What’s Happening in Pew Projects

Anniston, AL

The Anniston Star

The Star has compiled a database of more than 100 informal community leaders as part of its Civic Mapping Project. The paper’s mapping project coordinator has recruited sources from civic clubs, church groups, leadership training programs, civil rights groups and Parent-Teacher Organizations, among others. The database can be accessed easily by reporters and provides a detailed profile of each source, including involvement with various civic activities.

In its most basic application, the database provides a resource for reporters seeking comments and local perspective on breaking news stories. “When the recent tragic shootings took place in Colorado,” says editor Chris Waddle, “it was a simple matter for the Civic Mapping Project files to be searched for PTO presidents and others familiar with issues such as school security.”

But The Star is also using the database to generate discussion groups on topics of public interest. For example, The Star is using its list to invite residents to a brainstorming session on a Millennium project with the Anniston Museum of Natural History. Waddle says the session will help the paper plan the direction of the project.

The paper has also named a former metro editor its “civic journalism director” to oversee the paper’s efforts.

Berkeley, CA

Partners: University of California-Berkeley, Oakland Post, KALX-FM

The eight graduate journalism students enrolled in Berkeley’s “Covering a Community” course produced a dozen radio shows and five editions of the supplement “Inside Oakland,” which was tucked inside the Oakland Post. More importantly, professor Bill Drummond says, they learned how to cover a community from the inside.

Each student was assigned to cover one of Oakland’s seven councilmanic districts during the spring semester. Drummond says they penetrated those neighborhoods and became recognized by the people they were covering.

In the final “Inside Oakland” edition, students wrote that the effort had been personally rewarding. Highlights from the supplement are archived at: www.journalism.berkeley.edu/students/projects/INSIDE OAKLAND/.

Chicago, IL

The Chicago Reporter

The Chicago Reporter plans to hold a series of community meetings over the summer to get input from residents of the city’s Englewood neighborhood about police handling of the case of Ryan Harris, an 11-year-old murder victim. The citizens’ views will be incorporated into a series about how Chicago police handled the Harris case and other serious crimes in Englewood. Publisher Laura Washington says the paper has begun filing Freedom of Information Act requests for records about the Harris case and others.

Elmira, NY

Partners: Elmira Star-Gazette, The Radio Group

The Star-Gazette project on character education in public schools has turned out to be eerily prescient. Just weeks before the Columbine High School tragedy, the paper ran its series about teaching teenagers traits such as responsibility, honesty and respect.

“I must say the results of this have exceeded our expectations,” reports associate editor David Kubissa. “School districts are latching on to it as well as non-profit agencies and chambers of commerce.”

The project began with a Pew-funded survey to determine what character traits were most important to the community. The paper has kept the issue before the public in editorials, columns and school board election coverage. In July, character education specialist Louis Martinez will be conducting classes for a team of people selected to be character education trainers in the Elmira area.

“In the wake of (the Columbine) shootings,” says Kubissa, “this effort has gained special significance both for our newsroom staff and for our readers.

Minneapolis, MN

Partners: Internews Interactive, KTCA-TV

KTCA is expanding the reach of its interactive citizens forums with broadcasts originating in new locations. The venues are becoming ever more intimate. Bill Hanley, vice-president for news, says he believes a May show about teenage drinking was the most successful forum to date because it was broadcast from a family living room.

The show, which followed a four-day series in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, linked parents and teenage kids from Owatonna, MN, with parents and kids sitting in their homes in South Minneapolis. The families answered quiz questions that had been printed in the Star Tribune and discussed the issue of underage drinking.

Hanley says the goal was to get parents and children talking about drinking going into prom season. “It worked perfectly,” he said. The Pew Center supported the videoconferencing technology that makes the broadcasts possible.

Riverside, CA

Partners: The Orange County Register, The Press-Enterprise, La Opinion, CBS-2, KCET, KCRW, KPCC

The Southern California media partners say their “Election Connection” polling last fall was among the first to tap into voter discontent about the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Before national polls charted a voter backlash against Republicans, the “Election Connection” reported in October 1998 that Californians did not view the matter as a motivating factor at the ballot box and that they thought less of Republicans who backed impeachment than Democrats who supported the President.

It was also the first in the state to show Democrat Gray Davis with a double-digit lead over Republican Dan Lungren for California governor. The findings allowed coalition partners to focus discussions with readers, viewers and listeners about political trends across the state.

The “Election Connection” web site received nearly 160,000 visits between March and November 1998, with a spike of 50,000 hits at election time in November.

Portland, ME

Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram

The Press Herald asked teens throughout Maine to write about what life is like for teenagers today and it put the results – essays, poems, opinion pieces – on the “Teen Go” page of its web site. The paper’s community coordinator Jessica Tomlinson says the exercise has helped identify communities where teenagers are actively interested in writing about teen issues. That will help the paper select four communities to participate in the teen-centered web site project Pew is supporting.

Teenagers from the four communities will meet in roundtable discussions in the fall to choose topics for the site. Then each group will produce content using KOZ software, which allows them to create web pages without knowing HTML.

Seattle, WA

Seattle Times, KCTS-TV, KUOW-FM

The Front Porch Forum conducted two focus groups in the spring to explore citizens’ views of leadership. The reporting team will use the information in a series on leadership this fall.

Front Porch Forum coordinator Marion Woydovich says the groups were somewhat different in political leanings and socio-economic status but both came up with the same basic traits they look for in a leader. Neither group, however, could name more than few local leaders possessing those traits and neither could think of local leaders well-qualified to lead the Puget Sound region into the future.

The leadership series will explore, among other topics, how the region’s consensus style of leadership works against traditional notions of what makes a leader.

Savannah, GA

Savannah Morning News

The Morning News is launching an 11-part series in June on the issues of aging. Pew supported focus groups on the issues explored in the series, “Aging Matters: The Changing Face of Seniors.” Every other Sunday throughout the summer and into October, the paper will cover such topics as how and why we age, legal issues that arise as we age, the political impact of a growing senior population and economic issues that seniors face.

Spokane, WA

Partners: The Spokesman-Review, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Some new tools of civic journalism are being used to build a framework for The Spokesman-Review’s “Fixing Failing Families” project. The project will explore what it would take for a community to intervene in the lives of young people at risk for ending up in the criminal justice system.

In May, interactive editor Doug Floyd convened four roundtable discussions with teachers, law enforcement officers, religious leaders and child counselors to begin mapping key moments in the lives of young people that influence later success in life. This “key moments mapping” will be used as the structure for hard news reporting.

The paper is also working with University of Wisconsin professor Lew Friedland on creating a civic mapping device for the newsroom that would allow reporters to quickly chart community resources and contacts across traditional beat reporting boundaries.

Springfield, VA

NewsChannel 8

As part of its year-long “Target Transportation” project, the 24-hour, all-news station mailed to 600 government and community leaders the results of a poll of metropolitan area residents. The survey, funded in part by the Pew Center, found that traffic congestion is twice as likely as any other issue to be mentioned as the problem that most impacts daily life in the Washington, D.C., region. The poll questioned citizens about public policy trade-offs such as: expanding roads vs. limiting growth; funding more highway construction vs. additional mass transit; allowing sprawl vs. high density growth. It also asked for opinions about several proposed transportation projects.