How the spectrum auction could save journalism

[Commentary] The use of public airwaves has always come with public obligations. But nobody seems to be asking what the people are getting back in the deal. Whatever happened to “enlightenment of all the people”? Imagine if instead of cashing out, these station owners invested a significant portion of the auction revenue in a public fund to confront the crisis in journalism and support responsive local news, serious investigative reporting and public and community media of all kinds. What if they used the money to set up cutting-edge investigative newsrooms in cities across the country? Or built new tools to help the public sort through data and public records? Or leveraged it to support community-engagement efforts to attract and grow new and diverse audiences? What if we saw the auction as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reinvent public media and safeguard journalism’s future?

That’s how we see it at Free Press, and that’s why we’ve launched a new campaign — starting in New Jersey — to build the public pressure and political will needed to redirect and reinvest some of the spectrum-auction money to meet community-information needs.

[Craig Aaron is the president and CEO of Free Press and the Free Press Action Fund. ]