UCAN certainly has weighed in from time to time on the local media's failure to cover important issues large and small here in San Diego.

Last week, UCAN's affiliate New Media Rights filed comments for the FCC's Future of Media proceeding. Our comments covered many subjects from mobile phones, to investigative journalism, to the future of the internet. On the state of local media, New Media Rights remarks included the following:

"The media landscape in San Diego mirrors the challenges elsewhere in the United States. With regards to the more traditional mass media in San Diego, to our knowledge only one broadcast TV newsroom is producing any investigative news and there are significant layoffs in traditional media such as the San Diego Union Tribune.

Through direct work with producers at Public Access channels, our understanding is that local public access resources, particularly at Cox, are archaic.

Particularly missing from our media landscape is investigative and analysis journalism regarding local issues. Positive signs do exist, however.

There are many individuals, community and nonprofits trying to address the gap in news and information, and reinvent media in San Diego Some of these, such as VoiceofSanDiego.org, have received significant attention, but many other experiments are taking place in San Diego.

These include:

Liberty One Radio who is working on bringing another voice to radio in San Diego

East County Magazine which is a startup that gets significant traffic and provides basic news and info to East county in an entirely Internet based format,

Organizations like the New Media Rights, our local public libraries, and the SD Media Arts Center who play a role in local media through digital storytelling and training events.

Citizens are meeting weekly at various organizations to learn about everything from DIY media to the legal issues regarding publishing online. New Media Rights, for instance, has led discussions around San Diego and Southern California to groups of filmmakers, bloggers, citizen journalists, musicians, web developers, nonprofits, and lawyers, regarding overcoming legal and technical hurdles when publishing online. Our comments to the Commission are informed by working on a one to one basis with these creators and Internet users.

As far as financial support for the many different projects that are attempting to fill San Diego's media gap, there has been some foundation funding from groups like Knight Foundation and J- lab. While this funding is welcome, it is often limited to startup funds and projects often end up being unsustainable. We must find ways to create sustainable outlets for quality news and information.

Anecdotally, our most respected local news sources are public media. This is troublesome because one generally trusted source of local news, NPR, only spends a fraction of its 24 hour programming on local and regional news."

Read the full comments and press release here and sign up for the New Media Rights site to add your comments on the future of media.