This project examines the history of journalistic innovation and media policy. The team is exploring what earlier attempts to reach a wide audience using explanatory journalism have taught us; and, based on past experience, how policy can better support forms of evidence based journalism. The research moves through three sequential stages.

First, how new communication modes cultivated new genres of explanatory content. Second, how the historical evolution of intellectual property law first fostered, then effectively abolished the republishing of journalistic content. And third how new forms of explanatory journalism in the past, like investigative journalism, affected civic engagement, public understanding of issues, and public policy.