so what would you do with three hundred thirty million dollars what would you do with three hundred thirty million dollars if you were the state of new jersey that's the decision state legislators will be making in the next few weeks the state received this hefty sum from the sale of its public media licenses and a bill is being introduced called the civic information consortium assembly bill a four nine three three and senate bill s three three zero three proponents of the build want a portion of the three hundred thirty million dollars to be used to provide funding to unite journalists organizers tech companies and higher education to fund projects aimed at providing our communities with high quality information in depth reporting that would cover the pressing issues facing new jersey residents today we're going to be exploring legislative law welcome to pro se nation understand the law for oneself i'm mary lyn joining us today is my first spode journalism campaign director and new voices new jersey director for a free press and free press action fund since two thousand and fifteen mike  been working on newsroom community engagement or what he calls organizing for journalism he has been working with communities throughout new jersey and will share with us what new jersey residents have told him about local media and news coverage and his vision for how newsrooms and communities could collaborate and support one another he will also share with us why he believes it is critical that the civic information consortium bill be passed by the new jersey legislature welcome thanks for having me ok so what would you do with three hundred thirty million dollars wow what a question i might move to france no i'm kidding so before we get into this amount of money that the state has to spend let's talk about the landscape of media in new jersey right now  how would you assess it right now and what are people saying about it yeah so you know new jersey media for a long time has really relied on print media and the reason why that is because we're really overshadowed by the philadelphia and the new york broadcast markets and so new jersey has this really rich history of really strong and vibrant local print media and since the downturn in print media over the past ten or fifteen years new jersey has been hit especially hard and so what we're seeing is just in the past ten years thousands of journalists have been laid off dozens of newsrooms have closed down media consolidation has left a large part of the state really uncovered that's not to say that journalists aren't doing good work they are the they're working with the resources that they have is still providing really good coverage but where we are in a situation will work calling as the local news crisis here in new jersey and so for the past two years i've been running a project called news voices that  find ways that the community can help support local media but also how can journalists and local storytellers support the community so we've been holding events in the brunswick camden newark atlantic city as reported all around the state trying to find ways that we can build better relationships build trust and ultimately produce better journalism has an impact and what we've heard from people is that that yes they're frustrated with the lack of media in new jersey but they know that it's really important and so they want to find ways to support it and what we've heard from journalists too is that you know they're working overtime now they used to be the right one story day you file it you go home now journalists are writing six stories a day writing for the web writing for print shooting video doing media they don't have the time that they used to to really dive into the community to find out what's going on again they're doing really good work but how  why is print media going away i mean is it just because what is do you have access to any data that tells you that people are just watching they're not reading i mean is that what's happening i think it's a few things one you know it 's changing media habits consumption habits right you know the the move from print to digital has changed the way that that newspapers can can generate revenue and since we really rely in commercial media majority here in new jersey that you know those that ad revenue is not there anymore to really to really help create a sustainable press and so that's also on top of like a like i mentioned before media consolidation has really changed the way that people consume news and and so it's kind of like this perfect storm that we've seen and and like i mentioned before new jersey's been hit especially hard for that but one thing though that is very exciting and really interesting that's going on new jersey and that's thanks to the work of a lot of different universities and funders is that there's actually a really vibrant hyper local startup culture in news in new jersey and there's a lot of people testing out news ideas new ideas how to deliver information and so you know new jersey is fertile ground for some of these new ideas but these are people who are getting off the ground they don't they don't have the resources to do and so so it's kind of created this situation where a crisis has has brought it opportunity that we're seeing here in new jersey so this funding that we're talking about top tell us a little bit about this legislation that's being proposed to it's been introduced correct yes it has some cutting and exactly what are they asking for in this bill sure so the civic info bill as we're calling it s thirty three o three a forty nine thirty three think i've got the numbers here and you did yes it will create the civic information consortium and what that is is a joint initiative with four universities rocker's university rowin and j i t and montclair state and they would essentially over see a news and information fund so  taking one hundred million dollars from the proceeds of the sale of the state's media licenses one hundred million dollars would go into this fund and people would apply for grants for projects or ideas that they have that would better inform their communit so the universities would collaborate with media outlets stations like this tech technologists community organizations municipal governments whatever it may be if someone has a good idea on how they can better inform their community they would apply for a grand then they'd get it and they would be able to test it out and i think one thing that's really important with this fund is that ereka nies is the fact that communities around new jersey have different needs when it comes to information and so there's no one size fits all approach to really begin addressing this crisis we think that the best way to do that is to actually hear from folks in those communities meet with those local media outlets meet with those local organizations and and ask them you know what types of new news and information do you need what types of news information would benefit your community what stories are important to you and then they have a really good idea of how they can deliver that they can apply for a grand then the consortium be able to give money out that way ok know you had a brainstorming session or you have a number of brainstorming sessions around the state kind of drill down what would this look like what are some of the projects what it what kind of coverage would new jersey residents get from this yes so we've had actually held seven events over the past two months all around the state and we've asked residents in these different communities what types of stories are important to you if you had one hundred million dollars how would you better inform your community and the ideas that they produce have been so interesting so so here are some of the ideas that we're going to one is this idea around an america course for journalists so i don't know if you're familiar with american or yes but essentially it would take recently graduated students or maybe people in the middle of a career change and embed them in a community that's been under served or under covered by the media and then they would they would cover that community for two years using a grant from this consortium so the  idea being that if a media outlet isn't isn't able to reach or serve a specific community that this reporter would be the one actually working in that community providing important news and information oh please it's been under  so that's one idea that actually may end if i could just sort of build on that if i have the thought that you know we should have a fund some kind of fund that actually allows journalists to be truly independent right because as long as a publication or any kind of media is dependent on advertising funding there's always kind of that link yeah you know i mean not it's not overt and it's not in every case but imagine if you will a world where a journalist can really be independent and can explore and research and really dig down and not worry about offending anyone in the town anyone in the you know advertising stream and right yeah so is that that's kind of what you're talking about going to the ideas and that's really one of the underlying principles of this consortium so you know one of the challenges now like we were talking about before as as print publications transition to digital is that they're trying to make up for ad revenue that's so it's not really there anymore and so what we don't want to do is reward stories that are click baity that just drive headlines are there sensationalistic right i don't actually provide a service to the community and now a lot of newspapers don't do that but we are seeing this happen right the purpose of the civic information consortium as a public charity that would be set up is that it would reward journalism that is of the public interest this is public money we think that it's your woodward projects that better serve the public and so i think what that would do then is kind of flip this idea is h that journalism would get money if it better serves the public as opposed to it gets the most clicks on a website or the most shares on facebook or twitter the funds we're talking about  so i had said in the intro it's three hundred thirty million correct yes three hundred thirty two million to be exact to be exact to someone at one of the meetings i attended in new brunswick talked about how that the fun is for the licenses that have been sold came from the corporation for public broadcasting c p be correct so yes so the so the new jersey not too state itself held onto the broadcast licenses come at the last remnants of owning and j n and so when they sold those licenses that's what's bringing in this three hundred thirty two million dollars and so i think to to your point is that it was a public asset and that public asset was meant to better inform and provide news and information to new jersey residents and so we think it's an appropriate use of the proceeds to go back towards that purpose to better inform new jersey residents not just go into a budget hole or one shot budget gimmick you know this is something that if it's created could actually last for decades and really make new jersey a leader when it comes to innovative and forward thinking media well my question is why isn't the whole three hundred thirty million going into public interest media if with that i mean if the initial the seed money to establish that fund came from the corporation for public broadcasting i would imagine there were some rules around that at some point right the money has to be used for this not you know right or whatever unfortunately that wasn't a part of it and a real shame right so so  to give you a little bit of background so the federal communications commission just oversaw was called spectrum auction and centrally public media and commercial media t v license holders sold those licenses and they're getting money from that as a way that centrally is selling part of the television airwaves to band wireless and broadband coverage to the right of the telecommunications companies but in overseeing that auction there was no restriction on how that money once it's received could be spent so new jersey doesn't have to spend that money for any purpose so what they're going to do is that the money is going to come in it's going to go into the general fund and then it's going to go where it's kind of up to the lawmakers or i and so i agree i wish that three hundred thirty million dollars is going to support public interest journalism and media but realistically we know that that's not going to happen so even fighting for this slice one third of it is actually proving to be very difficult and that's why we've been really mounting a statewide full scale campaign just to protect one hundred million dollars and that of of itself has been you know pretty difficult but you know we actually have a real shot of making a how and you said the now the budget has to be decided by june thirtieth  can possibly be done what kind of programming would communities in new jersey get for this buck this is one hundred million yes so in me and we just mentioned this one idea around you know the  there's a few one is that there are huge pockets around the state that get very little coverage whatsoever so i think we'd want to see some of this money go into supporting community based local started media whether that's a digital site whether  that's community television a low power f m station that's that's one way another thing which i think is a really interesting use of this money is we've been hearing a lot about the lack of trust in media or the so called fake news or misinformation so we could use some of this money to create news literacy programs in high schools and colleges so that people can be able to discern fact from fiction and help build better relationships with the media you have i think that some of this money should be used for civic technology creating things like open data platforms so that if you live in a town you want to get access to public information you can do so in an easy way you can find a higher local municipalities spending its money with contracts they have i think some of this money could be used for citizen journalists or what about training for hap perhapses journalists some many of the journalists who have been lost their jobs in new jersey actually maybe they're retiring and they want to work part time and they could actually help train citizen journalist people who have not been trained in journalism prior yes yes so i think that's actually really interesting way to kind of begin trying to address these news that starts right is  hiring back of old reporters training young young young journalists who are coming out of school but i also think doing things like media training or production training for nonprofits or advocacy  they don't necessarily have to rely on the news media to tell their story but they can actually begin to produce videos or web sites or pod adding so that they can talk about the work they do and help serve their constituents as well i think the important thing to really remember about this fun is that there's not any one way that people could apply for grants from this right it really it runs the gamut from news to technology to to education programs and that's why it's so exciting because the way that people get information now is from a variety of different sources and people can create a lot of media on their own how do we help foster that and i think you can foster that by using this grant making process that if you got a good idea you will these grants is that yes so the the civic information consortium the way that the bills run it would have its own staff and be overseen by a board to be a public charity the universities themselves would kind of provide the infrastructure  reach so that they could provide things like office space or overhead or training facilities and so that's why we make sure that the universities will be able to collaborate with other groups to actually get these projects up and running i think it's a really good way of leveraging the existing in structure and reach of the university is having its key for us too that this money doesn't just go to this fund in the universities can use it any which way they see they would actually have to apply for grants for  and how would the fund keep renewing over the years so there's a couple different ways the way that the bills are and it would be served as a public charity an independent five a one c three so it would be able to raise money independently from state from the state so essentially using the proceeds from the sale that public media licenses would be a seed investment in kind of getting this up and running but the the they wouldn't have to soley rely on state funding they could raise money from other philanthropic endeavors technology companies universities them selves can kick in more money so that's one way and the way that it's written is that twenty million dollars would be appropriated this year in order to get up and running and then would be one hundred million dollars in total over five years or twenty million dollars for the for years after this year but i think it's the reason why we didn't want to have it solely reliant on state monies that we don't want to have to have an appropriation fight every year right we don't want to have the consortium be solely reliant on state government or state money but we do think it's a good use of public money to jump started to get it up and running and hopefully if the public finds it really useful there are so many good good news stories in this state  sixty years ago whenever it was i started i was writing for a patch and then later for the courier news i've written for the daily record cetera and it was amazing when i was covering a lot of news in my own area in long valley washington township all of a sudden it was like i was seeing the state in my area for the first time yeah yeah so there is i mean it's a beautiful states like abscess they have secret writing maybe we don't want to get that out there too much but there's so many good news stories and there are so many people i've had the good fortune of telling stories for people stories who are doing amazing thing unfortunately if people turn to the national news and this was i think i read it on your web site you know there's a tendency for more polarization right but covering local news really drilling down and for people to kind of get to know who is doing what in their communities it creates more common bonds right and not only that but you know the the presence of local media actually has great civic benefits so lots of studies have shown bad when local media with local media is deficient or disappears studies have shown that corruption increases fewer people vote fewer people volunteer fewer people run for public office and fewer federal dollars go to that community if there's no local media presence so there's a real tangible benefit to having a local watchdog who are who are who are holding powerful people accountable and representing the interests of those communities so that the fourth estate is right and that you know in the way that we really see this is that you know the civic information consortium isn't just a benefit to the journalism industry it's really a benefit to the future of our communities in the state and how they get information that allows for them to better participate in their community give them information about who to vote for an ultimate allowing for people to get you know the news that empowers them to be able to make decisions about their lives absolutely and media literacy by god we really need  i can tell you before the election or you know every is points when i said well where did you read that maybe they would say you know people would say well i read it on the net well well how do you vet a story how do you you know which sources can you rely on and which you can't you know i mean you need to know people need to learn how to discern this yeah absolutely and i also think a lot a lot needs to be done from the journalist standpoint i mean trust has been a row reading between the media and the public for quite some time is we've really saw that come to the forefront of selection and so not only should we be training people how to deal with that fire hose of information that's coming off the internet but we should also be helping support newsrooms in their endeavors to do more community gavan to build trust well i see tremendous opportunity and possibilities and this absolutely i hope so no i think we have great journalists in the state media you know media content creators and i see that it could work together in in synergy you know and so and if you don't mind is one thing too is that if people want to get involved  support those like you said we have to pass this by june thirtieth they can go to news voices dot org to get more information and they should absolutely reach out and contact their local state representative and tell them vote in favor of the civic info bill a forty nine thirty three the show or more you have an idea for a future segment please contact to contact us through the web at pro se nation dot org i'm mary lynch c e o in the future