Fall 1999
Transforming Journalism for Today
Reinventing It for Tomorrow
By Jan Schaffer
Executive Director
Pew Center
When the Pew Center for Civic Journalism was launched in 1993, we didn’t know what would happen.
What would happen if we tried to support some experiments in newsrooms with funding? What would happen if we survived the early, and harsh, criticism and contributed a useful legacy of ideas to the profession?
We were investigating a simple hypothesis: If journalists did their jobs differently, would citizens do their jobs differently? If journalists helped the community engage in critical issues, would people get more involved?
Well, several things have happened: For one, we got an answer to our question. Yes, if journalists do their jobs differently, citizens do behave differently.
Another thing happened: Thanks to the scores of ideas bubbling up in newsrooms around the country, we have become a key R&D center, helping to develop new kinds of news content.
Sure, there is a lot of research and development going on to build better weather maps, design new digital devices, and create ink that won’t rub off on your hands. And there is market research that tells us we should have more television writers than statehouse reporters if we want to appeal to an infotainment society.
But there’s not much of a tradition, in our beloved profession, of investing in R&D that nourishes innovations in news, our primary product. What is news? What has it become? What can it be? And can it be re-invented?
Research has shown that the definition of “news” has changed quite dramatically in recent decades. Many of those changes have been provoked by marketplace competition but have not particularly improved the product. Especially the way the product connects with its users.
Over the past six years, our funding has helped to create an impetus for innovation in newsrooms and some safe zones where journalists could experiment with doing journalism differently.
News organizations come to us with their own proposals. Our advisory board, which includes prominent journalists, selects those that promise to pioneer new prototypes.
When an idea receives support, an interesting dynamic kicks in. The journalists not only gear up for their project, they also strive to make the journalism especially good – because they know the rest of the journalism community will be watching.
To date, we have helped support 77 initiatives at 148 news organizations. This fall, we will fund another cycle. Separately, through the annual Batten Awards, we give legs to other efforts that arise independently.
Interestingly, much of our work is with regional news organizations, in places like Charlotte, St. Paul, Seattle, San Francisco, where the current generation of editors faces new economic and technological realities. Many of these efforts help newspapers “go on the offensive against the weaknesses of the Internet,” observes Spokane editor Chris Peck. Others build on the strengths of the Net.
This year, our funding helped New Hampshire Public Radio produce its nationally recognized web site, the New Hampshire Tax Calculator, to enable citizens to figure the costs of three tax-reform measures. We helped to support an innovative civic mapping exercise at the Anniston Star, videoconferencing experiments with Minnesota Public Television, and a fledgling e-mail-based neighborhood news wire in Tampa.
Of the more ambitious projects, we supported efforts in Spokane to map and report the key moments in the lives of young people that determine whether they might be successful – or end up in prison. This is a very different kind of “news.”
It’s been a thrilling experience and one motivated more by an active enthusiasm than a paralyzing fear – fear of the Web, fear of corporate ownership, fear of losing revenues and readers.
Finally, yet another thing has happened. Journalists, whether they are fleeing from fear or returning to core values, are embracing civic journalism. Whatever you want to call it – civic journalism, public journalism, or good, old-fashioned journalism – it’s now part of the mainstream practice of news reporting throughout the country.
“I guess I’m glad you’re a little bit scared,” David Brauer, creator of the Minnesota E-Democracy web site, told journalists at May’s Batten Symposium. “We want to scare you and influence you into covering things that you aren’t covering now, because that’s where you’re exposed.”