Mapping Seminars Peel Back Layers of Civic Life

Mapping Seminars Peel Back Layers of Civic Life

After only three months, journalists taking part in The Harwood Civic Mapping Seminars are making some discoveries.

For one, they are finding that their initial views of the communities they’ve targeted are often far different than how these communities see themselves.

And within the communities, journalists are finding that people in the “official realm,” the realm most heavily covered, approach issues much differently from those in deeper, less official layers of civic life.

“When I was first introduced to the concepts of civic mapping, I was very put off by what seemed like a lot of empty jargon to me. It felt as if I was in a blizzard of connectors, catalysts, essences, frames,” said Rebecca Allen, who, as Managing Editor, is leading civic mapping efforts at The Orange County Register.

“But I learned as we studied the concepts that they can be very helpful for journalists. I came to this realization when I started seeing stories get better. For example, the idea of connectors (people who connect and spread ideas and norms among various organizations or groups) in the community and catalysts (“unofficial experts” who spark change) is useful.

“For years, we talked about officials and ‘real people’ but reporters were reluctant to quote anyone without a title,” Allen said. “Now it seems very clear that there are many people with vast amounts of knowledge and expertise on their neighborhoods or on an issue who should be in stories to help the reader understand and work through the issues.”

Allen has joined journalists from five newspapers and one television station who have been taking part since March in The Harwood Civic Mapping Seminars, held with support from the Pew Center. The goal is to improve their ability to tap into and report on their communities by literally mapping areas and examining how, as journalists, they engage and interview people.

“Tapping your community starts with a mind-set shift,” explains Richard C. Harwood, president and founder of The Harwood Institute. “Many journalists have come to see themselves as separate from their communities – there to observe and report.

“Journalists must challenge themselves to be part of their community, without losing their journalistic independence. This shift will help journalists develop a deep understanding of their communities, which, in turn, enables reporters, editors, producers to move beyond pre-conceived views they may have and produce news stories that are more meaningful and ring true to people.”

The Civic Mapping Seminars are based on Harwood research and field work for The Wichita Eagle. The results are captured in the Pew Center publication, “Tapping Civic Life: How to Report First, and Best, What’s Happening in Your Community.”

All the participants selected an area to map and researched the nature and depth of their newsroom’s current knowledge of that area. Then, the newsroom teams visited their target areas to interview a range of community leaders and citizens, tapping into different layers of community life.

The participants are building on two key Harwood Institute frameworks: Types of Community Leaders and Layers of Civic Life. These frameworks help guide journalists out of the “leaders and real people” box into thinking more broadly about their sources. More importantly, they help journalists think through who truly speaks with authority on what are issues of concern in the community, what it takes to tap into and glean the knowledge different people have to offer, and the norms and ground rules that must be observed to enter different community spaces.

“My interview with Zee Ferrufino was very interesting because the line of questioning I followed took him through a process that ended with him realizing he is responsible for improving his community,” observed Denver Post reporter Angela Cortez. “I followed the recommended questions in the Harwood/ Pew workbook and Zee went from just superficially outlining the positive things in his neighborhood to getting to the real issues in the community.”

“After the interview was over, Zee said it went differently than he expected. Toward the end, he said, he realized he has to be more proactive in his neighborhood.”

The seminar participants all started in the same place as many who embark on civic mapping. They are struggling to make sense of what they perceive as jargon and thinking that mapping requires an enormous time commitment.

“Newsroom reaction to Civic Mapping can be defensive, with reporters and editors worrying that the process will take too much time,” said Jack Keith, team leader at The News Tribune in Tacoma, WA.

“The next time we’re on deadline and need to add perspective and context to a story, our improved source network and beat knowledge will save hours of time and instantly make our paper more credible with readers.”

At the last of the three sessions, June 18 and 19, the newsroom teams are to push themselves on whether they’ve truly gained depth of knowledge or just detailed information, and how to apply what they’ve learned to their daily journalism. They plan to review possible designs for storing their maps both in hard and electronic copy. And they are to develop strategies for spreading the mapping approach throughout their newsrooms.

The Pay Off

By Frank Scandale
Metro Editor
The Denver Post

When the team running the Civic Mapping Seminar in Denver announced at the first session that all participants would be required to go into the field and interview people, I posed the semi-rhetorical question: “Has anyone investigated if it was legal for an editor to actually go out of the office?”

Talk to people face to face? What madness were these people engaged in?

There were calls to make. Stories to log. Personnel decisions to act on.

There was work to do.

Yet within a few minutes, talking with my contact in our mapping area, there strolled by a kid pushing a “helados,” your basic ice cream cart that was unique to that neighborhood and a couple other Latino neighborhoods. You would not see such a sight in Cherry Creek or certainly in the suburbs.

Then came a story idea about a park that has been the center of controversy over what it should be named. Then one about a new school that was in the works – the result of a private effort that had yielded a chunk of money already. Then a story about a movement to unseat a school board member who, some say, was not representing the Latino community that put her there.

All these stories were not yet on the traditional radar screens of government agencies, subcommittees and boards. But they were on the radar screens of the community.

Now they are on the minds of hundred of thousands of Denver Post readers.