Examines the information needs of the 21st century American citizen and proposes 15 public policy recommendations for sustaining democracy in the Digital Age.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The time has come for new thinking and aggressive action to dramatically improve the information opportunities available to the American people, the information health of the country’s communities, and the information vitality of our democracy.

The Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy believes America is at a critical juncture in the history of communications. Information technology is changing our lives in ways that we cannot easily foresee. As dramatic as the impacts have been already, they are just beginning.

The digital age is creating an information and communications renaissance. But it is not serving all Americans and their local communities equally. It is not yet serving democracy fully. How we react, individually and collectively, to this democratic shortfall will affect the quality of our lives and the very nature of our communities.

America needs “informed communities,” places where the information ecology meets people’s personal and civic information needs. This means people have the news and information they need to take advantage of life’s opportunities for themselves and their families. They need information to participate fully in our system of self-government, to stand up and be heard. Driving this vision are the critical democratic values of openness, inclusion, participation, empowerment, and the common pursuit of truth and the public interest.

To achieve this, the Commission urges that the nation and its local communities pursue three ambitious objectives:

• Maximize the availability of relevant and credible information to all
• Americans and their communities;
• Strengthen the capacity of individuals to engage with information; and
• Promote individual engagement with information and the public life of the community. ...

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FORWARD
The idea of a high-level commission to examine the information needs of 21st Century American citizens and communities originated at an Aspen Institute forum in the summer of 2007.

Participants in that discussion noted both the spread of digital technology and that, in a democracy, information is a core community need. There was also a sense that people with digital tools and skills have distinct political, social and economic advantage over those without them, as do the roughly 60 percent of Americans who have broadband access over those in rural areas or the poor who do not.

Finally, we were beginning to realize that people with digital access have a new attitude toward information. Instead of passively receiving it, digital users expect to own the information, actively engaging with it, responding, connecting. In sum, they expect to be able to act on and with it in an instant.

The thesis evolved that technology was changing attitudes toward information in basic, critically important ways, but that free flow of all sorts of information continued to be as critical as ever to the core of democracy. We proposed a commission to inquire into the nature of this change and suggest a way, or ways, forward. ...

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