Civic Innovations: Building New Interactions

Civic journalism was about interactivity long before newsrooms even knew what the Internet was. Early interactivity occurred through town hall meetings, focus groups and issue polls. Panelists discussed new forms of interactivity that are connecting citizens and altering journalism.

GIL THELEN
Vice President and Executive Editor
The Tampa Tribune

We have been using database and interactivity in a thing called the “Crime-Tracker,” which allows citizens to use public safety information and customize it to answer their own questions. With this, we get away from the rather stereotypical crime coverage and give citizens control over that information.

We have together created something called “Citizens’ Voice” in Tampa, where readers, viewers and citizens come into the three news organizations in a common way. They can do it by telephone, online or print. But we take the citizen comments, criticism and feedback and then address them on all three platforms independently. I think it’s the only place in the country where we’re attempting to do this in terms of producing accountability for the journalism. We are also about to publish our joint promise to our community about what our standards and practices are going to be.

We’ve learned some things through the process of struggling through such questions as: Do you scoop yourself on another media? What do you do about competition? It is the notion that, ultimately, the community owns our stories, and it’s our stewardship responsibility to return those stories to the community. So our answer to the question of “Where do we publish first?” is on the first available platform so that the community can have the information it needs.

STAN STRICK
Executive Editor
The Herald, Everett, WA

We did not go into our [“Waterfront Renaissance”] project at all thinking “Gosh, with technology, the Web, what a wonderful thing.” We were just looking for a way to be more innovative in our reporting and get closer to readers. We had a public journalism editor at the time who framed the project. But very quickly Mark Briggs developed the idea of the clickable map and found this [software company] Smashing Ideas. They were happy to work with us for a lot less money than they would have gotten on a similar project, because they wanted the exposure and the testimony.

People could come to the Web site and look at any of four properties, and they could say how they would want it developed. Would you like a zoo? Would you like tennis courts? Would you like hiking trails? The gridwork under the map is absolutely fascinating because it takes those simple little clicks and those simple little icons, and it does things that I don’t begin to understand, but it comes out with rankings and positionings … that, in the end, empowered people in a way that we have not been able to empower people before.

JON GREENBERG
Senior News Editor
New Hampshire Public Radio

The success of the online “Tax Calculator” drew us into the Web in a way that we hadn’t before, as an organization, ever expected; certainly I hadn’t expected.

We did some really cool things. We had “Shock Value,” which was about electricity deregulation. We’re now doing some things on education. We did some stuff on affordable housing.

We found that the more we did these things, the more people came to expect them of us. So that they would understand this pairing of radio and the Web, and they’d understand that there would be feedback, and that their views would kind of ripple through and start affecting our stories. That was good in terms of building new habits inside the organization and new expectations on the part of people who heard our broadcasts.

MARTY STEFFENS
SABEW Chair Business and Financial Journalism,
University of Missouri

The root of all this conversation about inventing new ways of reporting is to talk about meaningful interaction. One of the things that we as journalists must do is to develop interactions – not only to connect, but also to do so in a meaningful way – and to create a sense of attachment, this long-lasting interest in an issue that keeps people coming back.

In Binghamton, NY, the “Facing Our Future” project was only supposed to last one year. It ended up lasting three years because the citizens were so attached to the idea that they could help change the economy that they kept going. In fact, one of our citizen groups went out and got a grant from the Pew [Partnership] for Civic Change so they could continue to work.

Why did this happen? It happened because we developed the reporting tools that created a strong sense of listening and a strong sense of attachment in a way that was very satisfying to our citizen readers.