By Jennie Buckner
Editor
The Charlotte Observer
At The Observer, Public Journalism is simply this. When writing about public life, we have a goal: To provide readers the information they need to function as citizens.
Saturday, October 19, 1996, Page 19A – Until recently, I had not understood the depth of the American journalism establishment’s devotion to Emily Post, especially to a dictum from “Etiquette,” her 1922 book of rules for the socially uncertain. It is this: “To do exactly as your neighbors do is the only sensible rule.”The Charlotte Observer has been breaking that rule by practicing what has come to be called “public journalism.” The journalism establishment has reacted as Mrs. Post might have upon seeing a dinner companion spear a gherkin with a butter knife.
Take, for example, Jonathan Yardley of the Washington Post. In a column, reprinted alongside this one, he denounces us as purveyors of the “insidious, dangerous idea” of public journalism, which, he asserts, involves kowtowing to readers, evading our editorial responsibility and inserting opinion into news coverage. He decries our journalism as (if I may condense his bombast) a sinister, arrogant, elitist, self-serving attempt to orchestrate the public agenda for the sake of profit.
Whew!
He admits he hasn’t read any of our public journalism work.
What so alarms Mr. Yardley? Judging from his column, not anything we’re actually doing here at The Observer.
Mr. Yardley isn’t alone in his horror. The New York Timeshas used every opinion venue to denounce public journalism: editorial, op-ed page, Sunday magazine.
What is this sinister thing called “public journalism”?
First, a disclaimer. Labels often are imprecise. The label “Baptist,” for example, applies to both Jerry Falwell and Martin Luther King Jr. The label “public journalism” covers a lot of territory.
At The Observer, public journalism is simply this. When writing about public life, we have a goal: to provide readers the information they need to function as citizens. We expect politicians to address issues they consider important; but we also expect them to address issues the public considers important. We want to keep people informed about opportunities to become involved in public life — an important service, we think, in our fragmented society. We try to confine advocacy to the editorial page. On both opinion and news pages, we value citizen voices.
In a recent interview published in The Washingtonian, David Broder of the Washington Post described one problem we’re trying to address. In politics, he said, journalists often become so intent on reporting what goes on inside campaigns that they forget the campaigns belong “not to the candidates or their consultants or their pollsters, but to the public. We’re now correcting that by putting voters back at the center of the process. The more of that we do, the better.”
The Observer began its efforts to put voters at the center in 1992, in a project developed in partnership with the Poynter Institute, a center for journalism training based in St. Petersburg, Fla.
The first step involved surveying people to learn what issues they considered most important in the ’92 elections for president, governor and U.S. senator.
The results were not surprising — the economy and taxes, crime and drugs, health care, education and the environment.
Next came interviews with many poll respondents to help us develop questions that focused on what they wanted to know.
We did not go through that process because we think ordinary citizens ask better questions than journalists. We’ve found they sometimes ask different questions — questions that many journalists regard as “softball,” even though they elicit basic information that helps voters understand how elections may affect them.
Many candidates bypass those basics, focusing instead on hotter topics they hope will sway voters. And in reportage centered on personalities, insider politics, hot-button issues and who’s ahead, many newspapers neglect these basic issues, too.
Some critics contend our approach amounts to letting readers edit the newspaper. It doesn’t. We report what we think readers need to know, as well as what they want to know. We’re not about to abdicate that responsibility.
We feel we’re capable of being informed by polls without being slaves to them. Ignorance about citizen concerns is not bliss; it’s simply ignorance.
Our reader-focused reporting does not seem revolutionary to me. It is reformist, reminding us that it is the people’s interests journalists traditionally have sought to serve.
The Observer‘s ’92 project has inspired many similar efforts across the country. This year we went a step further. With 15 newspaper and broadcast partners, we created a statewide project called “Your Voice, Your Vote.” As in our ’92 project, it began with surveys — one for the spring primary and another for the general election — to find out what issues North Carolinians considered most important in races for governor and U.S. senator.
Again, the results were not surprising: crime and drugs, taxes and spending, affording health care, financial security, families and values, and education.
We developed questions on those issues and invited all 13 candidates for senator and governor to sit for three-hour-long interviews before both the primary and general election. All but one accepted.
The result: 12 in-depth articles and graphics explaining the issues and where candidates stand. Each newspaper contributed stories, available for use by the others.
Why partner? There’s little chance each media organization could have accomplished this on its own. For one thing, it’s unlikely all the candidates would have found time for such in-depth interviews with every media outlet.
The joint “Your Voice, Your Vote” project is just part of our overall election coverage. In addition, The Observer reports on the campaigns (on the stump and on television), fund-raising, candidate profiles and a variety of issues: foreign policy, the deficit, corporate welfare, etc.
As chronic violators of Mrs. Post’s dictum, we expect criticism. But I have been astonished by the stark ignorance of much of the criticism of public journalism. I am particularly astonished by the number of journalists who seem offended by the suggestion that they might learn something valuable by listening to citizens.
I have reached a troubling conclusion: that some members of the journalism establishment are so alarmed by anything called “public journalism” that they presume anyone associated with it is guilty of corrupting the craft — no proof necessary.
That was the prevailing ethic of the Grand Inquisition. It seems to be the ethic of a large part of the American journalism establishment, too.