Lauren Frayer

The state of New York awarded nearly $212 million in funding to bring broadband to parts of the state where service is not available today or is only available at low speeds. The broadband funding awarded went to 26 companies, including cable companies, municipal networks, and cooperatives, as well as to traditional telecom companies including FairPoint Communications, Frontier Communications, and TDS Telecom.

Awards were made in phase two of the New NY Broadband Program. Funding recipients also must contribute some funding of their own, yielding total anticipated investment of more than $268 million. New NY Broadband is an ambitious program announced in 2015 that allocated $500 million to make broadband available throughout the state. Except in the most rural areas, operators are required to deploy service supporting speeds of at least 100 Mbps downstream. For the most rural areas, the minimum speed target is 25 Mbps downstream.

Governments hoping to evade responsibility for war crimes and rights abuses are having a much tougher time of it these days. Denying entry to nettlesome investigators is still standard while many places are simply too dangerous to investigate. But even where investigators cannot go, digital technologies can sometimes overcome barriers to investigation.

A recent Harvard Kennedy School report published by the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy underscores how various digital technologies undermine attempts to hide abuses and war crimes. Commercial high-resolution remote sensing satellites, some capable of distinguishing objects on the ground as small as 30-cm across, allow human rights groups to document military forces deployments, mass graves, forced population displacements, and damage to physical infrastructure.

Medium is introducing a new type of story to Medium for readers who just can’t wait for that next post: Series. Series are mobile stories that can be added to over time and unfold card by card with the tap of your finger. This is our first step toward building a new way to read on Medium that’s both seamless and serialized.

[Commentary] The White House’s vicious attacks on the press and the often-timid response from journalists stem from the fact that, as a business, the press at this moment couldn’t be more exposed: Most of the biggest media companies in the country still haven’t settled on a business plan that works (and the smaller ones, in ever-larger numbers, are simply closing up shop); reporters continue to lose their jobs; and magic-bullet answers that once offered hope for turning things around—video or live events or virtual reality—seem to disappoint by the day. No wonder the ridicule from Sean Spicer and Steve Bannon, propelled by historically low approval ratings for journalists, has turned into an existential threat to journalism that is gleefully fanned by the commander in chief.

There’s nothing new on the horizon, no business-model savior set to rescue media companies at the very moment they are facing their most critical journalistic test. There are, though, strands of hope, little bits of ideas that are working, albeit in limited ways. By mixing and matching them, we can begin to compile a recipe for a new journalistic model that may work—emphasis on the may.

[Commentary] While a majority of Americans are spending more time consuming news on social media platforms, the leaders of these companies have until recently declined to accept their role as the most important publishers of our time. They have shown scant interest in judging wheat from chaff while chasing market share. The good news is that’s changing, and Zuckerberg is leading the way. He and others in Silicon Valley would be well served by turning to Jack Knight’s core values for guidance. In our digital age, it may seem counterintuitive to look to a man who had ink in his veins for advice. But the basic principles about the role of information and the media in our democracy that Knight embraced remain critically important:
First: get the business model right.
Second, the product has to be demonstrably true to be believed. Knight wrote, simply, “get the truth and print it.”
Third, use technology to engage the reader.

[Alberto Ibarguen is the president and ceo of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation]

When getting news online, black online news consumers are much more likely than white consumers to follow up on these stories with an action. A real-time study asked more than 2,000 online news consumers twice a day over the course of a week (Feb. 24-March 1, 2016) whether they got news online in the past two hours and, if so, what their experience was with that news. Those who did get news online were asked whether they took one of six types of follow-up actions: speaking with someone either in person or over the phone; searching for additional information; posting, sharing or commenting on a social networking site; sending an article to someone by email or text message; bookmarking or saving the news for later; and commenting on a news organization’s webpage.

Black online news consumers took at least one of these actions two-thirds (66%) of the time on average. That is 17 percentage points higher than whites (49%). By comparison, online news consumers overall took a follow-up action 52% of the time. Blacks were more likely than whites to act upon online news in two particular ways: speaking with someone offline and saving news for later.

5G will genuinely be transformative — when it finally gets here. But the problem we’re seeing at Mobile World Congress, is that people are getting excited about the potential of 5G, but overlooking the immediate reality. Dan Bieler, a telecoms analyst with Forrester, said that hype surrounding the technology has “picked up noticeably compared with MWC 2016.” Journalists’ inboxes have been bombarded with news of 5G trials and prototype hardware from pretty much every big tech company around. Samsung, AT&T, Ericsson, Verizon, Nokia, Sprint, Qualcomm, have all had news to share, just to name a few. But while these firms are making genuine steps forward with 5G, some of the language might make you think the technology is right on the cusp of being widely available.

A broadcaster witness representing the National Association of Broadcasters told a Senate panel that broadcasters still don't think the 39-month timetable for repacking TV stations after the incentive auction and the $1.75 billion relocation fund will be sufficient. That came at a spectrum hearing in the Senate Communications Subcommittee, where numerous senators praised the medium and urged that neither it nor the viewers that depended on broadcasting be adversely affected in the repack. Pat LaPlatney, president or Raycom Media, who has testifying on behalf of NAB, said 22 of his stations alone would have to move, including a couple that would require putting new antennas on existing towers weighing thousands of pounds more than the previous antenna. He said broadcasters would work collaboratively and make the transition as quickly and efficiently as possible but that it was a complicated process.

Ranking Member Sen Brian Schatz (D-HI) said he was concerned that viewers could lose access to local news during the transition and asked if there was not a way to balance the desire for faster broadband with the need to protect access to local news. Sen Schatz got the commitment from Scott Bergmann, VP of regulatory affairs for CTIA, that he would work collaboratively with Congress and broadcasters to insure a smooth transition, but Bergman included the caveat that 39 months was an eternity to wait for the $20 billion worth of broadcast spectrum bought in the auction and said he thought the FCC could hold to that timetable.

America’s Public Television Stations recognized several public broadcasting leaders with awards and honored two members of Congress for their advocacy on behalf of the system. Sens Roy Blunt (R-MO) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT) each received the Champion of Public Broadcasting award, which recognizes political leaders and others who protect the ability of local public TV stations to provide education, public safety and civic leadership services.

“Senator Blunt’s extraordinary leadership has been instrumental in ensuring that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, our new interconnection system, and the highly effective Ready To Learn preschool education program have been fully funded in the Senate Appropriations Bill each year of his chairmanship,” said Patrick Butler, president of APTS. Of Sen Leahy, Butler said the senator’s longtime commitment to public broadcasting has helped to secure federal funding over the past four decades. “We are particularly grateful for his championship of the Rural Digital Program that helped ensure the delivery of our programming and services to all the people of Vermont and to millions of rural Americans nationwide,” Butler said.

All presidents lunch with major news anchors. But a recent White House gathering was different. The President kept his guests 30 minutes beyond the allotted hour, was gracious and spoke so much that he left his lunch untouched — a recognition, those close to him say, that he must sell himself to the Washington news media because he believes the people who work for him cannot. President Trump, after all, had conceded only the day before on national television that “in terms of messaging, I would give myself a C or a C-plus.” In the same interview, on “Fox & Friends,” the President described his press secretary, Sean Spicer, as “a fine human being.” The language struck close Trump associates as a dismissive turn from a man who relishes hyperbole.

Christopher Ruddy, the chief executive of Newsmax Media and a longtime friend of President Trump, said that the President was experiencing “a lot of angst” about his negative coverage. A master media manipulator and storyteller, candidate Trump went without a traditional press secretary during the presidential campaign, preferring to field queries on his own. Now he is increasingly taking command of his administration’s message making, and privately expressing frustration with a White House press office under siege amid leaks and infighting.