Fall 1995
Citzens ’96: Linking Civic Journalism Nationwide
By Dave Iverson
Executive Producer
Wisconsin Public Television
Citizens ’96 will be built around four national broadcasts on PBS (January, February, August, October). Each program will combine documentary reports with live, town hall discussions. Newspaper and broadcast reporting in participating communities will augment the TV specials. Here’s how it will work. The first broadcast is scheduled for the first Friday of the election year. Its theme is “a citizen’s state of the union.” In the weeks leading up to the program, neighborhood discussion groups will focus attention on how Americans see the country. Reports in newspapers and local broadcast outlets will draw attention to the process and the upcoming national broadcast special. Then on Jan. 5, PBS will broadcast a 90-minute special nationwide. The program will consist of reports produced by public stations around the country. They will explore how Americans assess their country as the last presidential campaign of the 20th Century begins. The stories will be based in part on focus group research commissioned by the Pew Center for Civic Journalism and conducted this fall by the Harwood Group. These findings will enable us to develop stories that go beyond the usual categories (crime, economy, welfare reform) and explore more deeply how people see the “real” state of the union. Interspersed between these documentary reports will be snapshots of conversations recorded in the coffee shops, bowling alleys and church basements across America. We believe these short conversational segments can provide intimate glimpses of what citizens across the country are thinking. Then in the second part of the program, we’ll conduct a live town hall discussion, where citizens will create their agenda for the 1996 campaign. In subsequent programs we hope to put citizens face to face with presidential candidates in an effort to define what Americans expect from their government, and what we, as citizens, expect from ourselves. Our second broadcast will be Feb. 9, on the eve of the primary season. This two-hour special, broadcast live nationwide from Des Moines, will bring citizens from six Iowa communities face to face with the presidential candidates. We may also broadcast a follow-up presidential forum one week later in New Hampshire. As in Iowa, we’re working with the civic journalism project in New Hampshire. Contributing to the Citizens ’96 project are Wisconsin Public Television; WETA Washington, D.C.; KTCA, St. Paul; University of North Carolina Center for Public Television; KERA, Dallas; Idaho Public Television; Iowa Public Television; KQED, San Francisco; and KCTS, Seattle. Each station will produce segments for the national specials and work with radio and newspaper outlets in civic journalism partnerships in their communities. Finally, we hope to involve NPR and a national print partner in the Citizens ’96 campaign. Will it work? Of course it will. After all, the project is funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Ford Foundation, PBS and the Corporation for Public Television. We don’t have a choice! In the meantime, send us ideas, comments and maalox.
On Jan. 5 at 9 p.m. (EST) something interesting will happen on public television. It’s called Citizens ’96, and it’s an attempt to link together civic journalism projects nationwide. This unique national partnership involves public television and radio stations, newspapers and on-line services all working together on the same project. We think it’s a real opportunity to build on the many citizen-based journalism projects developed the last few years.