Spring 1998
What’s Happening in Pew Projects
With crime down and the economy healthy, citizen concern is spread over a wider field of issues, said Dennis Foley, politics editor at the Orange County Register. “I’m looking for the connections between the issues.” The media partners have committed to coordinating “Election Connection” coverage every two weeks. A second poll is planned for the fall to probe for any shifts in people’s concerns. To follow up, the newspaper has scheduled a Civic Fair on March 28 at Coastal Carolina University to bring together civic groups and elected officials. The paper is publishing, every Sunday until then, updates with progress on the issues. Readers are also registering their views in a weekly “Speaking Out” column, which is being promoted by the cable station. The paper plans to do another survey at the fair to supply feedback on whether citizen opinions have changed since the initial survey. The paper has also begun running “To Do” lists to keep track of what elected officials have promised to do. “What I think was really worthwhile was what our reporters learned about what people cared about, in ways that they really didn’t know before,” said executive city editor Jim Robinson. “The big issues were not really a surprise. But our people learned a great deal about open-ended questioning. They really went out (to the focus groups) with a blank slate.” The paper is now producing a two-hour television show on the initiative with the local community access cable company. Is population growth inevitable? And is it always good? These are some core questions that will be examined in this year’s Front Porch Forum coverage. The questions grew directly out of 1997 efforts to learn what issues concern Puget Sound region citizens the most. Virtually every problem they defined could be linked to the effects of the region’s rapid growth. This year the media partners will explore issues such as whether growth pays its own way and whether it should. What role government economic development incentives play in fueling expansion? What effect does immigration have? The series will profile the people and places that illustrate this issue. How have other cities dealt with rapid growth — from no growth to slow-growth policies — their successes and failures. The partners are also exploring new ways to partner, for example, having print reporters doing radio and television segments. They also plan to develop methods for citizen involvement that can occur as each report on this issue unfolds. A Winter Poll, conducted by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center for New Hampshire Public Radio and UPI, led to stories on citizen attitudes toward education funding alternatives, education quality, prison overcrowding and public safety. The Supreme Court recently ruled unconstitutional the state’s reliance on property taxes to fund education. The media partners are doing citizen forums, called “Citizen Exchanges,” to continue the dialogue. NHPR airs the forums on its morning call-in program, the Union Leader covers the gatherings, and Media- One broadcasts the forums on its community access cable channel around the state. The Josiah Bartlett Center supplies information packets to those attending. The We the People/Wisconsin partnership is producing an April 3 “Race and Culture” town-hall program, the second of a five-part series devoted to the 150th anniversary of Wisconsin’s statehood. The year-long project is examining through reporting and town hall meetings the four pillars of human experience — family, race and culture, using the land and working — since Wisconsin became the nation’s 30th state. The topics are being framed from both an historical and present-day perspective — answering questions about “who we are as a people, how we got to this point in our history, and where we want to go from here,” said project coordinator Deborah Still. The goal is to help develop a citizen’s agenda for next year’s U.S. Senate and gubernatorial races. “Race and Culture,” to air statewide from 7 to 8 p.m., will examine the obstacles Wisconsin citizens face in having an honest conversation about race. A two-hour town hall meeting in Milwaukee will precede the broadcast. Several minority media organizations and other news organizations around the state are participating in the initiative. Coinciding with “Race and Culture” are focus groups to elicit how minority citizens get their news and how We the People/Wisconsin can become more involved in reaching minority citizens and reconnecting them with public life. Project Change will then help set up focus groups, with plans for a town hall meeting in May at the Chamizal National Memorial to help focus the community on solutions and directions for involvement. The poll was developed with the input of a community panel of academic and civic leaders who met almost weekly for most of December and January. The newspaper had to overcome a great deal of skepticism from the participants. But the result was a much better poll, said metro editor Robert Moore. For one thing, questions were framed in the positive rather the negative. Instead of asking: Do you favor ending bi-lingual education, we asked: Do you support it? “I’ve been doing survey designs for years,” said Moore, “and it’s always been a handful of journalists sitting around a table wondering what questions we should ask.” The Weekly Planet news magazine launched a quarterly paper to report on civic affairs. Called Public Life, the free tabloid carried stories about communities, policy and philanthropy. It contained listings from civic associations, non-profit groups and government agencies, sprinkled with government and economic data. Founder Ben Eason said the new venture is aimed at his baby boomer audience, who have grown up and joined corporate boards and volunteered at civic groups.
Los Angeles, CA
Partners: The Orange County Register, the Riverside Press-Enterprise, LA Opinion, KCBS, KCET-TV (PBS), KCRW-FM in Santa Monica, KPCC-FM in Pasadena, Orange County NewsChannel.
The Southern California Voice of the Voter media coalition has hired a coordinator for “The Election Connection” project and will launch coverage on March 16 with poll results. Their issues-based poll focused on education, including subjects surfacing in upcoming ballot measures. For instance, respondents were asked whether they agree with such proposals as ending bilingual education or capping school administrative costs. The survey asked what issues voters wanted U.S. Senate and gubernatorial candidates to address. And it probed for responses to the open-ended question of what people would like from the media to help them, as citizens, make better decisions.
Myrtle Beach, SC
Partners: The Sun News, Time-Warner Cable
As part of its “Living in a Boom Town” project citizens met in focus groups last fall to probe key areas of concern pinpointed in an earlier survey, including roads, growth and development, and the responsiveness of elected officials.
Long Beach, CA
Partners: Long Beach Press-Telegram, Long Beach Community Partnership, Leadership Long Beach
After a poll and more than 75 focus groups — three each held by 25 reporters and columnists — “Long Beach 2000: The Future of our Community” ran as an eight-day series in late fall. Issues that surfaced as community concerns were safety, education, race relations, immigration, neighborhoods and volunteering. Stories ran with listings of agencies that readers could contact and a sidebar on a person who was actually doing something about the issue.
Seattle, WA
Partners: The Seattle Times, KCTS public television, and KUOW and KPLU public radio
New Hampshire
Partners: New Hampshire Public Radio, UPI of New Hampshire, The Union Leader, MediaOne and the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy
Madison, WI
Partners: Wisconsin State Journal, WISC-TV (CBS), Wisconsin Public Television, Wisconsin Public Radio, Wood Communications Group
Bronx, NY
Partners: BronxNet, the Multi-Lingual Journalism Program of Lehman College
The community access cable station and students in Lehman College’s Multi-Lingual Journalism Program are starting dry runs of their first multi-lingual newscast — in Italian and Japanese. The program will provide news of those ethnic communities in the Bronx as well as national and international news of interest to Italian and Japanese Bronx residents. The plan is to run the program on prime time during the weekend.Meanwhile, strong demand in the public schools for copies of the newly launched Bronx Journal, with its multi-lingual pull-out section, has the new tabloid launching a Newspaper in Education program.
El Paso, TX
Partners: The El Paso Times, KVIA-TV (ABC), Project Change, University of Texas, El Paso Holocaust Museum, National Park Service
The newspaper went into the field in mid-February with a 20-minute poll probing Anglo-Hispanic relations. All the interviewers spoke both Spanish and English. The results are due by the end of March, when reporting will start.
San Francisco, CA
Partners: San Francisco Chronicle, KQED-FM (NPR), KRON-TV (NBC)
After 18 months, five public forums attended by 1,500 people, and more than 1,000 e-mails, the “Unlock the Gridlock” initiative ended. The Chronicle compiled a list of 10 recommendations on which most of the citizens at the forums agreed and seven other ideas for which no consensus existed. “When we began the project, we figured there would be more interest in highways than public transit, because most people drive to work,” said regional editor Vlae Kershner. “It hasn’t turned out that way. Our audiences have been far more interested in discussing public transit systems in the hope of making them a full-fledged alternative to the automobile.” One aftermath in the newspaper, the Monday “Commuter Chronicles” column is continuing.
Idaho Falls, ID
Partners: The Idaho Statesman, The Idaho Falls Post Register, The Lewiston Morning Tribune, The Idaho Spokesman-Review, Idaho Educational Public Television, KTVB (NBC, Boise), KIFI-Idaho8 (ABC, Idaho Falls)
The media coalition’s reports on runaway corrections spending has prompted the state legislature to examine some sentencing reform proposals, for instance making misdemeanors of some felonies such as writing bad checks and driving on a suspended license. Sentencing commissions to help reduce costs are also being explored. The series compared the rise in prisons spending with the shrinkage in higher education spending. “The tide has definitely turned,” said Dennis Joyce, the Idaho Statesman’s assistant managing editor. “We don’t hear anybody now talking about the law and order state, lock ’em up.”
Chicago, IL
Partners: The Chicago Reporter, WBEZ public radio
The Reporter is tackling its report on Wrightwood with database reporting plus a couple of community meetings in March to explore the impact of race and poverty on a neighborhood undergoing racial and economic change. Wrightwood is a blue-collar neighborhood on Chicago’s Southwest Side. The Reporter is planning to follow up publication in April with a town hall meeting to help residents continue the conversation and work on a community agenda.
Tampa, FL
Partners: The Weekly Planet, Speak Up Tampa Bay, University of South Florida, Study Circles Resources Center
Livelyhood
Partners: The Working Group, KQED-TV, public radio’s “Marketplace”
The “Livelyhood” series of four one-hour specials on the nature of work in America was launched on PBS on Nov. 21. The program, “Shift Change,” won good reviews. The next installment is now scheduled to air May 29 with the remaining two, on Sept. 4 and Jan. 8, 1999. Plans are underway to have a regional dialogue in Los Angeles connected with the January broadcast.
Aberdeen, WA
Partners: The Daily World, Channel 20 and TCI Cablevision
The Daily World is moving into the last major survey of its “Changing Tides” project to continue assessing priorities for the region’s residents and to ask officials if the public’s expectations are realistic.
A town hall meeting is planned for early May, when citizens can engage in some electronic voting and build a community agenda. More town hall meetings and surveys are planned for surrounding towns.
Including community members in the discussion about the future of the region “has changed our coverage a bit,” said Matt Hufman, project leader. “People are asking more big-picture kinds of questions.”