What’s New in Pew Projects

Huntington, WV

Huntington Herald-Dispatch and West Virginia Public Broadcasting

A six-part series, “West Virginia After Coal,” on the future of the state’s economy without coal began Sept. 17, with an investigation of how local governments are using coal tax severance payments. The paper found virtually none of the money was going to economic development. “It’s all being used for pencils and fire trucks” and other normal operating expenses, said managing editor Len LaCara. Part five featured the results of a poll the paper commissioned, showing a large majority of the state’s residents think West Virginia should reduce its reliance on the coal industry. West Virginia Public Broadcasting carried a live town meeting on the topic. The partners’ dedicated web site allowed users to chat live during the meeting. The site also allows users to search a database that shows how coal severance taxes are being
used in their communities. And it lets them do the poll and see where they stand in relation to the 400 West Virginia residents who responded. Find it at www.wvaftercoal.org.

Portland, ME

Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram

The papers’ teen site, renamed “20 Below” at www.20below.mainetoday.com, has become one of the more popular sites in the country, in part, because of its teen-generated content. The former “Teen Go” site, supported two years ago with Pew Center funding, has tripled the number of hits in the past year to a current average of about 60,000 a month. Maine only has about 124,000 teens.
The site lets teens set the agenda and gives them many different ways to react to their world, from writing personal essays to using disposable cameras for an online photo gallery.

At the same time the paper has been pursuing its ongoing “On the Verge” series about teen life through teens’ eyes. The series won an Edgie award from the Newspaper Association of American for public service. The August installment, which looked at today’s family life and, in particular, at children of divorce was praised on the “20 Below” web site. Reporter Barbara Walsh, now reporting about how race and culture affect teen life, recently hosted an informal pizza dinner for any interested teenager to discuss the topic.

Missoula, MT

The Missoulian
With raging forest fires dominating the news in Montana, political reporter Rob Chaney dragged one of his innovative and portable polling kiosks to the Ninemile Fire Camp, home base for some 1,300 people fighting the fires. In one day, Chaney collected responses from 50 people to questions about their most interesting experiences and most difficult challenges and collected messages for their families. The responses were printed in the Sunday paper. They included the thoughts of Johnny Parra of Calexico, CA, who said the hardest part of his job was “news of firefighters dying.” He messaged home, “love knowing that I make a difference.” Several firefighters said the most interesting thing was watching trees go up in flames in seconds. The kitchen crew’s Tawnya Wilson said she helps make “over 1,000 sack lunches a day.” The hardest part, she said, was “my lungs feel like crap.” Firefighter Alex Raygosa showed the rigors hadn’t dampened his sense of humor. His message home: “Fire: It’s not just for breakfast anymore.”

“Their writings added a missing voice to our extensive fire coverage: that of the grunt firefighters who worked the lines but never got to the media tours,” said Chaney. With the fall rains drenching the forests, Chaney says he plans to use the portable kiosks to collect citizen input for election coverage. The web site is www.missoulian.com.

Fort Lauderdale, FL

The Sun-Sentinel, CBS 4 and Newsradio 610
In August, the partners ran the first of five installments looking at massive changes taking place in South Florida and how they influence people’s sense of community. “Invisible Boundaries” described how the definition of community has evolved and how factors such as religion, ethnicity and sexual orientation interact with geographic boundaries to create communities. A Sun-Sentinel survey showed how South Florida residents define community and rank the importance of community associations in their life. Reporters and editors have been invited to conduct a workshop on the series at an October conference of neighborhood activists around the state.

Lead Sun-Sentinel reporter Tim Collie says he received 350 e-mails after the first installment. Most readers focused on his story about an Islamic family attending a mosque in Boca Raton. “They were exclusively positive,” he says. “They were all along the lines of ‘thank you for writing about us as citizens and not as terrorists’.” Collie says he received e-mails from as far away as Washington, DC, and Stanford, CA, from people who found the series on the web site, www.sun-sentinel.com. The second installment this fall will look at the community of work.

Portland, OR

Oregon Public Broadcasting with the Albany Democrat-Herald, La Grande Observer, Newport News-Times, Geneforum.org
Visitors to the www.geneforum.org site can take interactive quizzes on their attitudes toward genetically engineered food and the use of their own tissue for genetic research. The results are being forwarded to researchers and public officials who are studying and making decisions about the public policy implications of genetic research.

The web site has conducted four focus groups and Oregon Public Broad-casting and the partner papers have finished three of their own and are now planning a town hall meeting later this fall. Oregon Public Radio has hosted five live call-in shows on related topics. The partners will continue to gather public input through the year and present it to the state legislature, which next year will consider the ownership and use of genetic material.

Savannah, GA

Savannah Morning News, WSVH-Peach State Radio, WSOK radio
Some 40 Chatham County residents are participating in a discussion group to help the paper focus its project on improving local schools. In late August, a cross-section of educators, business people, community advocates and parents met for the first time and agreed on a list of five broad goals for schools. In September, they began working on specific ideas to achieve those goals. The Morning News covered the group’s work and will also use it to guide reports looking at successes in school reform, ideas being tested, roadblocks to success and other issues. The newsroom effort is part of a newspaper-wide project, “2001: A Learning Odyssey,” involving other departments. In addition, a web site will feature a database of school statistics, message boards to foster discussion and a teen web site for students. See www.savannahnow.com.

Anniston, AL

The Anniston Star
The paper now has about 200 names in its “cybermap,” an electronic database of readers and web site users. The paper commissioned a readership survey through nearby Jacksonville State University, and Online Director Geni Certain says she is also e-mailing the questionnaire to everyone on the cybermap. Though it won’t be as scientific as the poll, Certain said “it will be useful to find out what they want on the site.” Certain says the paper has been adding more interactive features to its web site, including a “school sound-off” page, giving readers the opportunity to share ideas on improving the local school system. It included links to recent education stories the paper has run and featured a live forum. Before the November election, the paper is sponsoring a televised candidates’ forum. Readers will be able to e-mail questions to the candidates through the web site. See www.annistonstar.com.

La Crosse, WI

La Crosse Tribune
The paper is generating sparks with its continuing coverage of the hazards of stray voltage. A special report in July on possible ill health effects of stray voltage on farms prompted complaints from local utilities. Utility representatives have met with the Tribune’s editorial board. Editor Chris Hardie believes that shows the series is having some impact. “If the stories are prompting questions from utilities, that’s a step in the right direction,” Hardie said recently. Hardie is planning to move the entire Stray Voltage series, along with other information about the phenomenon, to an interactive web site that will allow people with questions about stray voltage to connect with people who have answers. The web site, expected to be up in October, is at www.strayvoltage.org.

Richmond, IN

Palladium-Item, Dayton Daily News, Earlham College
The effort to find more civic ways of using wire stories has led to the creation of a new Sunday page in the Palladium-Item called “The Big Picture.” Each week, the Big Picture provides an in-depth look at a current news development or policy issue by using existing wire stories and supplementary information to provide background stories and a variety of boxes and sidebars to help readers put national and international news into better context. The response was very positive, from both readers and focus groups. Earlham College students helped put the pages together, using information they gathered through original research on how news coverage – particularly of far-away events – influences civic engagement. The students found readers most likely to become engaged in an issue through learning more about it, expressing views, joining groups around an issue and helping. Cheryl Gibbs at Earlham College is now working with the Dayton Daily News to develop better prototypes for more civic uses of wire stories. She also plans to contact wire services with reader feedback on what makes wire stores more meaningful to them.

Concord, NH

New Hampshire Public Radio
“Shock Value,” NHPR’s web primer on electric deregulation, drew far less traffic than last year’s hugely successful on-line Tax Calculator, but Senior News Editor Jon Greenberg said it showed listeners they can get a lot more from the radio network than eclectic music or news. “We have changed their expectations of what public radio does for them,” he says. The page went up as the state legislature was working out how state utilities would be deregulated.

The site got about 3,000 hits, mostly early on in the debate. The issue, however, generated little heat. “People maintained confidence in the legislature,” he said. “It made it hard to drum up an audience.”

Deregulation has now been approved and Greenberg says he expects very little traffic until people begin to have to choose their electric service provider in 2003. “The whole issue is outside the realm of public debate, now,” he said. “Nothing is going to happen that people can influence for another 2 1/2 years … But we’re laying the groundwork now, so we’re ready for that.”

Greenberg says NHPR plans to provide a web page with price comparison tools and ways to think through choices when the time comes for people to choose utilities. And he says he will apply lessons learned through the “Shock Value” project, including developing better discussion software. Click on www.nhpr.org.