A new kind
of news
Equal Access Public Media is pleased to reveal the name of our national daily news site.
After several months of fundraising, EAPM is now in the process of building The National Tab (launching soon at www.nationaltab.org). This will serve as EAPM’s flagship news product.
Public media as EAPM’s nonprofit business model
The public media is best known for its use in National Public Radio, the Public Broadcast System, and local affiliates of public radio and public television.
But we can trace the concept of public media all the way back to 1927. Philosopher John Dewey published his work “The Public and Its Problems,” arguing the new technology of the day, radio, should be used to inform and educate the public – equal access for all to information.
In Dewey’s understanding, the Public was not simply a group of people living in a community. The Public was the very core of what formed a state or commonwealth, which in turn formed government. The Public wasn’t a political party nor a civic organization. It was a living, breathing thing.
“To form itself, the Public has to break existing political forms,” he wrote.
The Public, he theorized, is a community of interest – something that affects society at large.
As Dewey was writing his book, he was thinking of trains and telegraphs, but his argument can easily apply to the internet.
“Means of transit and communication affect not only those who utilize them but all who are dependent in any way upon what is transported whether producers or consumers,” he wrote. “The increase of easy and rapid intercommunication means that production takes place more and more for distant markets and it puts a premium upon mass-communication.”
In Dewey’s concept, certain institutions were tasked with expanding understanding and equity. These ideas were taken up by educators at universities who promoted the idea that they could expand their educational reach through radio.
Many of Dewey’s ideas made their way into an act of Congress with the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 that created the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a public-private partnership that provides support for educational and news programing on the broadcast network. “Public media is a system of independently managed and operated local public radio and television stations. In rural, Native American and Island communities, public broadcasting stations are often the only locally-owned-and-operated media outlets. A handful of public broadcast licensees operate stations in more than a single state. Stations can choose to become PBS or NPR member stations, but do not have to join either organization,” CPB explains.
It’s from this history that EAPM chose our model. EAPM wants to bring an understanding and greater reach of news to the public, and believes news is a public good. We believe that we serve the public and are therefore a media nonprofit for the benefit of the public.
EAPM is, itself, not a news product. It is however, built to create and launch newsrooms and news products and to create a network of newsrooms and news products, beginning with the National Tab. We also look forward to a day when EAPM can join with others to employ our model of accessibility-first media in other newsrooms to expand our network.
What exactly is “accessibility-first media”?
When EAPM began working on a model for news sites, the goal became to move beyond simply checking off Web Content Accessibility Guideline checklist. Meeting a checklist standard or audit wasn’t good enough.
EAPM also agreed that using an “accessibility overlay” or other method of asking the user to select personal settings for the website was not the path for this concept. EAPM’s founder envisioned a news site where every news story was available in multiple media formats to the news audience.
For example, a story about a new bill in Congress should be in presented in the following ways:
- For readers, a news standard news article;
- For those who need to or prefer to listen – such as those who are blind or low vision, an audio version of the article;
- For those who prefer to watch a news video, a video format with closed captions, audio descriptions, and sign language;
- For those who have challenges with reading or have low literacy, a bullet-pointed Easy English format and an audio version of that as well;
- For those who are primary signers but prefer to have the “translation” of the full-length article, sign language interpretation of text.
These would all be available on the same page so that users have the option to choose how they receive their news. To do this, EAPM chose to make the story page simple in its design; perceivable with alt text and other adaptive content; operable by key commands; inclusive to many by excluding autoplay videos or noise; understandable by a wide variety of systems; and also robust in its grasp of working across disability and adaptive needs. The page itself is designed to meet a broad swath of internet users, yet the news itself is meant to be ready to meet specific users’ demands.
Our landing page doesn’t look much different from that of a typical news page. It is what’s inside that’s different. When a news consumer reaches a news story, they will find that each news story contains a tabbed container where the different modes of the story are available. Every news story is different, so some stories may offer the video above the tabbed box, while others may offer a photo to lead the page. Others may not do either.
The tabs are labeled so users can navigate to the content they want:
- “News in long” a standard news article;
- “News in short” – an Easy English version of the news article;
- “News in view” – a video news production of the news story;
- “Sources” – A list of the links to outside sources we used to help report the article or referred to in the article.
Of course, EAPM too must adapt as we know accessibility is infinite. We will continue to learn as we grow, finding new and better methods.
What is evidence-based news?
EAPM referred to evidence-based news first in our response to the 2024 election.
The term is often associated with the practice of medicine but can be applied to any process. We believe it fits with our practice of reporting in which we aim to follow facts and maintain objectivity; deeply report; investigate; be a watchdog of the government and business; ask questions without fear or favor; look at and evaluate solutions that have been tried; and do our best to inform the audience with good explanations.
Evidence based practice is a four-part process:
- Researching evidence, preferably peer reviewed research / scientific literature;
- Work-based research;
- Feedback from the stakeholders;
- And practitioner experience and expertise.
In practice in journalism, this looks like journalists:
- Researching a story using the best evidence available;
- Testing that evidence in the real world through observation, interviews, etc.;
- Speaking with and interviewing field experts and stakeholders on the topic;
- Using their own expertise as a journalist and their own knowledge on the topic to sort through the results to produce the final news story.
As we aspire to present facts and be transparent about our research, we believe this process will help our journalists work through the process of reporting. This will help them adhere to facts, not opinion. This will help them sort through what is simply conjecture and what is the best evidence available. This will also help them as they investigate issues corruption, waste and fraud; present a program’s success or failure to the news audience; or simply tell a story.
We believe this fits with the methods and techniques presented by other organizations such as Trusting News and the Solutions Journalism Network, which we deeply respect and admire and encourage our future journalists to employ in their reporting.
