November 2, 2000 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Big Bird & Beyond: The New Media and the Markle Foundation
by Lee D. Mitgang
Lee D. Mitgang explores the ways in which the John & Mary R. Markle Foundation, in New York, under its long-time president, Lloyd Morrisett, who retired in 1998, used the “might of the mass media”–starting with radio and television and continuing into cyberspace–to pursue its educational, cultural, and civic goals.
Mr. Mitgang, who is director of communications for the Wallace-Reader’s Digest Funds, begins his examination in 1969, the year Mr. Morrisett signed on as the Markle Foundation’s president and also co-founded the Children’s Television Workshop and its renowned television program Sesame Street with Joan Ganz Cooney of PBS. The popular success of Sesame Street and its ability to educate millions of children were of monumental importance to the Markle Foundation, Mr. Mitgang writes, as it proved Mr. Morrisett’s contention that entertainment media such as television could be used in a socially responsible way.
That belief, Mr. Mitgang makes clear, has been the governing theory behind most of the Markle Foundation’s endeavors during the last 30 years.
Throughout the book, he illustrates how thriving projects supported by the foundation–such as communications research centers at universities across the nation, programs aimed at making the news media more responsible, the use of cable television to promote accurate election coverage and foster voter enthusiasm, and a campaign to promote “universal e-mail”–all exemplify Mr. Morrisett’s conviction that communications tools have the potential to benefit all citizens.
Mr. Mitgang’s examination also notes the many difficulties that Mr. Morrisett and the Markle Foundation faced, including the ever-changing nature of communications technology, public and industry indifference to the foundation’s mission, the foundation’s small size in an industry of multibillion-dollar corporations, and the lack of existing programs to which the foundation could make grants.
Publisher: Fordham University Press, University Box L, 2546 Belmont Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10458; (800) 247-6553; 292 pages; $35.95 cloth, $19.95 paper; I.S.B.N. 0-8232-2040-0 cloth, 0-8232-2041-9 paper.
