Summer 1996
Dinner Keynote Speaker
Civic Journalism: Part of the Solution
Matthew V. Storin
Editor, The Boston Globe
Still, I wonder if they are in the best position to judge what the editors in Wichita, Sioux Falls, Charlotte, Kansas City and elsewhere deem as their proper role in their communities.
We are here to celebrate and examine what has come to be known as civic journalism or public journalism. I don’t know that I am comfortable calling any of what I do or my newspaper does anything but plain old journalism.
I would like to talk to you about my newspaper’s experiences with this movement — the presidential primary project in Derry, N.H., called “The People’s Voice” — and then take a brief look at some of the criticism aimed at other, perhaps more ambitious efforts.
. . . I recall a discussion I had with our executive editor, Helen Donovan, last November about the early installments of “The People’s Voice.” We thought they were probably too much, too soon and sometimes a bit dull. But that was long before Pat Buchanan’s success made Cassandras out of us.
Patrick Cox, a reporter at our radio partner, WBUR-FM, tells of going to a discussion group of “The People’s Voice” participants in Derry in mid-November: “I didn’t think Buchanan was going to be a player in this election until I stepped into that room and listened to people talk for two hours. After that, I knew I needed to do a story on him.”
WBUR tried to pitch NPR in Washington on a Buchanan story but was unsuccessful. According to Sam Fleming, WBUR news director, “Since the election, every time I talk to them, they apologize for not taking it and admit they made a big mistake.”
In assessing our “People’s Voice” project I am indebted to Tara Murphy, who is about to receive her masters’ degree from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. She was “The People’s Voice” coordinator for WBUR. Shortly before the New Hampshire primary, she conducted three focus groups of New Hampshire voters and some Massachusetts residents as well to get their reactions to “The People’s Voice” project.
I can report that these people were far more interested in “People’s Voice” stories than in The Globe’straditional political coverage.
I was struck particularly by their reactions to stories of the town meetings in which Derry residents got to question candidates directly. Essentially, these voters said they loved those stories because, instead of reporters, they involved “people like us.”
The sense of class distinction between journalists and themselves was striking and alarming. Asked about the reporters doing traditional stories, one woman from Nashua said, “What do they know about us?”
Tara Murphy’s research showed a hunger among these people for straight answers to straight questions on issues — the type of journalism that some of us might find, and in my case occasionally did find, unimaginative if not downright dull.
As for what didn’t work, we all felt a disappointment at not getting the candidates to participate more fully. Only five candidates agreed to meet with our citizens groups. And only Dick Lugar, Bob Dornan, and Al Keyes agreed to appear on the televised forum just before the primary.
Imagine a TV show with Lugar, Dornan, and Keyes. I know I couldn’t. But I tuned in and found it quite interesting. Why? Because it was genuine, civilized and focused on what voters wanted to hear. It was almost the anti-campaign, given what campaigns have become in the 1990s.
The Globeis committed to doing “The People’s Voice” again. We did it during the U.S. Senate race of Ted Kennedy and Mitt Romney in 1994 and can hardly wait to do it again for the Kerry-Weld race this year.
Now I’d like to say just a few words about the criticisms that have been leveled broadside against public journalism.
For many years, newspapers like the Wichita Eagle, and Argus Leader in Sioux Falls, and The Charlotte Observerhave been able to practice their brand of journalism without any particular note from the senior editors of The Washington Postor The New York Times. It’s still not entirely clear to me why the efforts of those papers to commit public journalism somehow shook the editors in Washington and New York out of their indifference, but somehow it did.
Now even if they didn’t in their infinite wisdom purchase The Boston Globe, I would say the people at The New York Timespublish perhaps the best newspaper the world has ever known. Matter of fact, I call Punch about once a week to tell him just that. I tell him that it requires every bit of his time to keep The Timesat that level, hoping he won’t give any thought to our little paper up in the provincial capital of New England.
The Washington Postis another fine newspaper, which, more than most, has a record of standing strongly independent of attempts by high government officials to pressure them on what to report or not report. Not an easy task in a government town.
The Timeshas a rarefied readership (a median income of about $65,000 for its readers.) It’s so rarefied that I once calculated that if The Globe’spenetration rate in the Boston metro area was the same as theirs in the New York area, our circulation would be 170,000 instead of nearly 500,000. The Postis a newspaper built on exceptional coverage of government and politics in a town where many folks care for little else. Both of these newspapers have very different challenges than the rest of us.
As good as these newspapers are, I think it hurts our business when we only look to those rather unusual publications with their specialized audiences and let them influence what flies for the rest of us.
In the eyes of some critics in those two cities, public journalism is the most dangerous thing to hit our business since establishment papers began quoting The National Enquirer.
Now of course, I don’t challenge their right to offer the criticism. I just don’t think everyone should jump off a bridge just because two mammoth 18-wheelers are rolling over it at the same time. I think with some possible exceptions, to which I’ll return, we editors in the hinterlands should do whatever we think is best to reach out to apathetic citizens and show them a way to get better control over the problems in our communities.
The one caution flag that I would raise is that I think editors should think long and hard before they undertake a project where it might be argued they are replacing the function of their duly elected public leaders.
I do think it is more than advisable for newspapers to bring citizens together and listen to what they have to say. We sponsor debates of office seekers, so why not sponsor discussions by voters? Whether a paper wants to commit to following the consensus, should there be one from those meetings, is an option that we might not all embrace. But I think getting folks out from in front of the TV one night and getting them to talk about the problems and dreams of their community is a terrific thing.
In Charlotte, The Observer put enormous pressure on public officials and then held them accountable. Jennie Buckner, the editor, has said the project proves “what a newspaper could do to combat hopelessness — without abandoning our role as an impartial auditor of the community.” I’m in total agreement with that goal as Jennie stated it.
The Kansas City Star series, “Raising Kansas City,” was an exceptional effort at doing what I would call constructive journalism, giving its readers helpful information about core values that can be used in bringing up the young people of that community. Maybe some found it patronizing. I don’t know. I found most of it inspirational. So much for the series itself. Some of the follow-up, as outlined in a letter accompanying the entry in the Batten Award competition, left me less enthused. It appears that The Starhas involved itself in helping form the curricula for both the high schools and elementary schools of Kansas City. I don’t know enough about what The Staris precisely doing to say that crosses a line, but it does raise questions. As I said earlier, I worry about when a newspaper takes over the function of public officials and their appointees.
But my hesitation to critique this involvement in Kansas City is based on more than just inadequate knowledge. I think that a newspaper that wants to improve its city’s schools deserves the benefit of the doubt as long as we can extend it. Many of us have aggressively covered the problems in our urban schools and resulting improvements are awfully hard to find. My caution is whether The Starcan maintain what Jennie Buckner called the role of “impartial auditor.” When a newspaper sacrifices even a bit of that, it begins to lose its purpose.
David Broder, the journalist that I probably have most admired in my career, delivered a speech on public journalism at Stanford University recently in which he said, “Politicians should and will be constant critics of the press, but they shouldn’t be running the press. And media ought to be constant critics of pols and public officials, but they should not attempt to substitute for those officials.”
I agree with that.
David also said, “Agendas are still best set in public arenas, not on news pages or editorial pages.” I don’t entirely agree with that.
Maybe it depends on how you define the words. First of all, I think David’s newspaper and virtually every other newspaper does — at times — try to set their community’s agenda by what they cover and how they play certain stories. Some of us — in less restrained moments — have even been known to brag about this function. Of course, it’s up to the public officials to actually carry out the agenda.
Second, I don’t know what institution in a community is better equipped than a newspaper to at least lay out an agenda, so long as it is not dictating solutions or campaigning unfairly. Agendas are okay so long as they do not taint the truth and the free flow of information that readers need.
Laying out, if not setting an agenda, with a clear role for the public is probably a pretty good definition of what public journalism is all about. I think it deserves support. I think the Pew Charitable Trusts deserve credit for helping give that support and honoring the ideas of Jim Batten.
Do we need to keep a close watch on how public journalism evolves? Of course. But I think people in our business have to show a little faith in the wisdom of editors across the country who have a feel for their communities and their needs.
The newspaper as we know it is under strain and the exact nature of its future is not clear. But it is a precious asset for its community. I have often said that if newspapers are headed for extinction, as some suggest, then the world is just going to have to reinvent something awfully similar. It is hard to see how you can have a community without one.
Part of what will prevent our having to go through such turmoil is having a readership and a citizenship that appreciates what a crucial role newspapers play.
In that effort, public journalism may have pitfalls, but I have no doubt it is far more a part of the solution than a part of the problem.