To suggest that the Internet has disrupted the news industry is perhaps one of the most gross understatements of the digital age.

The concern is not lost on policymakers.

In an effort to reframe the debate as one over preserving citizens' access to vital civic information, rather than the somewhat tired anxiety over how to save newspapers, a commission comprised of a broad group of leaders from the Internet, media, nonprofit and public-policy sectors this morning released a comprehensive report outlining a road map for sustaining journalism and civic engagement in the online era.

"It is not a hand-wringing report," said Alberto Ibargüen, president and CEO of the Knight Foundation, one of the co-organizers of the Knight Commission that prepared the report. "It is not a report that says 'woe is me' and laments what we all grew up with."

In a fitting nod to the nature of the challenges the commission aimed to address, the Knight Foundation and the Aspen Institute, the commission's other organizer, named Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) Vice President Marissa Mayer a co-chair of the effort.

"Information is a core community need and accessing that information has become vital to our democracy," Mayer said this morning at the event unveiling the report.

Mayer highlighted one of the commission's 15 policy recommendations, which couples the need for "ambitious standards for nationwide broadband availability" with the access to information of civic value. After all, if quality journalism is to be remade in the digital model, the need for universal broadband access becomes that much more pressing.

"We cannot stand idle and allow large groups of people to be disadvantaged," Mayer said, noting that the commission's research found that roughly one-third of U.S. households did not have access to what it considered sufficient broadband service.

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Calls for building out broadband fall on sympathetic ears in Washington these days, with the federal government moving to distribute billions of dollars in stimulus money for high-speed networks, and the Federal Communications Commission knee-deep in its work developing a national broadband plan due to Congress in February.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski was on hand at this morning's event to sing the praises of the commission's effort.

"Even as things change dramatically, some principles remain constant. One of those is the importance of information needs in our society," he said. "We hear loud and clear the assessment of the Knight Commission that this is a critical juncture requiring new thinking."

In the spirit of democratizing access to information, the report also called on government officials to ramp up their efforts to make data available online. Much like the calls for universal broadband, e-government advocacy is pitch-perfect in the current administration, which has loudly trumpeted its efforts to set up new Web sites promising transparency and accountability and communicate with the public through new media channels such as blogs and YouTube.

Aneesh Chopra, the federal government's first chief technology officer, followed Genachowski in offering praise for the commission's report, which he said "enforced a great deal of the work that we are committed to doing."

He added, "It will be a powerful foundation to the open government initiative at the White House."

Chopra is helping oversee the development of a government-wide directive President Obama ordered on his first full day in office calling on the agencies to adopt new technologies to further the mission of open government. Chopra said the initiative, which is expected from the Office of Management and Budget in the coming weeks, aims "to hardwire agency accountability to these principles."

"Our primary mission is to provide frictionless access to data," he said.

Among the commission's other recommendations include support for the sort of Net neutrality rules recently proposed by Genachowski and praised by Obama.

Framed in the context of access to civic information, the argument for a free and open Internet maintains that network providers should be barred from blocking content that might be politically disadvantageous. ISPs, both in the wireline and wireless sectors, are vigorously protesting Net neutrality obligations, arguing that they have no interest in throttling specific content, but rather must be afforded the ability to manage their networks to sustain performance.

The commission also called for more vigorous government support for local and public-service media initiatives, and to encourage academic and nonprofit institutions to help fill the information void that is appearing with the demise of so-called legacy media.

The commission also called for increased funding for community institutions such as libraries to establish digital-literacy training programs.

"It's not a broadband report. It's not a journalism report. It's not a report about the death of newspapers or not," said Michael Powell, a former chairman of the FCC who served on the Knight Commission. "It's a report about information."

Reed Hundt, another former FCC chairman who helped develop the report, spoke of the imperative of leveling the barriers to information in a media landscape where printing plants and delivery trucks are fasting becoming anachronisms.

Hundt recalled a meeting he had in 1994 with Jerry Yang, who told him that he had just founded a company called Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO). Asked what the company did, Yang joked that it was an acronym: "Yet another hierarchical officious organization."

Hundt, after a moment, took his meaning to be ironic. Yang explained that Yahoo was to be the precise opposite of everything that associated notions of hierarchy with access to information. To Hundt, that roughly defined the ethos of the Web, and, by extension, the kernel of the Knight Commission's report.

But for all the eager talk about democratizing media and remaking journalism and government in a vibrant Web 2.0 world, there always has to be a naysayer.

John Carroll, the former editor of the Los Angeles Times and other newspapers, said his role on the commission was frequently to offer the uncomfortable reminder that the Web has yet to produce a model to support the journalistic shoe leather required to expose corruption in city hall or blow the lid off a corporate scandal.

"The original baseline of journalism is very much in question," he said. "I was kind of the Cro-Magnon man of the panel, and was always raising the question: 'Where's the journalism going to come from?'"

Theories abound, many rooted in the recent groundswell of philanthropic support for local and investigative journalism projects. But, at this early stage, even the most exuberant proponents of new-media journalism admit that it's still something of a matter of faith.

Said Hundt: "We need to be really, really confident about what's just around the corner."