Originally appeared in Nation’s Cities Weekly, June 24, 1996.
In Charlotte, N.C., more than 1,000 citizens have responded to lists of critical needs in nine of the city’s most crime-ridden neighborhoods. The newspaper collected the lists from neighborhood residents as part of what became its award-series, “Talking Back Our Neighborhoods.”
In Binghamton, N.Y., about 300 citizens have begun grappling with the fallout from defense-industry downsizing by participating in 11 action teams that are focusing on recommendations. It’s all part of a print and broadcast media effort called “Facing Our Future.”
And in Wisconsin, dozens of citizens gathered last year to discuss urban sprawl and farmland preservation in a live, primetime broadcast on land use that ran on the CBS and public broadcast stations. To the surprise of the media sponsors, the show was a runaway ratings winner. It was watched by more viewers than any of the competing programs on Fox, ABC and NBC.
“This shows that people really want to watch this stuff,” said Tom Still, associate editor of the Wisconsin State Journal, one of the key partners in “We the People/Wisconsin,” the nation’s longest running civic journalism initiative.
All these citizens – and journalists – have come face-to-face with news coverage that is a little different in their local newspapers and on their television and radio stations.
It may not be entirely new, but it does have some new names. Variously called civic, public or community journalism, it has energized not only called civic, public or community journalism, it has energized not only citizens, but also editors and news directors who have been trying it in dozens of communities across the country m the past few years.
Simply put, most civic journalism initiatives make a deliberate attempt to reach out to citizens, to turn to them, and to have citizens listen and talk to each other and to use that information in a way that it enables citizens to be citizens – rather than consumers of a news “product.”
Sometimes this outreach and these listening exercises happen in large town meetings, at other times in more intimate livingroom conversations; sometimes at public debates, at other times in focus groups.
If attendance and response levels are any indicators, most citizens seem to like being invited to take a more active role in their communities, to help define just what the problems are, set an agenda, figure out solutions and interact with the candidates who want to run their governments.
In Derry, N.H., for instance, 200 citizens battled a fierce February snowstorm for the opportunity to attend a question and answer session with three GOP presidential candidates before the primary. And none of the front-runners even agreed to attend.
“When candidates did get together with the voters, the results were illuminating,” said Don MacGilk, who coordinated the project for The
Boston Globe. “Typically the citizens would stay around, talking among themselves and with the journalists, while the candidates were hustled off to their next event. It showed us how starved, in a way, citizens are for this kind of serious discussion about national problem, about having discussions like this with people from different backgrounds, and how little it occur, outside of events like the ones we were organizing.”
Last year, The Kansas City Star did a year-log series on 12 key values – selected by a panel of 13 citizens after some vigorous debate – as important to the raising of children. More than 3,000 people in the community responded and have carried the discussions beyond the newspaper into workshops on children’s issues and new designs for the school curriculum.
Similarly, in Sioux Falls, S.D., the Paper invited communities to nominate themselves for a rural renewal initiative. More than 500 people nominated 56 communities; Tyndall was selected. About 1,200 residents attended the first gathering.
“Throughout this, the towns-people alternatively worked together well and fought like crazy. And it is those conversations that mark the biggest success of this project,” said Peter Ellis, managing editor of The Argus Leader, which conceived the project. “We got people communicating and cooperating. Talk is the cornerstone of democracy.”
By the end of the year, the community had created a Tyndall Ambassadors Program, to bring their ideas and help to other communities.
By now, enough civic journalism efforts have been printed and broadcast to demonstrate that they are good journalism – as well as good catalyst to civic discourse.
It would be hard to top the kind of neighborhood reporting the Charlotte Observer has undertaken in its multiple award winning “Taking Back Our Neighborhoods” project. It has led the city to raze community eyesores, a bank to donate $50,000 to build a community center, local lawyers to volunteer their services to sue to close crack houses and, most importantly to citizens taking charge of their own communities.
And the “We the People” media partnership, based in Madison, Wis., has found that its approach to tackling such normally dry issues as the such budget, the race for state Supreme Court, and the University of Wisconsin budget crunch is finding disciples at newspapers and broadcast stations throughout the state.
Each year sees more and more civic journalism projects launched. This year, the Pew Center for Civic Journalism helped fund 17 of them. The Center is sort of a venture Capital fund for risky journalism experiments around the country — experiments that seek to re-engage citizens in their communities while still maintaining the highest values of good journalism.
Civic journalism is nourished by a concern among top editors that something is W in their relationship with their readers and viewers. Indeed, circulation and viewership numbers are ratifying those concerns. And some journalists are asking whether the media might be one part of the problem.
Civic journalists seek to cover issues not so cynically that readers and listeners give up hope for any solutions, but to cover areas of agreement as well as disagreement. And it means finding other people to quote who have a sense of the possibilities.
As Charlotte Observer editor Jennie Buckner has said: “All too often, we print stories that move our readers to call us and say: `What can we do?’. And our response is: `It’s not our problem’.”
Civic journalism tries to help citizens answer that question better.
Jan Schaffer, former business editor and Pulitzer Prize winner for The Philadelphia Inquirer, is deputy director of the Pew Center for Civic Journalism. The three-year-old center is a key part of the Pew Charitable Trusts’ growing initiative to stimulate citizen involvement in community issues, entitled “Renewing Our Democratic Heart.”
COPYRIGHT 1996 National League of Cities
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