By Jeremy W. Peters and Brian Stelter, New York Times, June 9. 2011

An explosion of online news sources in recent years has not produced a corresponding increase in reporting, particularly quality local reporting, a federal study of the media has found.

Coverage of state governments and municipalities has receded at such an alarming pace that it has left government with more power than ever to set the agenda and have assertions unchallenged, concluded the study, which is to be released on Thursday.

“In many communities, we now face a shortage of local, professional, accountability reporting,” said the study, which was ordered by the Federal Communications Commission and written by Steven Waldman, a former journalist for Newsweek and U.S. News and World Report. “The independent watchdog function that the Founding Fathers envisioned for journalism — going so far as to call it crucial to a healthy democracy — is in some cases at risk at the local level.”....

For more see:

FCC Report: “The Information Needs of Communities”
By Joel Meares, Columbia Journalism Review, June 9, 2011

The FCC’s eighteen-months-in-the-making Future of Media report—now called “The Information Needs of Communities”—is now out and available below for your perusal.

Steve Waldman, the lead author of the report is currently presenting the report at an FCC Open Commission Meeting. The live stream of that presentation is here.

If you’re looking for a yard stick to measure the report’s recommendations against, check out Steve Coll’s open letter to Waldman outlining his own recommendations here. The piece ran on the cover of CJR’s Nov/Dec 2010 issue......