Geting Down and Dirty with the Critics

I appear before you this

morning resolved to be more contentious on the subject of

civic journalism.

A few weeks ago, at a meeting of the American

Society of Newspaper Editors’ Change Committee in Columbia,

S.C., Jay Rosen challenged editors to be more assertive in

defending civic journalism from the recent outbreak of

vitriolic, inflammatory, unfair, and mostly inaccurate

attacks from the journalism establishment.

For many reasons, some of us who advocate

civic journalism have opted in the past to let the criticism

slide. No sense getting into a fight with our profession’s

icons.

But there are several good reasons to step up

to the recent challenges. For one, leaving the field to the

critics hurts our ability to take civic journalism into the

nation’s journalism schools. For another, it makes it harder

to discuss the subject in our own newsrooms where young,

ambitious journalists look up to and emulate the people they

believe embody the profession’s noblest values.

For those reasons and others, it’s time to

get down and dirty with the critics.

The title of today’s session is "Civic

Journalism: An Elite Conspiracy or Better Journalism?"

From where I sit, it seems as if public

journalism is being victimized by the media elite. It is

striking to me, as I travel around the country talking on the

subject, that there is so much less debate over civic

journalism in the South, the Midwest (the crucible of civic

journalism) and even the Far West.

But the big guns from Washington, New York

and Boston — and the big gun wannabees — are the folks who

have targeted journalists like me, and like you.

Yet they are the journalists most removed

from newspapers like mine, from communities like mine.

They don’t read my paper. They never before

concerned themselves with my journalistic values or

practices. They don’t know or care about the problems facing

my community. Or yours.

And I don’t expect them to.

I don’t know how to define civic journalism

for a national newspaper like The New York Times, The

Wall Street Journal or The Washington Post. As

far as I’m concerned, how or even whether these concepts are

embraced by Times, Journal or Post

editors is their affair.

But I do care how civic journalism is

defined, defended and ultimately, embraced by editors of

community papers like my own.

Why

Not Experiment?

If I distill the message of the critics–not

the specific criticism but their essential message — it is

this: Traditional journalism, having been invented at some

time in the past, ought to be immune to change,

experimentation and innovation.

Challenge the orthodoxy, as defined by

Pulitzer-obsessed editors — many of whose papers are bleeding

circulation, by the way — and you somehow cross the line into

heresy.

But when did journalism become a fixed

science? The best American journalism, and the most

innovative and exciting journalism, always has come from

thoughtful editors viewing the room, as it were, from a

different place at the table and exercising their best

professional judgment. There is no heresy in that.

And why, as a journalist engaged in this

grand experiment, must I devalue the effort and the intent by

apologizing for elements of that experiment that have gone

awry? Some civic journalists have engaged in practices that

make me uncomfortable. But that doesn’t invalidate the

experiment.

How many investigative reporters have been

called upon to abandon their journalism because Michael

Gartner’s "Dateline" reporters blew up a truck?

Were the nation’s best feature writers sent to a corner in

shame when the Post’s Janet Cooke made up a story

out of whole cloth?

And did our profession survive both scandals?

Of course.

Just as all of us will survive the inevitable

lapses of some civic journalists.

Now, having taken off on our critics, I must

also point out that part of the problem is of our own making.

So much of civic journalism has been defined

in project terms or focused on fixed-time election efforts.

That makes it easier for the critics to separate civic

journalism from the journalistic mainstream. In the last

year, as we’ve struggled to understand how civic journalism

informs our every-day work at The Gazette, I’ve come

to see that our efforts are totally compatible with so-called

traditional journalism. In fact, civic journalism brings an

essential dimension to all that we do, another layer of

richness and complexity to everything from night cops to arts

and entertainment coverage.

Which leads me to this last point concerning

our own culpability. I think we have been too quick to seek

accord with some of our critics by agreeing that civic

journalism is "just good ol’ fashioned journalism"

freshened for the ’90s.

That’s a wonderful way to dismiss the most

provocative elements of the experiment. Implicit in that

patronizing and dismissive statement is the assumption that

all of us either have been doing just that sort of good old

journalism or are capable of doing it if we decide, someday,

maybe, that it’s important.

I think it’s important to use the language of

civic journalism in defending the experiment; it forces the

debate that is so necessary to move journalism forward.

I don’t see civic journalism as an elite

conspiracy. I see it as populist journalism, born in the

heartland, nurtured in the South and Midwest and growing out

of the hopes, fears, and dreams of journalists like

me — editors of small and mid-size newspapers struggling to

connect with their communities in more meaningful ways.

It isn’t heresy. And it doesn’t deserve the

hack criticism we’ve seen in recent weeks.