'Frontline' Producer Says Public TV Needs More Partners, Money

[Source: PoynterOnline, by Bill Mitchell; March 25, 2010]

"Frontline" executive producer David Fanning says it's time for sweeping change in public broadcasting, beginning with deep partnerships with local Web start-ups and an ambitious new approach to revenue.

Fanning used the occasion of a career award from Harvard's Shorenstein Center Tuesday night to outline what he called "a public media transformation."

He urged a focus on enterprise journalism delivered on new platforms like the iPad that he said will enable extraordinary experiences of news generated by the multimedia collaborative he proposed.

Fanning called for a new national "Public Journalism Fund" supported by foundations, individuals and public money that would "go out and simply get together the best journalists we can hire."

Fanning acknowledged that "this reinvention is a political challenge of the highest order," adding, "At the heart of this big idea is more public funding."

In remarks at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, Fanning elaborated on ideas he raised a year ago, and joined others who have called for increased government funding for journalism.

The goal, he said, would be to "open up a new public media space online - to publish in the space between radio and television, but to use programs in both media to drive attention back to those online and print stories."

Noting some highlights across his nearly four decades in public television, Fanning said, "I could never have created 'Frontline' anywhere else."

He said Boston's public station, WGBH, "gave me a home for it, CPB [Corporation for Public Broadcasting], PBS [Public Broadcasting Service] and the stations have funded it, but it's really the idea and mission of public broadcasting that has sustained it.

"I believe deeply in that idea, but it needs re-invigoration."

Fanning, who received the Goldsmith Career Award for Excellence in Journalism, cited finalists for the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting as an example of the kind of increased collaboration he said will be required for public broadcasting to thrive.

The investigation of fatal shootings by police and white vigilantes in New Orleans, "Law and Disorder" was produced by a team that included journalists from the Nation magazine, ProPublica, The New Orleans Times-Picayune and "Frontline."

(I was among five judges who selected "Law and Disorder" and five other finalists.  This post is based on Fanning's prepared text and my notes from contest-related events Tuesday night and Wednesday morning.)

"I'm not alone in believing that we should reinvent public broadcasting around a mission for journalism," Fanning told a gathering honoring the winners.  "Radio has already shown the way; television now has to step up and do a lot more.  Together, they could become formidable."

The heart of Fanning's proposal involves integration of established public broadcasting outlets with what he termed "some of the new local online journalism start-ups."

He said public broadcasters should "offer space in our buildings - all those bricks and mortar built over years of capital campaigns - and start recruiting a new media generation, with their great new HD cameras, their laptop editing and their Web-savvy...Open up those studios, and begin practicing journalism on air and online."