Civic Journalism Is… True Stories from America’s Newsrooms
Civic Journalism Is…
About being part of the community.
Jan Leach
Vice President and Editor
Akron Beacon Journal
As civic journalists, we think about the places we live in and what journalism can do for those places.
An example is the Akron Beacon Journal’s reporting on school funding. Now, when you say “school funding,” people’s eyes blur because nobody understands it. But our reporters and editors said, “We are going to own this issue.” And they did an outstanding job of explaining how Ohio funds its schools.
The legislature needed to reverse its school funding formula after the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that relying on property taxes had created too much inequality. It was important to illuminate the problems and also seek solutions. The paper was very specific about what the solutions could be: How education funding could be changed and what the results of various plans would be.
The reporters showed that a proposal to reduce dependence on property taxes was a sham that would actually increase, not decrease, school funding disparities. It was a difficult but important story for the community. In the end, that’s what civic journalism is: It’s all about the community.