Teaching Civic Journalism

the hotel meeting room were taken long before Professors Jay

Rosen and Jim Carey, editors Buzz Merritt and Rem Reider, and

reporter Colette Jenkins moved toward their seats for the

panel on civic journalism.

As journalism

educators continued streaming in, a couple of people trudged

steadily back and forth to other meeting rooms, stealing

empty chairs to add row after row to the back of the growing

crowd.

By the time the

discussion began, people were packed in, wall to wall, and a

cluster of faces peered in from the doorway.

It was the second

day of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass

Communication’s 1995 convention in Washington, D.C., and one

thing was clear: Many people who teach journalism at America’s

universities and colleges wanted to know more about civic

journalism.

Back then, the

few who covered the subject in class usually just added

articles about civic journalism to their reading lists, or

had students study examples of news organizations’ pioneering

efforts.

With the

publication of Art Charity’s book "Doing Public

Journalism" and Buzz Merritt’s "Public Journalism

and Public Life" in 1995, and Jay Rosen’s "Getting

the Connections Right" in 1996, professors had texts to

add.

Usually, these

materials were used in upper-level courses such as advanced

reporting or media management.

These days,

however, many more professors are covering the subject, in

courses ranging from basic news writing to audience research.

They’re also exploring a much broader range of teaching

techniques.

Here is just a

sampling:

H Dave Boeyink at

Indiana University had his students discuss five ways of

thinking about journalists’ relationship to their community:

as entertainers, objective conduits, watchdogs, advocates, or

civic journalists. The class was then divided into teams, and

each team developed a news coverage plan that fit one of

those philosophies, as a way of exploring how coverage is

influenced by each of those roles.

"The aim of

the exercise is not to demonstrate the superiority of civic

journalism. Rather, it is to let people see how critical the

relationship of media and society is to the development of

news coverage," Boeyink says. "In that context,

they get to see for themselves the values–and the

problems–of civic journalism."

Seeing

the Lines

H Jill Swenson at

Ithaca College had students in her "Issues and the

News" class actively explore what happens when

journalists "cross the line" between observation

and involvement. Each student was required to choose an issue

that he would monitor and report on throughout the semester.

They were also required to get personally involved in making

a difference with respect to that issue.

A student who

chose to cover hunger, for instance, did a radio documentary

about food stamp program reductions and ran a canned food

drive. Her interaction with people who benefited from the

food drive gave her both sources who trusted her because they

felt she cared as well as insights into food stamp

recipients’ ideas for welfare reform. "The calls for

reform by those inside the system have been completely missed

by the public," Swenson says.

Students then

wrote reflective essays about the consequences of crossing

the line. These essays showed that getting involved had

definite advantages–including redeeming journalism in the

eyes of their sources–and posed challenges that required

students to do lots of "internal grappling,"

Swenson says. "When you get close to those sources, it’s

not as clean and neat."

Students also

found a line that lies beyond the one they crossed–the

dividing line of motivation. "With business and

government elites, the motivation for reporters crossing the

line is to either help the source or to help

themselves," Swenson said. "With the line-crossing

that occurs in public journalism, the motivation is to help

the public, and there is an enormous difference. The same

kinds of conflicts just did not arise."

H Jackie Farnan’s

students at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, N.Y., did

an extensive public listening project–including interviews,

a forum and an e-mail exchange–in their first foray into

civic journalism. The goal was to identify issues important

to the student body.

The biggest

challenge was for each student to explore new ways of

interviewing five other students. "They felt that they

should steer or shape the interview, and that meant asking

focused and direct questions," Farnan says. "I

said, ‘Just back off a little bit. We are engaged in a

different enterprise–let go of control and understand that

listening is different than traditional interviewing.

Seeing

Patterns

"For a while

they were at sea, and things seemed very nebulous and

unconnected until we got enough information that they could

see a pattern." The pattern was that some seemingly

unrelated campus concerns–diversity, racism, vandalism, and

the professionalism of campus security officers–were all

part of what students saw as a larger issue: the erosion of

mutual respect on campus. The students then wrote a cluster

of stories about those concerns, tying each to the respect

issue.

Several

professors–including Barbara Zang at the University of

Missouri, Mike Killenberg at the University of South Florida

and Sharon Hartin Iorio at Wichita State University–have

sent students out into the surrounding community to talk to

citizens.

For years, Zang

has had basic news writing students do "beat

reports" in her beginning news writing course, then

develop the material they gather into in-depth, issue-based

feature stories. Before the recent presidential election,

Killenberg had students interview citizens about whom they

planned to vote for and what issues were important to them.

Graduate student Eric Eyre then wrote an in-depth story for

the St. Petersburg Times about their findings.

Sharon Hartin Iorio had her students do in-depth interviews

with citizens about election-related concerns this fall as

part of a research course about the emerging field of

interactive audience studies.

Cheryl Gibbs

in Richmond, Ind.