Carnegie Reporter, Vol. 4, No. 4 | ideastream: The New Public Media, page 5

OneCommunity Provides Reach
The grand symbiotic relationship ideastream has embarked upon, which has drawn national attention—including a Harvard Business School study—and opened vast opportunities for Cleveland, is with OneCommunity.

OneCommunity—formerly OneCleveland—was the vision of Lev Gonick, who became CIO and Vice President, Information Services at Case Western Reserve University in 2001, just as ideastream came into being and the Cleveland community was coming to know about the Quiet Crisis. Essentially, what Gonick sought was to build a regional broadband network at relatively little cost to serve the educational, health and nonprofit communities of northeast Ohio. What he didn’t have in mind, until he was approached by Wareham, was someone to provide content to that network and, perhaps more importantly, someone with the community connections to bring together the nonprofit community in Cleveland in support of Gonick’s vision.

Toward the end of the 20th century, an estimated $3 trillion-plus was sunk into the streets of the U.S. in the form of fiber optic cable in anticipation of the explosion in broadband digital service, which halted abruptly when the e-commerce bubble burst. Gonick understood that this fortune in so-called “dark fiber” (unused cable), was everywhere in the country. In 2003, Gonick convinced City Signal Corp. to donate several strands of dark fiber to his nonprofit organization, for which the corporation got a substantial tax write-off. In September of that year, OneCleveland was incorporated and Scot Rourke, a former venture capitalist and Cleveland native, became its first executive.

If Gonick is the visionary, Rourke is the master builder. Rourke’s plan for the nonprofit was to expand the broadband connection well beyond the city of Cleveland. What he proposed was that the corporations donating some portion of their dark fiber would not only get a healthy tax write-off, but also, said Rourke, “We are going to build the market for you. We will expose the community to the value of [broadband], we’ll do the missionary work and build a market demand for the rest of your fiber.”

“Scot has a wonderful concept,” says Wareham. “He refers to ‘Liberating content held captive by various community institutions, universities, foundations, and nonprofit organizations.’” Adds Rourke: “It’s not that they are trying to imprison it, it’s that they don’t know how to let it out.”

Some of the programs enabled by the ideastream-OneCommunity partnership:

Distance Learning enables schools, which pay an annual fee, to have interactive access to live shows and instructional classes presented at the Idea Center.

Voices and Choices enables anyone interested in the economic issues of the region to log into a dedicated web site, study the issues, make choices and contribute to an ongoing dialogue, including community town meetings.

One Classroom is the outgrowth of a $2 million grant from the Cleveland Clinic connecting 1,500 area schools to the OneCommunity network, making rich media content created by ideastream, including lesson plans and other educational content, available on-demand. In time, this is expected to include digitized content from the many museums and cultural institutions in the region.

Wireless Mesh Network is a work in progress, building on ideastream’s FCC licenses to develop a citywide wi-fi network with OneCommunity, Case Western Reserve University, the city of Cleveland and area schools.

Rural Health Network, when completed, would create a broadband network for participating medical institutions in Northeastern Ohio to exchange medical data ranging from paper records and MRIs to televised medical exams.

Somerset-Ward says of ideastream and its partnerships: “They are becoming much more than just community broadcasters, they are becoming community enablers. And they are doing that by forming partnerships with community institutions. Jerry and ideastream are in a class of their own...But it’s a model of what communities can do when institutions like schools, universities, and health authorities create partnerships.”

Harsh Realities
Perhaps the toughest part of using ideastream as a model is broadband access. Rourke, however, insists that should not be a problem. Dark fiber exists throughout the nation and large telecommunication companies are anxious to build a market for broadband by getting the attention of consumers—and one way to do that is to donate a couple of strands of fiber to a local nonprofit, with the added benefit of a tax break. “We know we can repeat this pretty much anywhere in the United States by promising that we are going to create the market and we aren’t going to touch the residential customer,” says Rourke.

Some observers say that an equally tough challenge is finding people willing to cede control, both in terms of the traditional gatekeeper role played by broadcasters/journalists and a willingness to enter into partnerships in which the traditional objectivity of the broadcaster/journalist might be questioned. Other skeptics have challenged ideastream’s partnerships with regional institutions that are sometimes subjects of media scrutiny, such as the Cleveland Clinic, the second-largest employer in the state, which has provided grants to OneCommunity and ideastream.

Unquestionably, partnerships can create the appearance of conflicts of interest for journalists whose stock in trade is perceived objectivity. But the same can be said with respect to advertisers: does The New York Times, for example, have a problem covering a scandal at General Motors because it accepts ads from GM?

David Molpus, a veteran reporter with NPR and Executive Editor at ideastream since March 2006, says that there are some legitimate issues to be addressed when working with another organization on content creation. “What are the rules of the game? We’ve started to work that out and codify it,” he explains. “We obviously see that there is one level of cooperation with another news organization like the Plain Dealer. But then there are degrees of variation: What could you do with the university? What could you do with the city library? What could you do with other nonprofits? What could you do with a government agency?”

There was an early dust-up over a perceived conflict of interest, concerning a grant provided to ideastream to do stories about affordable housing by an organization that also provided affordable housing. “There was concern in the newsroom, at that time, that this organization was setting some agenda,” says Mark Smukler, ideastream’s Senior Director of Content. “But they never did get involved, there was no direct conversation, no proposals, no story ideas. At one point they did place a call to the reporter that was working on it and I told them not do that and they said fine and that was the end of it.”

And, as with any merger or change in corporate identity, there were myriad management issues, including heightened staff distress and brain drain. “I have a great deal of admiration for the model and for the people who put it in place,” says Mark Fuerst of the Integrated Media Association. “Merging any two organizations is a particularly hard undertaking. There are fears, anxieties and big concessions that have to be made. Kit and Jerry deserve great credit for what they’ve done.”

Neither Wareham nor Jensen is recommending others follow ideastream’s lead. “I don’t know if our model can be or should be replicated elsewhere,” says Jensen. “But the key has to be to work within the resources that the communities provide and with full recognition of the communities’ needs.”

M.J. Zuckerman is a veteran freelance journalist, author and lecturer, currently
on the adjunct staff of the George Washington University School of Media and Public Affairs.