We the City, Dallas, TX 1997
Partners:
The Arlington Morning News
The Dallas Morning News
KERA-FM
KERA-TV
The University of Texas, Arlington
The partners seized on an initiative by the city of Arlington to increase citizen participation with “We the City,” a civic approach to covering the city’s move toward a deliberative model of government. The first stories, Feb. 7, 1997, explained how the media partners’ civic approach would track and complement the government’s efforts to engage citizens, which included the convening of neighborhood focus groups to replace the more limited public hearings before City Council. Through the spring, the partners sponsored a “civic inventory” of 900 residents, conducted by the university’s School of Urban and Public Affairs, to uncover the role of informal community leaders, the importance of incidental meetings among neighbors, and the impact of absentee landlords and renters on a community. The inventory provided a baseline for assessing and comparing the quality of life in various neighborhoods. The partners did stories on issues that surfaced through the inventory and the neighborhood focus groups, including code enforcement, growth and development. Their stories also reviewed what the city’s efforts had accomplished and looked at how the city could further involve citizens in their government.
The project proved to be a watershed for the Morning News, which had been in existence less than a year when the project started. The previously skeptical lead reporter attended a Pew Center training seminar when the project was launched and, as a result, spent more time in Arlington’s neighborhoods, talking to residents, rather than with public officials. Her reporting stood out in the highly competitive Dallas-Fort Worth market for its richness of sources and voices. Not only did the Arlington experiment prompt more people to get involved in government, it broke down barriers with the media, as more residents began calling the paper with story ideas, attending editor’s meetings and writing columns and letters.
Contact:
Marla Crockett
Asst. Dir., News & Public Affairs
KERA-FM (NPR)
3000 Harry Hines Road
Dallas, TX 75021
TEL: (214) 740-9349
FAX: (214) 740-9369
EMAIL: kerafm@metronet.com