Learn How to Tap into Your Community

By early spring, five news organizations will be chosen for the Seminars, a series of three, two-day workshops that will improve reporters’ and editors’ capacities to know their communities. The sessions will also provide the context, approaches and skills to literally map the civic layers of communities and neighborhoods.

The approach to be used was first outlined in Tapping Civic Life: How to Report First, and Best, What’s Happening in Your Community, a Harwood workbook based on research at The Wichita Eagle.

Your newsroom is invited to be among the first to attend. There is no fee to participate. What is required is a commitment to re-examine how you view and cover your community.

News organizations are expected to pay transportation costs to the seminar site, which will be in the Denver metro area. The Pew Center will furnish meals and lodging.

The seminars will build on the work done in your own newsrooms.

Session 1:
March 19 & 20, 1999

• Learn key Harwood frameworks for tapping into the community, including Layers of Civic Life, Types of Neighborhoods and Types of Leaders.
• Develop initial plans to map neighborhoods in your town.
• Discover news coverage ideas.

Session 2:
April 30 & May 1, 1999

• Learn additional key Harwood frameworks for Engaging People in Public Life
• Begin to build your civic map.
• Identify gaps in what you know.
• Explore ways to engage citizens and catalysts fully to further develop your map.

Session 3:
June 18 & 19, 1999

• Sort through types of neighborhoods, leaders and issues you’ve identified.
• Identify remaining gaps in your civic map.
• Map out specific strategies to develop your map further and use it in your daily journalism.

Preparation for the sessions includes studying Tapping Civic Life, doing some strategic reading, holding newsroom conversations to identify areas of your community to explore and conducting key interviews with citizens and catalysts.

Should you apply? Review the questions in the box. If you answered “yes” to all of them, then these seminars are for you.

How to Apply
How to apply? Please answer the questions below in no more than two pages and include the names and titles of three staff members from your news organization who would like to attend.

• What are the two main challenges facing your paper’s efforts to tap neighborhoods, leaders and communities?
• What are two things that you hope to take away from this experience?
• What are two things that you bring to the table?

Deadline is Feb. 10, 1999. Selected participants will be notified no later than Feb. 19, 1999.