Yearly Archives: 1999

By Pat Ford
Pew Center

It was a battle of the Titans: Aetna-U.S. Healthcare, the giant national insurer, vs. The Physicians Inc. (TPI), a group of 1,800 doctors — the majority of doctors practicing in the Louisville area. The details were Byzantine but the impact was simple: Thousands of Aetna policyholders, though not part of the dispute, would bear the consequences. They would no longer be covered for visits to their doctors. 

Enter The Courier-Journal in the role of Greek chorus, trying to provide perspective that would help people decide what to make of the dispute. Read more

By Pat Ford
Pew Center

“Men and women of the white race, now is the time to show just how white and proud you really are. We all fight for the survival of our white heritage, the purity of our white families. We must come together now to become a proud white force”…

The flyers for a white supremacist Fourth of July rally that started going up around Enumclaw, last June, shocked residents and drew regional media to the town, about 30 miles east of Tacoma.

Reporters parachuted in from nearby cities and bureaus to tell the dismaying story of overt racism turning up so close by. Then they left and put the rally on their daybooks for the Fourth. Read more

“The Box” in Seattle

By Pat Ford
Pew Center

It looks a bit like an old-fashioned photo booth: A plain wooden box with a curtain across the entrance and inside, a seat with a swatch of velvet behind it to create a background and a glass window behind which sits a camera. The sign outside says, “Tell us what you’re thinking.” 

And people do. Boy, do they.

Seattle public television producer Peggy Case compares the box (called simply, “The Box”) to a modern-day confessional. “We never get to see people alone,” says Case, “especially in the media. People are directed; they’re made into sound bites. But inside the box, it’s like just meeting someone. They’re careful and pleasant and not too revealing at first but as time goes on, they begin to embrace the camera and relate more of their hopes and dreams and the darkest parts of their history.” Read more

By Pat Ford
Pew Center

A young man, all in black, with hair moussed into a wild halo wants to talk about homelessness. Another, neatly dressed in suit and tie, wants to talk about parking meters and how “they wait there till the meter is just about to expire so they can write you a ticket.”

Next, a couple peers into your TV screen, arms around each other, smiling sweetly. “Hi, I’m Ken Moore,” says the man. “And I’m Moira Moore,” says the woman. They look at each other. Ken beams back into the camera, “And we really want to have a baby.” Read more

Philadelphia Inquirer Gives Voters a Voice and WPVI-TV Gets a Debate Ratings Hit

By Pat Ford
Pew Center

Sidney Toombs had been preparing for this moment for months. It was May 8, the final televised debate of the hotly contested Democratic Mayoral Primary in Philadelphia.

All five candidates were there. Toombs and other voters taking part in The Philadelphia Inquirer’s “Citizen Voices” project would be asking the questions – not newspaper or television reporters.

Toombs and several hundred other people had been meeting since January to zero in on the issues they considered pressing, to frame those issues and, in a full day of discussion, to devise the questions they would put to the candidates. Read more

Last spring, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch invited readers to join in serious conversations about important public issues in a Sunday section that includes background on an issue and opportunities to join a discussion. In the weeks since its debut, readers have responded with phone calls, letters and e-mail expressing their interest. Now, the newspaper is working with a local television station to produce a weekly public affairs broadcast based on the feature.

“Imagine St. Louis,” the Post-Dispatch’s redesign of its Sunday news analysis section, was launched April 11. Read more