What’s New With Pew Center Projects

What’s New With Pew Center Projects

While the paper has published letters from readers commenting on these initial reports, it plans an even fuller publication of responses, combined with invitations to call, write or e-mail the paper with feedback. Next up: the paper plans to hire a professional survey firm that will use the informal results to draft questions for a scientific survey of the community. In addition, the paper has future plans for kitchen-table discussions of the key issues.

Seattle, WA

Partners: The Seattle Times, KCTS public television and KUOW and KPLU public radio

Some 700 Puget Sound residents hosted “Pizza on the Porch” parties in early June to launch this year’s Front Porch forum project, Puget Sound 2020. Its aim is to find out what people in the Puget Sound region think it should look like in 20 years and what they think needs to change to make that happen. Thirteen reporters representing the partners attended parties and found that citizens touched on every subject affecting quality of life. Concerns included traffic and potholes, affordable housing and diversity, and teachers’ salaries.

Responses will be used to develop a region-wide public-opinion poll to be conducted later this summer. That survey, in turn, will help to guide a citizen assembly that is to meet later this year to discuss priorities, and, perhaps, solutions.

Aberdeen, WA

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

The Daily World launched its year-long “Changing Tides” projects with a 96-page “Perspectives” edition in April that gave a historical perspective to current issues. For July, three focus groups, randomly selected by geographical area, are meeting, facilitated by pollster Stuart Elway, to probe for various issues. The focus group input will be used to develop questions for a telephone survey in mid-August. Then, starting in September, town meetings will be held to target the issues that surface in the survey. By July, the paper also will have started a weekly feature, that will publish reader opinions on various topics.

Bronx, NY

Partners: Bronxnet Community Cable, The Bronx Journal, Lehman College (CUNY)

The first “Eyes on the Bronx” special, “The Changing Face of AIDS” in the Bronx, aired in May, using all four of the community cable network’s channels in an unprecedented way. The program focused on living with HIV and AIDS, the extent of the AIDS crisis in the Bronx, and local efforts to increase public awareness and prevention. Bronxnet interns worked on the program with students from the Multilingual Journalism Program at Lehman College. Bronxnet used its Channel 67 for a call-in program in English; a simultaneous Spanish translation was presented on Channel 69. There was an electronic video quilt remembering those who died of AIDS, and families and friends of AIDS victims had their written messages air on an electronic message board on Channel 68. Then Channel 70 aired contact information for AIDS service organizations in the Bronx. Off the air, bilingual English and Spanish educators and counselors staffed special phone lines and made referrals to appropriate organizations.

Meanwhile, Lehman’s Multilingual Journalism Program is planning to begin distributing this fall The Bronx Journal, a tabloid newspaper that will contain a pull-out section with news in 10 languages, from English to Korean.

Portland, ME

Partners: The Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram, WGME-TV (CBS)

The group of Sanford citizens who participated in the 1996 “Maine Citizens Campaign” are continuing to work together to prioritize issues they’d like to be involved in. As part of that effort, they have spent the first part of the year inviting experts on education, youth issues and the town government to address their group. In mid-June, they met to refine the issues. They have proposed that group members be trained as study circle facilitators so they can each facilitate a study group and expand their educational efforts townwide. They will hold a day-long workshop July 15 to refine their plans.

Meanwhile, WGME-TV, the CBS affiliate, has been working on a documentary, funded by the Pew Center, that would chronicle these citizens’ efforts at coming to citizenship.

Chicago, IL

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

With the controversial beating of a 13-year-old African-American youth in a park in the Bridgeport community, former home of Mayor Daley, The Chicago Reporter has tackled hate crimes as a topic. In the city, the Reporter identified about a half-dozen problem parks where hate crimes have occurred. Next, the Reporter turns its sights on hate crimes in the suburbs. After that, the partners hope to convene a community forum to discuss the problem.

Portland, OR

Partners: The Oregonian, Oregon Public Broadcasting

The newspaper was in the field in May with a survey of 733 people — 301 non-voters, 232 occasional voters and 200 frequent voters. Then three focus groups, one comprised of members from each of these groups, met in mid-June to add depth to the survey findings and to help the journalists frame future stories The early survey showed “similarities between occasional and frequent voters and those who don’t vote at all,” said Nena Baker, lead reporter on the project. For instance, there are a lot of similarities among the members of the three groups in terms of volunteering at school, being involved in church, and coaching a soccer league. “People who are not voting, that doesn’t mean that these people are disengaged from their communities,” she said. “We’d like to get at what are the things that are turning people off.” Plans are to begin publishing stories by late summer.

Long Beach, CA.

Partners: Long Beach Press-Telegram, Cablevision Industries Inc., Long Beach Community Partnership, Leadership Long Beach

The first stage of the Press-Telegram’s “Beyond 2000” project has begun, with about 25 reporters and columnists conducting three focus groups each — one with officials, one with less formal community leaders, and one with average residents in a variety of settings. With about a dozen people to be contacted in each group, the paper expects to have heard from about 900 people by the time the groups are completed. The journalists are asking open-ended questions aimed at learning what issues most concern people, what solutions they’d propose, and how officials, organizations and the Press-Telegram could help bring about the desired changes. A local opinion-research firm will compile the results, which will be used to formulate questions for a scientific survey in mid-July. The paper plans to start publishing the results later this year.

New Hampshire

Partners: New Hampshire Public Radio, Media One, The Telegraph of Nashua.

The New Hampshire partners launched the first of a series of citizens forums throughout the state on May 12 when about 90 citizens attended a “Citizens’ Exchange” with Gov. Jeanne Shaheen at the Nashua Public Library, hosted by New Hampshire Public Radio. The forum was taped and aired the next morning and again the next evening. It was also broadcast on Media One cable network. Another “Citizens Exchange” is planned for Hanover, N.H., with U.S. Rep. Charles Bass, a Republican, later this year.

Dallas, TX

Partners: KERA-FM, KERA-TV (PBS) The Arlington Morning News, The Dallas Morning News, The University of Texas, Arlington

With the first “civic inventory” of 900 residents of the city of Arlington complete, KERA radio featured the findings on the air. The inventory looks at who the leaders in communities are, the importance of incidental meetings among neighbors, the involvement of landlords vs. renters, and of absentee landlords. The inventory provides a good baseline for comparing the situation in individual neighborhoods. With the city officials having finished their focus on East Arlington, with ramped-up code enforcement one result, the spotlight turns next to the southeast part of the city, where growth and development are major issues.

Madison, WI

Partners: Wisconsin State Journal, Wisconsin Public Television, WISC-TV (CBS), Wisconsin Public Radio, Wood Communications Group

“We the People/Wisconsin,” in its efforts to involve more members of racial minority groups in its civic journalism initiatives, is planning a series of focus groups across the state to find more effective ways to tape into the state’s “silent minority.” The focus groups will try to determine how minorities get their news, seek to find out what issues are most relevant to them, and learn what will make “We the People” more credible to the state’s minority communities. In addition to the focus groups, the media partners will bolster contacts with publications and broadcast outlets that reach minority outlets. Future plans include distributing quarterly publications to minorities that summarize issues that are the focus the partners’ forums.