best journalism, civic media must, by definition, center high-quality and verifiable information. What is striking here, and in an earlier definition by the Center for Civic Media at MIT, is that journalists and news are not explicitly mentioned. Instead, civic media has a more expansive view of who can bring journalistic skills and processes to bear to meet needs. The answer? Literally anyone.

Interestingly, civic media has a more narrow view than news of what the point this type of information production and sharing is, which is primarily to serve needs and make self-governance possible.

Despite the focus on self-governance, civic media is not about government per se, nor is it exclusively public affairs oriented. University Extension Offices, high school newspapers holding down prep sports and education coverage, Signal chats helping communities keep immigrant neighbors safe during ICE sweeps, and Documenters keeping their collective eyes on price gouging are just a few examples of how expansive civic media can be.

Do we really need a new field?

Absolutely yes. News is so completely on the back foot that reinvention is a necessity as much as a moral imperative (my view). I've pulled all these stats from the Reuters Institute’s excellent 2026 Digital News Report.

• social media and video network consumption is now ahead of other news sources as the most widely used source of news globally (54% of all audiences).
• On average, interest in news has fallen from 59% to just under 46% since the height of the pandemic.
• Trust in news has fallen to the lowest level (37%), since 2015. Only one quarter of the people surveyed in the United States say they trust the news most of the time.

The views of these people, more than 100,000 across the globe, make it clear that the news needs to urgently re-orient itself towards a completely different purpose, not just towards different platforms or tactics. And, while I was reading this report I couldn't stop thinking about a truly surprising statistic Lindsay Green-Barber dropped on me the other day. Almost 3/4 of people, according to a 2024 survey by the Pew Center, get their information by word-of-mouth.

I see this indicator as a hopeful beacon in the otherwise dark views of news. People may be losing trust in news, but they still trust each other and rely on one another for information. Ultimately, this matters more to the future of healthy communities and democracies. Perhaps the best way to rebuild trust in news is to earn that trust by first increasing the flow of high-quality, responsive and relevant information in existing word of mouth networks (Heather Chaplin has been and still is doing cool work on this).

There was one last table in the Reuters report (on pg. 16) I found full of possibility. People were asked which groups have the most influence on the news. The menu of options included media owners, politicians, activists, experts, even crime bosses. One group that might influence the news was notably missing; “people like me” was not an option. Here is where we see both the absence and potential of civic media. When people understand that they have tremendous power to influence the news and use that power we will have a thriving civic media system.

Making the tent bigger

The point of distinguishing civic media from news or journalism is not to keep people who already work in news out. Absolutely not. The point of building a civic media field alongside news is to invite more people—both from inside and outside the profession—into the practice and functions of news in the public interest.

News and journalism were built to be professions and products rather than a field. This boundary building was an attempt to build professional legitimacy and power and stave off scrutiny. But it's now been decades since the internet blew the door hinges off news production and distribution channels. Making more people feel welcome in news is long overdue.

Let's take education as a counterpoint, for example. Education is a profession, a field, and a social and individual imperative. There are plenty of accredited professionals and formal structures within education, but those structures and licenses don't limit the ability of the average person to educate themselves or others. Instead, we teach and learn throughout our lives in a variety of ways and settings; by joining a PTA or booster club, auditing a class, teaching a workshop to a group of neighbors, homeschooling, setting a personal course of study, the list goes on and on.

The possibilities for engaging with news or journalism could be just as generous and lifelong if we build a field designed to equip people to use information rather than an industry looking for customers.

I'm ready. What's next?

This is just the beginning of our conversation about civic media. What questions do you have so far?

News Futures has done a lot of careful thinking abut why and how to build a civic media field, and is following the strong field framework to get there. If you are ready to participate in building the field, sign up for one of five News Futures working groups designed to push the field forward. (I'll let you know when sign-ups are open, and I'm co-stewarding a group). Anybody who has signed the News Futures charter can participate.

If that's not the kind of thing you're looking for right now, that's ok too! We can continue to explore these ideas together, practice some civic media skills, and create some value along the way. Let's do this!

Take care of yourself until next week, and apologies for coming to you a day late.