New Sensibilities Always Vie With Old Habits

There was sobering news for journalists in the new Pew Center surveys: Whites and minorities differed very significantly on whether important local institutions, such as police, schools, the local government – and the news media – treat minorities fairly.

Nationally and regionally, the local news media scored the poorest. Fewer minorities (30%) said the news media treated them fairly than said they got equal treatment from their local police (33%).

It was a pronounced perception by the minority respondents, and it defied all of the news business’s recruiting and diversity efforts. So what’s a journalist to do?

One thing that a group of 18 editors and reporters from six news organizations started doing this spring may be part of the answer. They embarked on four days of civic mapping training being taught by Richard Harwood, of the Harwood Institute for Public Innovation.

Why did these journalists want to do this? Their answers on the first day were straightforward and unhesitant:

• “We want to diversify our news reports.”

• “We want our readers to set the agenda, not politicians or editors.”

• “We want to get rid of some of the dumb quotes we have in the paper because we don’t know who else to quote.”

• “We want to become, again, an integral part of our community.”

• “We are trying to matter to our readers.”

These editors and reporters are what Harwood calls “change agents,” willing to try new ways of doing things. Yet, they acknowledged it will be a rough journey in their newsrooms. What are their challenges? Again, their answers came easily:

• Newsrooms are cynical.

• Old habits die hard.

• Editors don’t want to give up power.

• And then there’s the “this, too, shall pass” syndrome.

The Pew Center, working with the Harwood Institute, hopes to give these journalists, and another class that will meet this summer, some tools-or what Harwood calls “sensibilities”-to diversify their reports with new voices, to break some stereotypes, and to report with authority and authenticity.

Newsroom Challenges

Their challenge will be to carry out a civic mapping project that will demonstrate quickly to the entire newsroom the value of what they are doing to their journalism and to their readers.

It won’t be easy, but we already know what another group of reporters and editors accomplished last year after undergoing this training and having their eyes opened to new story possibilities.

You can see some of the results of their work in the new “Tapping Civic Life” workbook.

You should consider this for your newsroom, too.

E-mail: jans@pccj.org