Summer 2000
Extra: Getting a Handle on Civic Journalism
By Sharon Hartin Iorio
Wichita State University
How is civic journalism being conveyed visually by designers and photographers? And how is civic journalism being written about?
These two questions are the focus of academic studies that will share top research honors this year, awarded by the Civic Journalism Interest Group of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.
Kathryn Campbell, a professor of journalism at Southern Oregon University, earned the Top Faculty award in the annual research competition for her multi-year review of books and articles on civic journalism.
The award for Top Student Paper goes to Renita Coleman, a graduate student at the University of Missouri, for her in-depth interviews with 18 visual journalists at U.S. newspapers.
Both awards will be presented in August at the AEJMC annual meeting in Phoenix. The submissions were generated by a national call for papers and judged in blind-refereed review by journalism faculty from U.S. colleges and universities.
Coleman believed that visual journalists were being left out of the conversation on civic journalism. For that reason, she spent many hours talking with newspaper photographers and designers.
Her study, “Civic Journalism on the Right Side of the Brain,” shows how photographers and graphic designers incorporate the principles of civic journalism in their work.
The first-person accounts reveal how the journalists see their challenge to put a “human face” on civic journalism stories that appear abstract and conceptual to them and the techniques they use to meet the challenge.
To earn the top faculty award, Campbell looked at more than 400 books, articles, reports and web sites with some connection to civic journalism.
Her research showed nearly all of the materials were positive in nature and that the negative work was not particularly well-argued or well-informed.
“Engaging the Literature: A Civic Approach” calls for more constructive criticism and identifies seven major ways civic journalism is discussed.
The categories are 1) the forebearers of civic journalism; 2) its history; 3) media practice, democracy and public life; 4) the links between academic research in civic journalism and professional practice; 5) the assessment of civic journalism efforts; 6) how to do and how to teach civic journalism, and 7) work that pairs civic journalism with community development.
Campbell argues that theorizing about civic journalism needs to “move out and beyond its original and sustaining ideas.” She suggests that the study of community-enhancing endeavors, such as community policing, neighborhood organizing, and public conflict resolution, be paired with civic journalism work.