Building Civic Media 2.0: A Regional Design for Public-Interest Media

Author’s Note: This is the fourth post as part of my research project as a Documentary Film in the Public Interest Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center for Media, Politics, and Public Policy. Building from existing public media research and policy analysis, this work is shared in progress to surface points of alignment, areas of tension, and practical constraints as we consider how public-interest media infrastructure might be redesigned for today’s conditions.

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The system that once supported public-interest media is no longer aligned with how media operates today. Across journalism, documentary film, and community storytelling, the same pressures are converging: distribution pathways are narrowing, platform companies control visibility and revenue, public funding is declining (and under attack), and the institutions that once connected production, distribution, and public access are weakening simultaneously.

In The Roadmap for Local News, the 2023 report co-authored by Elizabeth Green, Darryl Holliday, and Mike Rispoli, the collapse of local journalism is described as a structural market failure driven by digital disruption, platform dominance, media ownership consolidation, and policy frameworks that have not kept pace. The report emphasizes that rebuilding local media will require coordinated systems of public, philanthropic, and market-based investment, treating journalism as civic infrastructure serving the public good that requires long-term infrastructure, rather than a collection of individual outlets with short-term interventions. 

For those working in independent film, this diagnosis likely sounds familiar.

In a recent Senate spotlight hearing, I testified on behalf of Future Film Coalition about the challenges facing America’s independent film industry alongside IATSE president Matt Loeb, Actor Noah Wyle (The Pitt, ER), and former CNN anchor Jim Acosta. You can read Future Film Coalition’s submitted testimony here.

The 2025 symposium convened by the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy on Documentary Film in the Public Interest documents a similar trajectory: 

“Across every conversation, one reality was unmistakable: democracy is eroding, and the documentary field is grappling with both external political pressures and internal systemic crises. Forces such as authoritarianism, censorship, platform consolidation, chronic underfunding, exploitative labor conditions, and algorithmic gatekeeping are rapidly dismantling the conditions for free expression, accurate information, and public accountability.”

Similar conversations are unfolding internationally, as Anthony Kaufman recently observed at CPH:DOX 2026, Copenhagen’s international documentary film festival, in a piece for the International Documentary Association. While solutions will vary across nations, the reality is consistent: independent documentary outside the commercial market still requires sustained funding. And for the United States, the loss of roughly $40 million tied to the CPB rescission highlights a gap that philanthropy alone cannot reliably fill.

While the impacts of federal disinvestment, market disruption, and industry consolidation are evident across the globe, conversations across the field are shifting from crisis to solutions. At the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, I moderated a panel focused on public investment in documentary film alongside leaders at ITVS, American Documentary, and California’s Common Cause. Despite the challenges, the discussion underscored a consistent and optimistic insight: independent storytelling plays a critical role in helping people navigate complex issues, build trust, and feel connected to one another. When social isolation and community fragmentation are increasingly recognized as public health challenges, this function is not secondary. It is essential. Maya Chupkov, who was part of this panel, writes about this in Public Media as Civic Infrastructure. 

Storytelling does not just reflect culture; it creates shared understanding, strengthens social ties, and contributes to the broader conditions that support community well-being. By connecting these dots, this points toward the need to move beyond short-term interventions and design long-term systems that connect film, public media, policy, and community engagement in ways that sustain both civic participation and social cohesion over time.

This framing is already visible in adjacent fields

KEXP, based in Seattle, has built a globally recognized platform by combining public funding, listener support, philanthropy, and deep community engagement. It functions not only as a radio station, but as a cultural hub, supporting local artists, curating independent music, and connecting audiences with a broader creative ecosystem through a powerful premise: “you are not alone” and “music heals.” Through programming that fosters connection, shared experience, and emotional resonance, KEXP demonstrates how cultural media can actively counter isolation and contribute to community well-being as part of its core mission.

What KEXP demonstrates is that public-interest media can thrive when it is rooted in place, responsive to community, and supported by a diversified funding base. It also suggests that the future of civic media is not limited to local news alone.

Music, storytelling, and cultural programming all play a role in shaping how communities understand themselves and each other. And while these are often treated as separate, independent fields, they move along the same structural trajectory and share a common function by building community connections, shaping public understanding, and activating civic life.

In my previous post, I described this as Civic Media 2.0, a regional architecture designed to support public-interest media as an interconnected system rather than a set of isolated sectors. In this model, independent film, journalism, and cultural programming operate not as discrete cultural products to be financed and distributed one at a time, but as part of an ongoing public good that strengthens both civic participation and social cohesion.

To function at scale, this system requires a modernized funding approach that better reflects how media operates today. Civic Media 2.0 proposes a layered funding model that integrates platform-era revenue streams alongside voter-authorized public funding, earned revenue, and traditional public and philanthropic support. Together, these components form a coordinated system capable of stabilizing core infrastructure while enabling growth, experimentation, and long-term sustainability.

If Civic Media 2.0 is within reach, the task is to design a feasible way to test and implement a regional framework.

A Shift Already Underway

We can already see parts of this system beginning to take shape across the country. The Media Power Collaborative, a project of Free Press, manages a policy tracker offering a real-time view of how local news and civic media policy is evolving across the country, mapping legislative activity and surfacing emerging models that treat journalism as essential public infrastructure. 

In a recent Media Power Collaborative meeting, organizers and field leaders pointed to a historic surge in state-level policy activity: local news bills are advancing through legislatures, gaining hearings, and in some cases becoming law, with New Mexico’s new local journalism tax credit among the latest examples. 

At the same time, the conversation revealed a deeper tension. Many of these efforts are focused on stabilizing existing local news media structures and remain confined to a more traditional definition of journalism, rather than rethinking the broader civic media system. Currently, California is the only state to use the term “civic media” in a legislative framework, but it is still limited in scope compared to Civic Media 2.0.

This raises a more fundamental question: If journalism, independent film, and community storytelling are all shaped by the same structural pressures, why are solutions still being developed in isolation?

Continuing to build piecemeal responses risks reinforcing the very fragmentation that has contributed to the system’s decline. A more effective approach may be to address the underlying conditions they share, and reimagining civic media not as a collection of sectors, but as a unified infrastructure.

Regional Models We Can Learn From

The U.S. already has a history of various policies and regional voter-approved tax collection mechanisms to support cultural infrastructure in defined geographic areas. These models demonstrate that public investment in shared cultural resources can be both politically viable and structurally durable when tied to clear community benefit. 

From Denver’s Scientific and Cultural Facilities District to Washington State’s Doors Open programs, modest, locally authorized levies have generated stable, recurring funding for arts and cultural organizations while maintaining independent governance and public accountability. These mechanisms are established tools that communities have willingly chosen to adopt when the value proposition is clear and the funding is transparently managed. 

This approach could be adapted to meet the needs of Civic Media 2.0, and designed with a clear public purpose, independent governance, and a consistent revenue stream.

Designing a Civic Media District: A Two-State Test

If the goal is to move from concept to implementation, the next question is design. What would a model look like that offers a clear public purpose, independent governance, and dedicated revenue streams?

Two states provide especially strong testing grounds: Washington and Colorado.

In Washington, the most viable pathway is a county-level pilot that builds on existing cultural access frameworks.

• King County’s voter-approved Doors Open program has already demonstrated that residents will support dedicated funding for cultural infrastructure when the value is clear and governance is trusted. 
• A Civic Media pilot could extend this model by allocating a portion of new or complementary funding toward local journalism, documentary film, and community-based storytelling. 
• Structured through an independent Civic Media Trust, funds would be distributed across four core areas: reporting capacity, public-interest storytelling, shared infrastructure, and youth and community access. The goal is not to fund individual projects in isolation, but to strengthen the systems that make ongoing production and distribution possible.

Colorado offers a different but equally important test case.

• The Scientific and Cultural Facilities District has provided a durable model for regional cultural funding for decades, supported by a small voter-approved sales tax and governed through a multi-county board. 
• A Civic Media District could build on this precedent, extending the same logic to journalism and public-interest media. 
• Funding could be distributed through a tiered system that supports anchor institutions, mid-sized community organizations, and smaller projects and innovations. In this context, civic media would be treated not as a separate category, but as a natural evolution of existing public investment in cultural infrastructure.

To reflect the realities of today’s media economy, both pilots could incorporate mechanisms that capture a small portion of digital platform value and reinvest it into locally-focused initiatives. As outlined in my previous post, these could include modest levies on digital advertising transactions, negotiated contributions from streaming platforms, or state-level policy frameworks designed to redirect a fraction of platform-based media revenue into public-interest systems.

Together, these models offer two complementary approaches leveraging the ability of state and local districts to move more quickly to coordinate an approach to rebalance and adapt infrastructure based on real-world conditions. The model for Washington explores how civic media can be integrated into existing cultural funding systems at the county level, and the model for Colorado tests whether a regional tax district model can be expanded to include civic information and storytelling as shared public goods. 

Implementation would require adapting or expanding existing programs through coordinated action initiated by community leaders working across policy, funding, governance, and field alignment to combine legislative authorization, public investment, independent oversight, and cross-sector collaboration.

What happens if there is success in piloting this approach?

If successful, these experiments begin to link a path forward towards a framework for forming Regional Civic Media Trusts, supporting independent forms of film, music, journalism, and community storytelling as an expanded, coordinated network of regionally funded civic media ecosystems serving the public interest in service as a public good.

In the next (and final) post for this series, I’ll outline a more detailed blueprint draft for Civic Media 2.0 and continue to explore ways we can begin to build, test, and advance this work together in the field.

In the meantime, please share your thoughts by completing the fourth survey in this series.