BBC Charter Review – Public Service Media Needs More Than An Expanding BBC
The House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee’s report on the BBC Royal Charter Review contains an important recognition: the media environment in which […]
Foundational Media
Foundational Media – Why Your Experience Belongs in the Decentered Media Podcast
Foundational Media starts with a straightforward idea. Communities need dependable ways to share knowledge, interpret events, represent their experiences and take part in public life. […]
Media Exchange – Taking the Foundational Media Conversation Forward
What does a healthy media system need to provide before it asks for our attention? That question will be at the heart of the forthcoming Decentered […]
Communicative Devolution – Is Local and Civic Part of Britain’s Essential Infrastructure?
What if the decline of local media is not principally a problem for the media industry? What if it is a failure of civic infrastructure? That […]
Stronger Together Needs Stronger Local Media
Belong’s new report, Stronger Together: What We Know and Must Do About Cohesion, joins a growing stockpile of reports diagnosing the same deteriorating conditions: economic […]
Britain Under Strain – Civic Communication Must Be Tested, Not Assumed
The publication of More in Common’s Britain Under Strain – The Broken Social Contract, Democratic Distrust and the Mainstreaming of Extremism has quickly become a […]
Why Community Media Should Have A Voice In The UK Media Green Paper
The government’s new media Green Paper, Watch This Space: A New Strategic Direction For UK Media, should be welcomed as an important opportunity to think […]
Emerging Media in Nigeria – Reflection with John Coster
What happens when we stop treating media as a production process and start thinking about it as a relationship-building practice? That question sits at the […]
Can We Fix Media, Not Just Explain It?
There is a distinction that matters more than we often admit. Many people can explain why media systems are failing. Fewer can help build the […]
Better Together in Leicester – Rebuilding the Conditions for Public Discussion
Our recent Better Together workshop brought forward a set of concerns that feel immediate, but are in fact part of a longer and deeper pattern […]
From Price Controls To Media Controls – What Does The BBC Charter Renewal Really Protect?
In much of Eastern Europe during the 1970s and 1980s, governments attempted to make daily life affordable by setting prices for essentials. The stated intention […]
Common Ground, Foundational Media, and the Future of Social Cohesion
Social cohesion is often discussed as though it is something that happens after the “real” work of public services is done. Housing, health, education, policing, […]
When Orthodoxies Fail – Rebuilding Trust in News
Much of the public discussions about the decline of trust in mainstream news focuses on polarisation, misinformation, or changing audience behaviour. The recent Triggernometry podcast […]
BBC Ratings Decline – Problems for Strategy or Sign of the Wrong Metric?
This article argues that Christmas TV ratings cannot be used as a definitive measure of the BBC’s success or failure. Reflecting on the contrast between […]
Media Reform as Civic Renewal
UK media reform is being shaped by Ofcom’s Review of Broadcast Regulation and the BBC Charter Renewal process. This blog frames reform as civic renewal, […]