1999 Batten Awards and Symposium
A Citizen’s-Eye View: Civic Journalism, Civic Engagement
Introduction
By Jan Schaffer
Executive Director
Pew Center for Civic Journalism
In-depth, interactive journalism that served as a catalyst for further conversation in the community was the hallmark of this year’s Batten Award- winning coverage.
Each of the winning news organizations courageously and thoroughly explored a sensitive subject – alcohol abuse, race relations, poverty amid welfare reform – in ways that encouraged unprecedented levels of reader and viewer response. Often, people took advantage of some new tools to participate, such as book clubs, discussion groups, on-line conversations and study circles.
As a result, the one-way conversation of traditional journalism became an active civic dialogue that continued in these communities long after the journalism wound down.
In Maine, the Portland Press Herald’s series on alcohol abuse gave rise to more than 70 study circles and individual community action plans that were published in a book. In the Twin Cities, more than 2,500 Minnesotans took up the St. Paul Pioneer Press’s invitation to participate in book clubs and form discussion groups on poverty. In San Francisco, thousands of people engaged in on-line conversations about race relations in response to KRON-TV’s groundbreaking coverage.
The winners all took risks that improved their journalism – and their ties to the community.
Creating opportunities for citizens to participate was a hallmark of this year’s Batten Symposium, as well. It was the first day-long symposium in the five years of the awards’ existence – and the first to make citizens active participants in discussions about current and emerging forms of journalism.
In this booklet, you will hear from the winners, the citizens, the inventors of emerging journalism and, for the first time, from researchers. And from the two keynoters, you’ll find some fresh and sound advice for creating more meaningful coverage.
Author and professor Michael Schudson reminds us that the link between information and democracy was not born of our nation’s founding fathers; it evolved as the nation matured. And he poses some challenges for journalists: Avoid “sloppy populism.” Beware of hostility toward political parties. And pay attention to the current rights revolution, now underway in the courts, as a new venue for citizen engagement.
Philadelphia Daily News Editor Zack Stalberg pays homage to the late James K. Batten’s vision of newspapers as vital to building communities. He urges a potent journalism – one that embraces a sense of purpose. And he warns against journalism that is “intelligent, elegantly packaged – and utterly bloodless.”
Our thanks to all the Minnesota media partners and The Minnesota Journalism Center. Their energy and imagination helped produce the 1999 Batten Awards and Symposium: “A Citizen’s-Eye View: Civic Journalism, Civic Engagement.”