Media Re:public’s final report went to press in November. It is available on the Berkman Center’s Web site at www.mediarepublic.org. Its conclusions include the following:
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The disruption of the scarcity-based business model for traditional media outlets is leading them to reduce and shift the scope of their original reporting.
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Web-native media entities are not addressing all of the reporting gaps left by legacy media, and current structures and mechanisms do not provide sufficient incentives for them to do so.
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In the changing media environment, news consumers risk relying on news sources that are neither credible nor comprehensive.
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Despite impressive successes, participation in the online media space is not universal; there are populations and ideas that remain underrepresented.
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There are specific kinds of critically important journalism that have not found reliable sustainability models in the online media environment.
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Efforts to understand and address the issues above are limited by a lack of rigorous empirical evidence, instead relying largely on incomplete information, anecdotes and intuition.