Pew Center’s New Projects

13 civic journalism efforts to receive funding support in the

coming year. The projects range from reporting on the ongoing

depression in the Southern Olympic Peninsula’s timber and

fishing industries, to defining the scope of unemployment and

underemployment in Daytona Beach, to chronicling efforts to

create a new governing compact between citizens and officials

of Arlington, Tex.

Several of the initiatives grapple with the

future of such communities as Myrtle Beach, S.C., Long Beach,

Calif., and the Puget Sound region.

This round of projects marks the fourth year

that the Pew Center has helped to support pioneering efforts

to engage readers, listeners and viewers in community issues

through journalism that seeks to involve them as participants

rather than as spectators. To date, the center has helped to

support 47 initiatives around the country.

Aberdeen,

Wash.

Partners: The Daily World of Aberdeen, Channel 20, TCI Cablevision

"The Changing Tide" will undertake

a year-long examination of the political, economic and

environmental forces that have changed the structure of life

on the Southern Olympic Peninsula. The media partners will

examine the death of the logging industry and the re-training

of thousands of loggers for lower-paying jobs, the ecological

cutbacks that have crippled a once bountiful fishing

industry, and the unprecedented bond default of the

Washington Public Power Supply System that mothballed a major

local project. In reporting on the big picture, the news

organizations will, though polling and focus groups, examine

attitudes and feelings and focus a conversation on solutions.

Long Beach, Calif.

Partners: Long Beach

Community Partnership, Leadership Long Beach

"Long Beach Beyond 2000–Unity in Our

Community" proposes to engage a multi-cultural

population in a blueprint for the future of a city built on

the Cold War defense establishment. Long Beach has been

economically battered. The Navy closed its base, once a home

port to 25,000 sailors and a shipyard that employed 7,000.

McDonnell Douglas Corp., the city’s largest employer, has cut

30,000 workers. Plans for a seaside Walt Disney theme park

have evaporated. And rioters have ransacked and torched

dozens of city businesses. The partners hope to engage

residents–and decision makers–in a discussion of what kind

of city they’d like to build to replace the one that went

away. The partners propose to add to a quality-of-life survey

taken last summer with deeper telephone surveys in the city’s

African-American, Latino, Asian and Cambodian communities.

Tampa, Fla.

Partners: The Weekly

Florida, Study Circles Resources Center

In building on its town

halls, the partners propose a "Civic Discourse"

project that would help them interpret better what they have

heard in these forums and bring that information into their

news coverage. They propose to convene three

"framing" conferences with citizens, experts and

the media to help the journalists report on the issue being

framed and help citizens discuss options for acting on the

issue.

Chicago, Ill.

Partners: The Chicago Reporter, WGN-TV cable superstation, WNUA-FM, WBEZ-FM

"Racial Change in

Chicago: A Case Study" proposes to bring the

investigative and computer-assisted journalism skills of The

Chicago Reporter, a leader in reporting on race and

poverty, to an examination of Wrightwood, a blue-collar

enclave on Chicago’s Southwest side. The partners would

compile demographic data and conduct interviews that would

serve as the foundation for a "neighborhood

agenda".

Bronx, N.Y.

Partners:

(The City University of New York)

"Eyes on the

Bronx" proposes to focus on a range of multi-cultural

issues in New York City’s largest borough. The community

cable network plans to work with journalism students at

Lehman College, which has the nation’s only accredited

multi-lingual journalism program, in using town meetings and

community forums to create in-depth coverage of diverse

communities often neglected by mainstream media. Issues to be

addressed include environmental concerns; crime and crime

prevention; the impact of local, national and international

politics on the Bronx; health; affordable housing; and such

legal issues as immigration and naturalization and ethnic

diversity.

Myrtle Beach,

SC.

Partners: The

Cox Broadcasting

"Boom Town Faces

its Future" will examine this resort’s efforts to deal

with a booming tourism industry, rampant development and an

astonishing population growth. Such growth has led to traffic

congestion, wetlands preservation and water-quality concerns,

and an increasingly diverse population. It has also led to

tensions between a development-minded business community and

residents who want to preserve a more tranquil quality of

life. Through polling, kitchen table conversations, and

public forums, the media partners will mine the issues and

explore solutions.

Dallas,Tex.

Partners: The

KERA-TV (PBS), The University of Texas, Arlington

Can Arlington, Texas,

create a new governing compact between city officials and

citizens? This community of 280,000, located between Dallas

and Fort Worth, is seeking to move from a "public

hearing" model of government to a more

"deliberative" model. Citizens in neighborhood

focus groups are being asked to engage in deeper

conversations about such basic civic concerns as personal

safety, fire prevention, economic development, schools, parks

and transportation–in hopes that citizens will become more

engaged and commit to greater participation. The media

partnershope to cover these efforts to forge a new

city-citizen relationship and to assess the progress through

citizen inventories and a forum of Arlington neighborhood

groups.

New Hampshire

Partners: New

Herald, UPI of New Hampshire

"The Voters’

Voice" proposes to move into a non-campaign phase to

give citizens a voice as their elected officials begin to

govern. The partners plan to identify critical issues on the

minds of New Hampshire citizens through polling and focus

groups and to report on them. The partners also plan to

follow up on how politicians deliver on their campaign

promises. Part of the project will involve the creation of

forums where citizens can directly engage politicians and

policy makers.

Seattle, Wash.

Partners: The

Seattle Times, KCTS (PBS), KPLU-FM, KUOW-FM

The "Front Porch

Forum" partners propose to move beyond their

well-established election efforts to launch a Puget Sound

visioning project. They hope to engage citizens in defining

an agenda for preserving the region’s much-envied quality of

life into the the next century. The partners will design a

process where a demographic microcosm of the region’s

citizens (perhaps up to 100) would form a "citizen

congress" that would deliberate and help create a public

voice on such big-picture issues as traffic congestion,

population growth, environmental hazards and the quality of

the drinking water.

Daytona Beach,

Fla.

Partners: The

Stetson University, National Civic League

The "Wanted:

Jobs" initiative will seek to define the scope of

unemployment and underemployment in a community with an

eroded manufacturing base and a decaying tourism

infrastructure. Workers in the local economy suffer from

chronic underemployment in the low-paying and highly seasonal

tourism industry. The partners plan to survey public

attitudes about the jobs environment and to report on key

elements of job creation, including the roles of the county’s

economic development agencies, of the schools, and of

government regulation. Then through community forms and

panels of experts, they will help the community explore its

job creation potential.

Madison, Wis.

Partners:

Wisconsin Public Radio, Wood Communications Group

"We the

People/Wisconsin" will launch "The Silent

Minority" initiative, an effort to broaden the reach of

this long-standing civic journalism effort to the state’s

black, Hispanic and other minority communities. The partners

will try to measure how minority groups get their news and to

learn what issues and concerns are most relevant to them.

They will convene focus groups in cities with large minority

populations and on Indian reservations. And they will look

for minority media partners in these communities.

Portland, Ore.

Partners: The

Oregonian, Oregon Public Broadcasting

About one million

citizens in Oregon don’t vote despite their eligibility. The

media partners propose to identify and profile the non-voting

Oregonian, to determine why these people don’t exercise one

of their most fundamental rights, and to find out what it

would take to bring these citizens back into the the system.

Portland, Me.

Partners: The

Public Radio

"Sanford Phase II:

The Search for Solutions." One year after about 50

citizens of Sanford, Me., began meeting to discuss issues

important to them in the 1996 elections, they are seeking to

continue their efforts–to enter a new phase, a

"solutions" phase. The news organizations hope to

cover these efforts from the frame of how people in an old

Yankee mill town rediscovered the power they had all along–a

voice that could get the attention of government leaders and

the togetherness that could make a difference in their

community. In chronicling this journey from disaffection to

empowerment, the news organizations will document the

citizens’ 1997 struggle to formulate solutions to specific

policy problems.