In a time of increasingly centralised media ownership and declining local news provision, it is worth revisiting the legacy of Andrew Carnegie—not for nostalgia’s sake, but as a source of inspiration for how we might renew civic infrastructure in the UK through public–community partnerships. Carnegie’s model of library provision offers a blueprint for sustainable, locally owned media platforms rooted in the everyday lives of the communities they serve. At a moment when corporate media is consolidating and civic communication is fragmenting, the Carnegie approach is not just relevant—it’s vital.
The Carnegie Model: Capital for the Common Good
Between 1883 and 1929, Andrew Carnegie funded the development of over 2,500 libraries worldwide, including more than 600 across the UK and Ireland. This wasn’t blind generosity. Carnegie’s model was conditional and strategic: he provided capital for buildings and equipment, but only if the local council agreed to maintain and run the service as a free and open facility for all. The formula was simple but powerful—philanthropy enabled infrastructure, while democratic governance and public finance ensured sustainability and accountability.
Carnegie viewed libraries as “the people’s university,” spaces for self-improvement, shared knowledge, and civic development. Their design embodied values of accessibility and dignity: open stacks, generous lighting, and grand civic architecture. These were not passive warehouses of books, but active hubs for learning, community building, and cultural advancement.
Industrial Media Today: Centralised, Extractive, and Distrusted
Fast forward to today’s digital media landscape, and we face a paradox. There is more content than ever, yet trust in media is at historic lows. Public interest journalism is hollowed out from the middle. Community newspapers have folded or been swallowed by conglomerates. Broadcast infrastructure is increasingly algorithmic, opaque, and globalised. Platforms extract attention and data from communities without reinvesting in the civic structures that sustain shared identity, trust, and democratic participation.
Ofcom’s recent comments about “dogmatic” media outlets, coupled with the High Court ruling that the regulator acted unlawfully in a series of complaints, underscore how fragile public confidence in media oversight has become. At the same time, small-scale community media—local radio, volunteer-run podcasts, place-based journalism—is being pushed to the margins, surviving without systemic support despite being one of the few remaining domains of trust-based, locally accountable public dialogue.
A Carnegie-Inspired Community Media Compact
What if we returned to the principles of the Carnegie model—not just as a memory of a philanthropic age, but as a policy framework for the digital public square?
A community media compact, modelled on Carnegie’s approach, would rest on a simple foundation: investment in place-based civic infrastructure, maintained through local partnerships, governed by democratic principles, and aligned with public value outcomes.
This compact could be formalised through mechanisms such as:
- The Civic Compact – enabling co-investment from local authorities and community groups to establish and sustain independent local media platforms.
- Neighbourhood Renewal – recognising community media as critical infrastructure for social cohesion, identity, and participation.
- Democratic Devolution – embedding community-led media into the fabric of local governance, planning, and service accountability.
Where Carnegie demanded that local governments match his building investments with maintenance funding, today’s equivalent could involve public investment in studio space, training hubs, and digital tools—matched by community labour, editorial independence, and sustained social impact assessment.
The Communications Impact Analysis model developed by Decentered Media provides a route to evaluate this impact, focusing not only on audience reach, but on trust, inclusion, participation, and cultural relevance.
Realigning Policy to Practice
The UK government’s recent emphasis on place-based growth, levelling up, and civic pride should logically include a sustained investment in local, independent, community-rooted media. Yet current policy too often conflates media innovation with scale, speed, and commercial return. The value of slow, deliberative, relational communication—the kind built over years by community radio, neighbourhood newsletters, and grassroots podcasts—is overlooked.
Moreover, foundational economy approaches remind us that civic value is generated not through extractive transactions, but through care, trust, and long-term local commitment. Community media, when done well, embodies these values: it is where people learn to speak with and for their neighbours, challenge power structures, and tell stories that matter.
But unlike libraries, we do not yet have a statutory or institutional model for sustaining this kind of communication infrastructure. Community media remains vulnerable, ad hoc, and poorly integrated into public policy frameworks. The time has come to change that.
From Philanthropy to Policy: Lessons for Now
The Carnegie model succeeded because it struck a balance between idealism and pragmatism, between philanthropy and policy, between individual agency and collective responsibility. To apply it now, in the realm of community media, means accepting that communication is not a luxury or a side-project—it is central to how we navigate social cohesion, democratic legitimacy, and public trust.
What might this look like in practice?
- Small-scale capital grants for shared community media infrastructure—editing suites, broadcast studios, mobile journalism kits.
- Local authority and public sector partnerships to host and collaborate with community reporters.
- Training and mentoring programmes embedded in community centres, libraries, youth clubs, and housing associations.
- A national framework for assessing and validating the social impact of community media initiatives.
- Recognition in planning, devolution, and levelling-up strategies of media as a civic utility, not just a market commodity.
Conclusion: Building a Civic Commons for the Digital Age
Carnegie’s libraries were built to democratise access to knowledge. Today, we must democratise access to the means of communication. That means seeing community media not as an add-on, but as a cornerstone of the civic compact. A place-based, trust-driven, and locally accountable media infrastructure is not just a good idea—it is essential if we are to resist the drift towards centralisation, alienation, and digital enclosure.
If we want a future of meaningful democratic participation, cultural diversity, and collective resilience, we need to build it—not with nostalgia, but with purpose. And in doing so, we might echo Carnegie’s most famous line:
“There is not such a cradle of democracy upon the earth as the Free Public Library.”
Today, the cradle might be a community radio studio. Or a volunteer-run podcast. Or a youth-led YouTube channel in a city estate. But the principle remains: civic life depends on shared access to trusted space, voice, and participation.
Let’s build the studios and platforms that will carry our civic imagination forward—for this generation and the next.