Civic Journalism: Experimenting with Hand-Offs

• It’s best to capitalize on where the passion lies in the community.

• There are clear call-to-action moments and you often have only one shot to capture that momentum.

• There has to be community, not newspaper, ownership of the issue.

• Citizens, if invited, will get involved if they sense they can help make a difference.

“It was an incredible journey into the heart of a democracy and what it means to be an engaged citizen and what it means to be an engaged newspaper,” said Jessica Tomlinson, community coordinator for The Portland Newspapers and its “Maine Citizens Campaign.”

Binghamton, NY

The Press & Sun-Bulletin embarked on covering the aftermath of corporate downsizing with its “Facing our Future” project and a televised call-to-action town meeting for 300. Citizens were then invited to join 10 “action teams” to come up with ideas and solutions for issues that surfaced in a community survey.

About 200 people responded; two years, 120 stories and scores of team meetings later, 60 were still active. The project was renamed “Building our Future,” and the Broome County Chamber of Commerce is ready to release a community strategic plan, developed from the action team ideas.

Already, various teams have spearheaded consolidation of the region’s 911-system, the planting of community gardens, renovation of the airport and the creation of a tourism advisory board. They are working on making Route 17 an interstate highway and developing a youth incubator for business ideas and a teen center.

The youth action team has produced with WBNG-TV, the local CBS affiliate, a television show, “Generation Y,” for young people. The initiatives convinced William Turner, head of the youth action team, to stay in the community to continue working on the ideas.

The newspaper, meanwhile, has launched a regular column written by senior citizens.

Interestingly, noted editor Marty Steffens, “The community has adopted the action-team model of citizen engagement.”

When a local hospital wanted to do some neighborhood outreach, it created action teams. NYPENN, a local health systems agency, used action teams for a health futures conference. And United Way is planning to use 10 action teams to explore problems and solutions for children’s issues.

“The hand-off was difficult,” said Steffens. “Some of the solutions fell under traditional government agencies. There had been a lot of anger in the community, so when you had to turn back to traditional groups [to carry out ideas], it was awkward. People were saying: ‘You failed us, you didn’t do the job.’ “But now the town’s power structure has adopted the grassroots ideas and are carrying them forward.

Peoria, IL

The Journal Star in Peoria wrapped up its “Leadership Challenge” project, probing the city’s declining leadership pool, after 70 stories, five mail surveys, and four community roundtable discussions.

A town meeting attended by 200 generated a list of 147 ideas. Then Illinois Central College hosted a three-day Neighborhood Summit, which drew 432 people the first night, 350 the second and 250 the third. The meeting would probably not have happened without the Community Change funding, said the project’s leaders.

“I can’t tell you what a pivotal event that was,” said George Kreiss, Executive Director of the Peoria Area Community Foundation.

As a result, and with the cooperation of Peoria’s new mayor, a Neighborhood Commission was given $1.2 million in city funds, with the mandate to spend it where it was needed.

A Neighborhood College was created to teach residents such things as resolving conflict and navigating City Hall. “We expected 20 people to sign up; we took 40 and we have a waiting list,” said Dr. Barbara Hartnett, of the ICC’s Center for Nonprofit Excellence.

In the works is a handbook of model corporate policies for employee volunteerism.

“I went into the project knowing I wanted to hand it off,” said managing editor Jack Brimeyer and, from the start, he invited alums of a local leadership group to get involved. “I didn’t know when the hand-off would be and to whom we would hand it off.”

“After investing a year of my life, a year of my newspaper’s life, and probably $100,000 in newsprint and labor,” Brimeyer said, he wanted more than a series that expired like a “dead dog.”

“Our options would have been to cajole some group to pick up the ball and run. That’s an uncomfortable role for an editor to play.”

Portland, ME

The Portland Press Herald convened a group of about 40 residents of the old mill town of Sanford during 1996 to discuss election issues. But when the year ended, the citizens wanted to continue meeting and focus on community issues.

In their second year, they decided to meet “to talk politics, educate ourselves and do something.” They identified education, youth issues and local government as their areas of interest and invited community leaders and elected officials to talk about these concerns with the idea of charting a future course of action.

Their personal journey was chronicled in a WGME-TV 30-minute documentary aired in November 1997. Many said the experience of talking and listening to their neighbors was vastly helpful in deliberating the issues. Two other documentaries on the citizens’ experience were produced for journalism schools and elementary and secondary schools.

By the start of the third year, some of the citizens had gotten elected to the town’s Warrant Committee, and with the help of the Maine Roundtable Center, they prepared discussion guides with the intent of launching community wide study circles on “How to Create a Better Sanford.”

But the group, their numbers reduced by normal attrition and people leaving the area, are now exploring some less daunting goals, including using the material gathered for the study circles for church group discussions or creating a quarterly “town forum” to discuss issues.

Coordinator Tomlinson saw the benefit to the newspaper of “covering citizens when they’re not in crisis.”

Nevertheless, she said, “The newspaper was the right tool to start this project, but it is not the right tool for where it’s gone.”

“What a valuable resource media can be for logistics, organizing meetings, getting moderators, distributing agendas,” said Paul Williams, a science teacher who stuck with the project. “That was the hardest thing to get used to — not having it organized. I think that’s why so many people dropped out. It’s now hard work. You can’t just opinionate.”

Binghamton coordinator Michelle Berry saw benefits to continuing the momentum of the civic journalism efforts to both the citizens and the media. “Participants learned more about how to use the media and the media learned more about our own citizens and who were reliable sources,” she said.