Civic Lessons

Civic Lessons

Report on Four Civic Journalism Projects
Funded by the Pew Center for Civic Journalism

The Pew Charitable Trusts

Copyright © 1997 The Pew Charitable Trusts. Reprinted with permission.
The Opinions expressed in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Pew Charitable Trusts.

Report Based on a 1996 Evaluation
Conducted for The Pew Charitable Trusts

Evaluators
Esther Thorson
Center for Advanced Social Research
University of Missouri

Lewis A. Friedland
School of Journalism and Mass Communication
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Report Writer
Peggy Anderson

Table of Contents

Foreword

Evaluation Summary

• Key Findings
• Project Overviews
• General Community Findings
• General Project Findings
• General Newsroom Findings
• General Partnership Findings
• General Journalism Findings

  Civic Journalism in the Community

• Deliberative Projects
  • “We the People/Wisconsin”
  • “Voice of the Voter”
• Civic Engagement Projects
  • “Taking Back Our Neighborhoods”
  • “Facing Our Future”

  Civic Journalism in the Newsroom

• Responses in Individual Newsrooms
• Other Newsroom Findings
  

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  Foreword

  There has always been a close relationship between journalism and democracy. One without the other is impossible. Democracy rests on a foundation of citizen involvement, but without the news and information citizens need to become involved, democracy cannot survive.

  The Pew Charitable Trusts’ decision to create and support a civic journalism center in 1993 was a response to the disturbing erosion of citizenship and the value of community–qualities that have characterized the great American experiment in democracy since our earliest days as a nation.

  The Pew Center for Civic Journalism was intended to build on earlier efforts initiated by The Wichita Eagle and The Charlotte Observer. Its purpose was to seed a variety of projects around the country that would test out the notion that journalism can play a role in countering the cynicism and disengagement that appears to infect a significant segment of modern American society.

  In 1996, as pare of our ongoing assessment of new strategic directions undertaken by the Trusts, we funded an evaluation of the center to examine the results of its work to date. The evaluators were asked to study four projects selected to compare different approaches, newer sites with older ones, large cities with smaller, and cities of different ethnic and cultural compositions as well as media structures. The purpose of the evaluation was threefold: to ascertain the impact of the projects in their respective communities; to determine what kinds of projects seem to work best and why; and to see what impact the projects had on the newsrooms involved.

  The evaluators chosen were Professor Esther Thorson, University of Missouri School of Journalism and director of the Center for Advanced Social Research; Professor Steve Chaffee of Stanford University; and Assistant Professor Lewis A. Friedland of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication and the Mass Communications Research Center of the University of Wisconsin at Madison. While Friedland and several associates did intensive interviewing in newsrooms, communities, and official quarters–some 400 interviews altogether–Thorson, with the consultation of Chaffee, devised and administered an attitudinal survey that comprised the quantitative phase of the evaluation.

  By far the most significant finding in the evaluators’ report is that, on the whole, civic journalism is making progress toward its goals. It benefits both the communities it serves and the overall democratic process. Most people surveyed who were aware of the four projects chosen for study reported being more knowledgeable and concerned about their communities as a result and indicated they had a stronger sense of their civic responsibilities, especially as voters.

  As we anticipated however, the findings were not all positive. The evaluators found, for example, that the four projects studied were more warmly received in the communities they sought to serve than in most of the newsrooms that produced them. Citizen responses to civic journalism were consistently enthusiastic. Newsroom responses were frequently ambivalent or even negative. As is evident in this finding–and known to most practitioners of the craft–civic journalism is controversial within the ranks of professional journalists. Editors at leading newspapers oppose it on the grounds that the mission of news organizations is solely to report and analyze the news. Other critics believe chat civic journalism may harm objectivity. Still others object to news organizations accepting even indirect support for such efforts, arguing that if a project is worth doing, it should be done with internal resources.

  These concerns are certainly worth continued vigorous examination. And the questions they raise merit careful consideration inside and outside of newsrooms.

  We hope that the evaluation findings presented on the following pages will provide useful grist for the mill of this debate, while offering new perspectives on one of the most challenging journalistic issues of these times.

  Rebecca W. Rimel
  President and CEO
  The Pew Charitable Trusts

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  Evaluation Summary

  Key Findings

  Between January and November 1996, we evaluated in depth four projects funded by the Pew Center for Civic Journalism to ascertain how civic journalism has worked in a variety of settings. The projects we chose for study were in Charlotte, North Carolina; Madison, Wisconsin; San Francisco, California; and Binghamton, New York. This design allowed us to compare project impact in a large, complex community (San Francisco) with effects in two cities of medium size (Charlotte and Madison) and in a relatively small city (Binghamton).

  The design also allowed us to compare older project sites (Charlotte and Madison) with a new one (Binghamton) and efforts oriented mainly toward public deliberation (Madison and San Francisco) with those seeking to stimulate civic action (Binghamton and Charlotte).

  Our key qualitative findings are as follows:

  • The civic journalism projects in all four cities had impressive reach into their communities. 
  • All four projects increased public discussion in their communities, and the most intensive of the four achieved tangible improvements in community life. 
  • The projects appeared to strengthen a sense in leaders and citizens alike that they could solve local problems.
  • The projects most likely to affect significantly their communities were those that focused on single issues over longer periods of time.
  • The citizens most likely to be aware of the civic journalism projects in their communities represented an active civic core of local residents and leaders who were also the most likely people to be motivated to action by these projects.
  • The minority communities targeted generally expressed strong support for civic journalism projects in their areas.
  • Citizens exposed to civic journalism want more such reporting.
  • Civic journalism appears to be more effective in communities claiming a relatively small number of media organizations.
  • The strengths of these four experiments in civic journalism lie less in technological innovation than in the intensified application of enterprise reporting.
  • The projects typically had less impact within the newsrooms involved than in the community at large.
  • Most media partners involved expressed overall satisfaction with the partnerships and said they would continue them. Coordinators funded by the Pew Center in several sites were central to project success in those sites. 

  Our key quantitative findings were as follows:

  • A significant proportion of citizens surveyed in all four sites who were aware of the project in their city reported that, as a result of it, they were thinking more about politics, had a better idea about problems important in their area, and wanted to be more involved in making their city a better place to live.
  • A large portion of respondents aware of the project in each of the three cities where we asked citizens how they felt about voting felt more strongly as a result of the project that they should vote in every election.

  Project Recognition Levels in the Four Communities Recognition by project name alone Madison 40% Charlotte 81% San Francisco 18% Binghamton 42% Recognition after brief description of project Madison 52% Charlotte 84% San Francisco 40% Binghamton 51% Impact of Projects on Citizen Attitudes “Thinking more about politics” Madison 62% Charlotte 59% San Francisco 49% Binghamton 53% “Feeling angry about people who do nothing to make this city a better place to live” Madison 52% Charlotte 72% San Francisco 37% Binghamton 58% “Having a better idea about problems important to people in this area” Madison 74% Charlotte 86% San Francisco 70% Binghamton 80% “Wanting to be more involved in making this city a better place to live” Madison 64% Charlotte 78% San Francisco 47% Binghamton 67% “Feeling more strongly that they should vote in every election” Madison 60% Charlotte 67% San Francisco 49% Binghamton NA Citizens in Charlotte also were asked whether “Taking Back Our Neighborhoods” had made them think more about the causes of crime. Of those responding, 81% said yes.

  Project Overviews

  The four projects we evaluated represent the first case studies that have measured the impact of civic journalism. For this reason, we attempted to choose the broadest cross section possible of the efforts supported by the Pew Center. We wanted projects interesting in themselves that might also yield significant contrasts as a group.

  The four we chose, and the critical factors in our choice, were as follows:

  “We the People/Wisconsin”
  in Madison, Wisconsin
  This project is the nation’s longest-running civic journalism initiative and one of its best organized. Launched in 1992 as a one-time presidential election effort, “We the People” has evolved into an ongoing cycle of at least four projects a year that seeks both to inform citizens and increase public deliberation about elections and issues. Techniques include town-hall meetings, candidate debates, and interactive civic exercises. One example of the latter: citizens in Madison and Milwaukee were invited to try their hand at reducing the federal budget.

  Because the public radio and television partners that help produce “We the People” broadcast throughout Wisconsin, this is actually a statewide project, and the only one we studied. However, we assessed its effects solely in Madison.

  “Voice of the Voter”
  in San Francisco, California
  In terms of commanding citizen attention, this project had the biggest challenge of the four we studied. With 750,000 people in a metropolis of 2.5 million, a population that includes immigrants of almost every nationality, San Francisco was by far the largest city we studied and easily the noisiest media environment. The Bay Area is the fifth-largest TV market in America, with eight network affiliates, nine independent stations, and five public TV stations. It is also home to more than three dozen radio stations and four major daily newspapers.

  “Voice of the Voter” began in 1994 to inform citizens about and involve them in the California gubernatorial race that year. Two subsequent election projects addressed the 1995 San Francisco mayoral contest and the 1996 presidential race. Also in 1996 the media partners examined the future of transportation in the Bay Area, their first project addressing a specific local issue.

  Along with polls, candidate debates, and targeted neighborhood reporting, the partners have actively sought citizen participation through E-mail, voice mail, and a hot line. In 1994, the San Francisco Chronicle included postage-paid voter registration forms as inserts in one day’s editions, an example followed by several other Bay Area papers that resulted in an unprecedented number of new voters that fall.

  “Taking Back Our Neighborhoods”
  in Charlotte, North Carolina
  Like Madison, Charlotte has been in the forefront of civic journalism since 1992, when The Charlotte Observer and two other partners fielded “Your Vote in ’92,” a project that covered the 1992 elections from the standpoint of citizen concerns. At the time, The Charlotte Observer owner Knight-Ridder, Inc., was headed by James K. Batten, an early proponent of civic journalism. Partly because of his commitment to the concept, “Taking Back Our Neighborhoods” was one of four projects accepted for support by the Pew Center in 1993, its first year of funding.

  This was also the most ambitious single enterprise we studied. Its purpose was to pinpoint–precisely–the sources of violent crime in Charlotte and then encourage the community to respond with solutions. “Taking Back Our Neighborhoods” featured intensive reports on high-crime neighborhoods and the formulation of “needs lists” for each neighborhood to offer area residents and agencies some concrete ways to help.

  “Facing Our Future”
  in Binghamton, New York
  Begun in the fall of 1995, this project was the newest of the four we studied (it is still under way at this writing) and has, in a sense, the most difficult task: to help reinvent a community left in disarray by the radical downsizing in recent years of IBM and a few other large corporations that once held this area together. “Facing Our Future” has approached its task by identifying community problems through newspaper surveys, call-ins and focus groups conducted by Binghamton University, forming citizen teams to devise solutions to these problems, reporting in depth on the relevant issues, and encouraging local leaders and citizens to work together to map out the road from here. Binghamton was the smallest site we studied. Its population slightly exceeds 50,000 in a metropolitan area of just over 200,000.

  Media Partners Madison Wisconsin State Journal Wisconsin Public Television Wood Communications Group  (a public relations consulting firm in Madison) CBS affiliate WISC-TV Wisconsin Public Radio Charlotte The Charlotte Observer WSOC-TV WPEG and WBAV (jointly owned; the two dominant radio stations within the area’s African American community) United Way of Central Carolinas San Francisco KQED-FM  San Francisco Chronicle  NBC affiliate KRON-TV  (the latter two organizations both owned by Chronicle Publishing) Binghamton Press & Sun Bulletin PBS affiliate WSKG-TV NPR affiliate WSKG-FM CBS affiliate WBNG-TV Binghamton University

  General Community Findings

  We will discuss our specific findings on each of these efforts later in this report. Here we want to present our larger findings in several categories as well as our overall reaction to the projects as a group.

  To begin with, we were impressed by their reach. In each community we studied, recognition of the project by local leaders and residents was excellent–higher than we had anticipated, especially in San Francisco, where the media environment is so noisy. The one place we’d have expected higher awareness was Madison, home of the project of longest duration. We will offer a possible explanation for this with the Madison findings.

  Secondly, we were impressed by what the projects have accomplished in their communities– again, more than we had expected. It’s useful to look at their accomplishments in light of the odds against them. Almost by definition, these enterprises raise difficult issues. They ask questions about problems that communities have either addressed with limited success or, in some cases, ignored for some time. We would expect them to be unsettling.

  But while the projects we studied did engender acrimony here and there, we saw less negativity toward them in every community than we would have anticipated. Instead, the projects seemed to open options in these communities, giving leaders and citizens alike a greater sense of possibility than they had had before about solving local problems.

  In all four sites studied, a large proportion of citizens surveyed who were aware of the project in their city reported that, as a result of it, they were thinking more about politics, had a better idea about problems important in their areas, and wanted to be more involved in making their city a better place to live. In the three cities where we asked citizens how they felt about voting, a majority of respondents aware of the project in each city felt more strongly as a result of the project that they should vote in every election.

  In Charlotte especially, we saw the power that civic journalism can have in a community. Though advance investigation had told us that “Taking Back Our Neighborhoods” was a good, well-organized, well-received program, we were struck by how deeply it had penetrated into the corners of community life in Charlotte, and how it had diminished barriers between people of different races and classes. At a period in America’s history when race and class lines are hardening, “Taking Back Our Neighborhoods” brought some of the more advantaged residents of Charlotte and some of their poorer neighbors into each other’s lives and gave them some tools for working together.

  We saw power, too, in San Francisco, particularly in Visitacion Valley, a predominantly working–class neighborhood populated almost equally by African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, and whites that is widely viewed by residents, politicians, and civic leaders as neglected. As part of the “Voice of the Voter” coverage of the mayoral election in 1995, this neighborhood among others was featured by Chronicle urban affairs reporter John King, who walked the streets of Visitacion Valley almost as a beat reporter, seeking the views of ordinary citizens.

  Residents we spoke to contrasted “Voice of the Voter” stories with typical coverage, characterizing the latter as generally negative when it occurred at all. The King stories, they said, had put a face on residents and their struggles, showing other San Franciscans that the citizens of Visitacion Valley could not be written off as people who live in the projects and commit crimes. Even residents historically angry at the media said that this time the press had done a good job. Although “Voice of the Voter” did not stimulate great change in San Francisco, it created in at least some citizens a higher expectation of press performance.

  Our other general findings about the projects in their communities were as follows:

  • The citizens most aware of the civic journalism projects in the four cities we studied represented an active civic core that was distinct from the broader citizenry and local elites but straddled both groups. These citizens were also most likely to be motivated by the projects to take action.

    While this point might seem self-evident, the finding is significant. By mobilizing the citizens most likely to instigate and carry out community change, civic journalism projects can have a greater potential impact than is indicated solely by the numbers reached.

    We found that citizens aware of the civic journalism projects in their city were 20% to 50% more active in community organizations than were those not aware. These percentages derive from citizen responses to two questions: What kinds of organizations do you belong to, and have you attended at least one meeting of each group named in the last six months? Citizens aware of the projects in their communities were ahead on both counts.

    In San Francisco and Madison, we also asked citizens whether they had participated in solving a problem in their community within the last year. In Madison, 20% of those unaware of “We the People” said yes while 38% of those aware said yes–nearly twice as many. In San Francisco, 30% of those unaware of “Voice of the Voter” said yes while 51% of those aware said yes–again, a significantly greater number.

    What remains unknown is whether civic journalism causes community action or being active leads people to pay attention to public journalism. But even after all the demographic variables have been subtracted from the findings, the correlation between awareness and activity is very strong.

  • Minority communities where targeted–in San Francisco and Charlotte–responded strongly and well to the projects.
  • Citizens who experience the approach of civic journalism to reporting on issues, elections, and neighborhoods have a strong appetite for more such reporting.

  General Project Findings

  To determine what kinds of civic journalism projects seem to work best, we chose projects representing two common strains in civic journalism that divide along the lines of intent. The goal of two of these projects–“We the People” in Madison and “Voice of the Voter” in San Francisco–was to increase public deliberation, or citizen reflection and discussion. The goal of the other two, by contrast–“Taking Back Our Neighborhoods” in Charlotte and “Facing Our Future” in Binghamton–was to increase civic engagement: to motivate citizens to take action toward the solution of a community problem.

  To different degrees, all four projects increased community discussion about matters of citizen concern. In Charlotte, where the project focused hard on a single set of tightly related issues, citizens also took action toward solving community problems. Though the direction and extent of actual change in Binghamton remained open at the time of our fieldwork, all of the projects have clearly increased discussion and, where intended, increased community problem-solving activity.

  In Charlotte, a project aimed at motivating people to solve problems also increased public deliberation about those problems. However, the converse did not apply: the projects aimed at public deliberation did not necessarily move citizens to act. Community problem solving does not necessarily follow from stronger deliberation.

  In our view, “We the People/Wisconsin” illustrates both the strengths and weaknesses of primarily deliberative projects. Its strength in general, and in Madison in particular, is that every three months or so, the project focuses the attention of a large number of citizens on an issue or election more sharply than might otherwise be the case, thus stimulating a broad public discussion.

  But the episodic approach diffuses both the intensity of the project and its impact.

  The deliberative approach in Madison represents a more traditional approach to civic journalism: the media’s job is to give people the broadest spectrum of information and then it is the task of citizens to make up their own minds. “We the People/Wisconsin” attempts to broaden public debate from the narrow “on-the-one-hand/on-the-other hand” stories that posit only two sides. But the project does not actively encourage the next step. If, after project partners have spotlighted an issue or a set of candidates, citizens don’t vote, for example, that’s their choice.

  So although “We the People” is consistent and strong, it is also somewhat self-limiting. Even within the spectrum of deliberative projects, it represents an approach grounded in public discussion, rather than broader dialogue focused on public problem solving.

  Our most critical finding about what kinds of projects work best is that the narrower the focus of the project and the more sustained the effort, the greater the impact on the community. Charlotte offers the strongest example. While the reporting raised a variety of complex related issues, “Taking Back Our Neighborhoods” was about one subject– crime–and the partners exhaustively covered that issue from all angles for more than a year while actively encouraging citizen involvement in problem solving. The results were tangible improvements in community life.

  One “We the People” project that did focus on a specific local problem had the strongest overall impact. In July 1995, a few months before our fieldwork, project partners did a program on land use. Of all the efforts “We the People” has undertaken since its inception in 1992, this was the most focused and localized. It spoke to a specific set of problems in a specific geographic area–Dane County–that directly affected the people who live there.

  Though some might consider land use a boring issue, this effort drew a stronger, more direct community response than had any other issue until that time. A live town hall on the subject that was broadcast at 7 p.m. on both WISC-TV and Wisconsin Public Television had extraordinary ratings–the kind of ratings ordinarily associated with very popular prime-time shows. A county board election soon after the broadcast was won by candidates favoring tighter land-use controls, an upset attributed by some, including Madison’s outgoing mayor, to “We the People.” The TV program prompted more calls on related issues to the county executive than had any of its predecessors.

  That the project stirred citizen motivation showed clearly in our survey results. Respondents who had read about or watched land-use stories were significantly more knowledgeable about the issues and far more concerned about future land-use problems than were those without such exposure.

  This project worked well in Madison. Whether short-term projects with an equally narrow focus could work as well elsewhere, however, is a matter for further research. In general, civic journalism efforts that focus clearly on a single topic or specific community problem over time seem more likely than short-term, episodic, issue-oriented projects to have lasting effects on both community reflection and citizen engagement.

  Our other findings about what fosters success in civic projects include the following:

  • Civic journalism is more likely to strengthen existing civic networks in cities such as Charlotte where they are already strong than to catalyze new forms of social capital in cities such as Binghamton with relatively weak existing networks, at least in the short term.
  • Civic journalism can nonetheless be a critical stimulus in communities with weaker civic networks to the wide-reaching public discussion that is a precondition for forming stronger social networks.
  • Problem-solving projects are more likely than deliberative projects to lead to new connections among previously unconnected civic networks.

    Deliberative projects may strengthen and even expand the active civic core and may also lead to long-term expansion of community-wide discussion. But at least in Madison, where we would have expected it to happen, the projects did not appear to generate specific problem-solving efforts.

  • Civic journalism had a stronger impact in less complicated media environments.

    In smaller cities with only one newspaper and three or four major TV stations, civic journalism partners have a better chance to blanket the area and attract community-wide attention. At least by the measures employed in this study, the three smaller projects were more effective in attaining their goals than was the San Francisco project studied. Still, there was greater success in San Francisco than predicted. 

  • Civic journalism projects in larger areas might, for this reason, create more lasting results with a focus on single problems or topics rather than on elections or generalized discussion of many issues.

  General Newsroom Findings

  As already noted, newsroom response to civic journalism in the projects we studied was mixed, with some significant negative opinion expressed in most newsrooms. Our specific newsroom findings will constitute the last part of this report. In the majority of newsrooms involved in the projects studied, daily news-gathering practices did not change much beyond the projects themselves (the most notable exception being The Charlotte Observer).

  The ways in which projects were viewed and the extent to which they were understood varied widely across newsrooms. Among the factors accounting for this variation were the following:

  • The broader context of news worker/management relations.
  • Early acceptance of the project by respected reporters and editors. 
  • Demonstration by these reporters and editors that civic journalism is compatible with “good journalism.”

  In only two cases were the projects introduced into newsrooms with a formal meeting. At KQED-FM in San Francisco, “Voice of the Voter” was described to staff in the earliest stages and enjoyed solid staff support. At the San Francisco Chronicle, the only other instance in which a formal introduction was attempted, it stimulated resistance by an important group of senior reporters and editors (although almost all members of this group embraced the project as it progressed).

  As a result, the projects were sometimes initially perceived as management gimmicks or pet projects–a perception that in some cases set up a negative dynamic between the news managers who were project leaders and the reporters, editors, and producers being asked to cooperate in the effort. There was also concern that in setting up projects and then reporting on them, the news organizations would be “creating the news.” While these concerns diminished considerably over the course of the projects in most of the newsrooms that we studied, they were expressed by significant minorities in varying degrees in all of them.

  Among all the media partners we studied in all four cities, only at The Charlotte Observer were the principles of civic journalism widely accepted and understood at all levels in the newsroom. This approach was just beginning to be implemented as standard practice in daily news gathering during our fieldwork.

  Yet on this score we also discovered a paradox: while the newsroom commitment was uneven at best, which inevitably affected partner commitment, the unevenness didn’t necessarily hurt the projects in the community. This was an important lesson: that a project can yield good results in the broader community despite weak links in the partnership.

  General Partnership Findings

  Apart from the commitment of their newsrooms, the partnerships functioned unevenly in another way. With their typically greater news-gathering resources, newspapers tended to have the senior role in these civic journalism efforts. TV stations were inclined to either downplay or resent this role, yet to be more passive at the “street level” of news gathering (although not necessarily in the partnership process). But because TV tends to have broader reach, project identity was divided equally, so newspaper editors and reporters who were leading the charge sometimes resented the attention garnered by television partners.

  Still, despite what we might see as the normal friction of coordinating activity between different media and competitors, most partners on both sides expressed overall satisfaction with the partnerships and said they would continue them.

  As we expected, we found that the more actively the media partners involved themselves in the project, the better it was.

  Also as we expected, each medium involved in these projects somewhat reinforced the others, with televised town meetings and news spots bringing readers to newspapers, and newspaper coverage pointing readers toward televised town meetings and other TV stories. Consistent with what is known generally about local media patterns, TV coverage in the four projects we studied was typically wide but somewhat shallow, while newspaper coverage was deeper but somewhat more narrow in reach.

  In all communities surveyed, the news organizations that sponsored the civic journalism projects improved their local standing as a result. We asked citizens specifically whether the projects made them feel more positive toward the media involved. In Charlotte, 74% of the citizens surveyed said yes; in Madison, 67%; in San Francisco, 43%; and in Binghamton, 74%.

  General Journalism Findings

  Before presenting our specific findings, we want to add one important observation about the four projects we assessed. The strengths of these experiments in civic journalism came less from innovation in either presentation or technique (such as media cooperation or town-hall meetings). Rather, each project in its way, focused on issues or problems important to local citizens, in a sustained and comprehensive manner. All of the projects, in very different ways, listened to citizen concerns, took them seriously, and then invested the time, money, and experience necessary to engage in a type of sustained enterprise reporting that is becoming increasingly rare in American journalism.

  Contemporary journalism tends to divide into two kinds of stories: hard-news or “real” stories, and human-interest pieces, often profiles, that tell the “human” side of a situation. In “real” stories, the chief sources are usually experts, most often representatives of institutions. “Real” people, meaning ordinary citizens, are typically brought into these stories as devices for telling larger stories. What citizens have to say is rarely treated as valuable in its own right. Technology has compounded the problem, making it all too easy for reporters to report from their desks. For a journalist to spend time with people on the street or in their homes is not as common as it once was.

  But in the projects we studied, reporters went out and asked citizens what they thought about issues, listened carefully to their answers, and took those answers seriously. They viewed citizens not as devices but as sources who knew better than the experts what was important to them in their own lives and in this democracy.

  One could argue that these projects represent among other things a return to good reporting in the classic sense.

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  Civic Journalism in the Community

  Because we selected for comparison two projects seeking to increase public deliberation and two aiming at increased civic engagement, we will discuss the projects by these categories.

  Deliberative Projects

  The two projects we studied that seek to increase community reflection and discussion were “We the People/Wisconsin” in Madison and “Voice of the Voter” in San Francisco. Both ongoing, they also both began as election projects, “We the People” in 1992, “Voice of the Voter” in 1994. “We the People” is the oldest continuous civic journalism project in America.

  “We the People/Wisconsin”

  The Place
  Madison is the capital of Wisconsin, home of both the University of Wisconsin and of Midwestern progressivism, a city of 200,000 people who are predominantly white, middle-class, and highly educated.

  It is also a city in transition. Since the late 1980s, Madison has experienced a large migration of relatively low income African Americans from Milwaukee and Chicago and a smaller influx of Asians and Hispanics, changes that have required adjustments for both the older and newer populations and caused some friction between them.

  Nonetheless, Money magazine recently named Madison America’s most livable city. It is a community of citizens active in community affairs and has no clearly dominant elite. Power is shared by a large number of relatively equal players. Agriculture is still a major industry in Dane County; and area residents are employed in a wide and stable variety of industries: state government, education, insurance, and, increasingly, high-tech and big-tech research. At about 2%, Madison’s unemployment rate is one of the lowest in the country.

  The city has a history of public discussion reflecting a strong deliberative culture in the state, which long predates civic journalism there.

  The Project
  “We the People/Wisconsin” has been in continuous operation for five years. By the fall of 1996, it had sponsored 16 individual projects on elections or issues and won a handful of awards, including two regional Emmys. Long before our fieldwork, it had also become a local institution in Madison.

  For these reasons, we were somewhat surprised to discover that, while recognition of the project was strong in the community as a whole–nearly three-fifths of the local populace knows about “We the People,” according to our survey–awareness was considerably lower than was project awareness in Charlotte and lower than one might expect for a project so well entrenched, especially in Wisconsin.

  Recognition was strongest, however, among community decision makers. Virtually all local leaders we interviewed recognized the project and expressed support for it.

  “We the People” received its first support from the Pew Center for Civic Journalism in 1994. By then it had sponsored three election projects and several exercises focusing on issues. Its founding partners were the Wisconsin State Journal, one of the state’s leading newspapers, and Wisconsin Public Television, which broadcasts statewide and is exceptionally strong in the market. These two organizations had brought in a third, Wood Communications Group, a local public relations firm specializing in strategic planning and market research.

  In 1994, the first year of Pew Center funding, “We the People” gained two new partners: CBS affiliate WISC-TV, the leading commercial station in the Madison market; and Wisconsin Public Radio, previously an informal partner, which broadcasts statewide and reaches about 134,000 people a week.

  In the spring of 1994, this new partnership sponsored projects on health care reform and “We the Young People.” In the fall election, “We the People” concentrated on the races for governor and U.S. senator. Along with organizing town-hall meetings in three cities and live forums featuring citizens questioning the candidates, partners also asked Wisconsinites to host town meetings in their own localities, providing them with materials, training, and guidance for the purpose, and produced a “Voter’s Self-Defense Manual” that was offered free to citizens shortly before Election Day.

  The Pew Center’s support essentially enabled the partnership to broaden and deepen these efforts. The center also funded an evaluation of the 1994 election coverage. With money left over after the election, the partners produced one more “We the People” that year, an intensely local project on the rapid rise of local crime.

  In 1995, along with the land-use program mentioned earlier, the partners undertook projects on the state Supreme Court election, the state budget, and juvenile crime.

  In all, the partners had sponsored 12 projects by the time of our evaluation. Through the spring of 1995, more than 2,000 Wisconsin citizens had participated directly in “We the People” town-hall meetings, forums, and other civic exercises. Hundreds of thousands more had watched telecasts and rebroadcasts, listened to WPR, or read the Wisconsin State Journal and other newspaper coverage of these events.

  Evaluation Findings
  In no small part because of both project longevity and the strength of the partnership, “We the People” has sunk deep roots in Madison. The term has actually become a verb in local parlance: the partners have all been approached by civic leaders asking them to “We the People” a given issue. The term occurs repeatedly in conversations both public and private.

  Here, as in San Francisco, even citizens who expressed a general dislike for the media praised the project for its contribution to public discussion.

  As already noted, project recognition in the community as a whole was strong. Of those surveyed, 40% had heard of “We the People.” When reminded of the specific nature of the stories, the total percentage of those who were aware of them increased to 52%.

  Understanding of the project was weakest outside of the active leadership in Dane County. In a sampling of 24 citizens interviewed in depth–a group evenly divided between those who recognized the project and those who didn’t–half a dozen at most could describe the aims, topics, and/or format of “We the People.”

  This is due, in our opinion, to the nature of deliberative projects, which seem to seize citizen attention less forcefully than do problem-solving projects.

  The same phenomenon may explain another of our findings in Madison. “We the People” has increased public deliberation in that city and perhaps beyond it, but not as much we’d have expected given the project’s history.

  This said, we must add that the traditional orientation of “We the People” may be the secret of its longevity. Partners work most easily together on enterprises that seem a “normal” part of what they do anyway. Innovative election coverage is still election coverage. Once established in the early Madison projects, the new pattern could be applied rather easily to issues coverage. The more projects of either kind that the partners undertake together, the more they trust each other; and their growing comfort as partners sustains the momentum of the whole enterprise.

  Citizens aware of “We The People” in Madison indicated that the project had affected them in the following ways:

  • Made them think more about politics (62%).
  • Made them feel angry about people who do nothing to make this city a better place to live (52%).
  • Given them a better idea about problems important to people in this area (74%). 
  • Made them want to be more involved in making Madison a better place to live (64%).
  • Made them feel more strongly that they should vote in every election (60%).

  “Voice of the Voter”

  The Place
  San Francisco is one of America’s most complex cities. A high-tech center and a banking hub for the Pacific Rim, it is America’s most expensive city, yet it is also stratified by class and race, with large pockets of middle-class home owners struggling to maintain their foothold.

  The city’s social structure is an interesting hybrid. Along with very strong traditional bonds within neighborhoods, ethnic enclaves, labor unions, and political clubs, San Francisco has a rich tradition, especially since the 1960s, of communities organized around civic issues of mutual concern. From decades of shared struggle and accommodation, these communities have also developed bonds of social trust, even among disparate groups that do not necessarily care for each other.

  The City by the Bay is known for its vibrant civic and political life. There may be more active political clubs in San Francisco than anywhere else in the country, representing ethnic groups from Irish to Latino, a cultural mix from conservative working class to gay and lesbian, and philosophical positions from no-growth to prodevelopment.

  The Project
  Like “We the People” in Madison and other deliberative projects supported by the Pew Center, “Voice of the Voter” began purely as an election project.

  Unlike “We the People,” this project began with funding from the Pew Trusts as part of a national initiative launched in 1994 by National Public Radio and the Poynter Institute for Media Studies in St. Petersburg, Florida, called the NPR Election Project. (Chronicle Managing Editor Dan Rosenheim said his staff was planning such coverage before the NPR project began.) With Pew support, NPR affiliates in five cities including KQED-FM in San Francisco partnered with other local news institutions to improve the off-year campaign coverage by involving citizens in it.

  “Voice of the Voter” did in-depth reporting on issues identified in a citizen poll, sponsored candidate debates, and featured registration applications as newspaper inserts. Citizen response to the public kick-off of the project was a flood of messages via fax, voice mail, and E-mail. For its coverage that year, “Voice of the Voter” won a respected award from the local chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists for public service in professional broadcasting.

  By the time of our 1996 visit to San Francisco, “Voice of the Voter” had completed projects on three elections. The most recent was the city mayoral race, the focus of our fieldwork. Given the relative youth of the project–“Voice of the Voter” was then only 18 months old–and the media noise in the Bay Area, we approached our assessment with rather modest expectations as to project impact.

  But though overall recognition levels were the lowest of the four cities we analyzed, awareness was nonetheless surprisingly strong. Nearly a fifth of the citizens we surveyed identified “Voice of the Voter” without a prompt, and after the prompt, an additional 22% indicated they had heard about the project. A significant proportion of those reported that the project had given them a better idea about local problems, prompted them to think more about politics, made them want to be more involved in improving San Francisco as a place to live, and made them feel more strongly that they should vote in every election.

  In Madison, Charlotte, and Binghamton, the initiating media partners in local civic journalism efforts were newspapers. Because NPR was the principal in the Election Project, the alliance in San Francisco began with a radio station, KQED-FM. The partners were two much larger news organizations both owned by Chronicle Publishing: the San Francisco Chronicle, the dominant newspaper in the region, and NBC affiliate KRON-TV.

  In all its election coverage, “Voice of the Voter” has attempted to open a dialogue among the people, the candidates, and the media: to shine a spotlight on the candidates to get them to respond to citizens’ real concerns. The 1995 mayoral contest featured eight candidates including the incumbent. Again the project began with a poll to gauge voter concern; but this time the reporting focused on nine representative neighborhoods of San Francisco, each partner reporting on three of those neighborhoods in relation to the campaign.

  The Chronicle did the most intensive coverage, mainly the aforementioned series by reporter John King: two or three stories on each neighborhood over three and a half months. The Chronicle also ran a week–long series on issues important to voters as revealed by the poll. Again the partners sponsored debates. KRON also conducted a series of “minidebates,” each featuring two candidates being questioned by citizens. Citizen input was solicited throughout the campaign through community outreach, broadcast promotional spots, reader boxes in the Chronicle, and a hot line that on some days drew hundreds of calls.

  Evaluation Findings
  To assess the 1995 “Voice of the Voter,” we studied two of the three neighborhoods featured for the Chronicle by John King: the Castro district, San Francisco’s predominantly gay neighborhood, which is quite diverse, with an active sense of neighborhood that goes beyond sexual orientation; and, as noted earlier, Visitacion Valley, a neglected section on the southern edge of San Francisco.

  In the Castro district, we spoke to leaders, business owners, and citizens. Most had heard of “Voice of the Voter” and were able to describe it. Response across the board was generally positive.

  The many AIDS activists in the Castro section who were aware of the project tended to feel that its impact was limited, in our judgment because their issue of greatest concern was not a direct focus of the mayor’s race or, consequently, the news coverage. Business and neighborhood leaders saw a stronger impact. Those we interviewed felt that by focusing politicians’ attention on specific issues within the neighborhood, the project had been good for both the district and the political process citywide.

  In Visitacion Valley, we spoke to a cross section of residents, including two groups of seniors, one predominantly white and Hispanic at a Catholic Church, another racially diverse group at a community center administered by African Americans. Patterns of awareness were mixed but still remarkably high. Both groups thought that “Voice of the Voter” had raised awareness of neighborhood issues and been good for the area. Many of the people we interviewed described the Chronicle stories as the first positive media coverage of their neighborhood that they had experienced. They wished for more of this type of reporting.

  Groups of younger African American program administrators at two other community centers were generally aware of the project but reacted neutrally or negatively. To us, this reaction seemed more related to general resentment of the media than to the project itself–a sense that news organizations don’t give this neighborhood a fair shake. Still, the administrators did seem to view project coverage as better than the ordinary fare they’ve come to expect.

  Asian businesspeople we interviewed about “Voice of the Voter” were almost all unaware of the project.

  Citizens surveyed who were aware of “Voice of the Voter” reported that it had affected them in the following ways:

  • Made them think more about politics (49%).
  • Made them angry about people who do nothing to make San Francisco a better place to live (37%).
  • Given them a better idea about problems important to people in this area (70%).
  • Made them want to be more involved in making San Francisco a better place to live (47%).
  • Made them feel more strongly that they should vote in every election (49%).

  Civic Engagement Projects

  The two projects we studied that seek to increase community problem solving were “Taking Back Our Neighborhoods” in Charlotte and “Facing Our Future” in Binghamton. The Charlotte project, launched in 1994 and continuing into 1995, was undertaken to explore the causes of and solutions to crime in that city. “Facing Our Future,” which began in 1995 and was in full swing at the time of our visit, has as its goal the revitalization of the Binghamton metropolitan area.

  “Taking Back Our Neighborhoods”

  The Place
  The second-largest of the cities studied, with a population of 440,000 people, one-fifth of them African Americans, Charlotte has become a genuine boom town over the last decade, thanks partly to Sun Belt growth but mostly to a state regulatory climate that has made the city a banking center and brought record job growth to the area. NationsBank and First Union, both based in Charlotte, are now the third- and fourth-largest banks in the United States, respectively. The city is growing wealthier.

  But the boom has not reached the inner core of Charlotte. On its own, with 146,000 people in an area of 60 square miles, the section known locally as the City Within a City would be the fifth-largest city in North Carolina. Almost equally black and white, the CWAC has deteriorated rapidly in the past decade. Mill closings have led to 25% unemployment in some of these neighborhoods and rapid growth of absentee landlordism. The CWAC contains a majority of Charlotte’s substandard housing. One in six residents lives below the poverty level, and 50% of all violent crime is committed in this part of town.

  Even so, of the four cities we visited, Charlotte evidenced the strongest capacity to solve community problems. Although comprising different geographic entities, the city and Mecklenburg County together boast one of the most unified governments in the nation, sharing one police department, one school system, and one system of parks and recreation. Government, civic, and religious leaders work actively together. African Americans are active participants in civic life, with a vital NAACP and active church organizations. Neighborhood associations with strong grassroots leaders flourish in most areas of the CWAC.

  Along with other innovative social efforts, Charlotte has strong programs in housing. Until recently, more Habitat for Humanity homes were built here than anywhere else in the country. To finance central city housing in Charlotte, NationsBank created one of the first corporate community development corporations in America here–a community investment typically undertaken by governments and rare for any business organization.

  Among the banks, NationsBank in particular has expressed a strong commitment to the region as a whole, publicly stressing that the welfare of Charlotte’s predominantly white and affluent outer ring depends on the social and economic health of the CWAC.

  The Project
  Like the projects in both San Francisco and Binghamton, “Taking Back Our Neighborhoods” was started with Pew Center funding. Its partners were The Charlotte Observer, the city’s only daily newspaper; WSOC-TV, the dominant television station in the market; WPEG and WBAV, jointly owned, which are the two dominant radio stations within the area’s African American community; and United Way of Central Carolinas.

  The centerpiece of “Taking Back Our Neighborhoods” was a series of in-depth stories in The Observer on the areas of highest crime in Charlotte. Unlike traditional crime coverage, the stories treated not crimes but crime. Reporters went into the heart of the City Within a City and sought citizens’ opinions on the specific problems faced by residents–housing and unemployment, for example–that contributed to crime in those neighborhoods.

  Special efforts were made to assure that citizens who usually aren’t heard were heard. The stories were crafted to give voice to the CWAC residents in their own problem-solving efforts and to give other Charlotte residents a stake in reclaiming these neighborhoods. The public responded with an outpouring of concern and contributions that demonstrably improved community life in Charlotte. “Taking Back Our Neighborhoods” won several prestigious awards for public service and journalistic excellence; and The Observer series was a finalist in the public service competition for a Pulitzer Prize.

  Not surprisingly, project effects on public opinion were higher in Charlotte than in any other city we studied. A full six months after “Taking Back Our Neighborhoods” was completed, citizen recognition and understanding of the project remained very high among all segments of the community. Of respondents chosen at random, 81% had heard of the project. With further reminders about the stories, an additional 3% of all respondents indicated that they had heard of these stories, for a total of 84% awareness–comparable to the recognition resulting from a hugely successful national advertising campaign.

  The project began in response to the murders of two young police officers in Charlotte in October 1993–the first policemen to die there in the line of duty since 1991, and the first two to die together. The murders sent shock waves of grief and fear through the whole community.

  “Taking Back Our Neighborhoods” began in the spring of 1994 with the selection of five representative neighborhoods through highly sophisticated data analysis. Residents were then polled; and in stories that set the stage for the neighborhood profiles, the project was kicked off in The Observer and on WSOC-TV in early June. (Wanting to retain a distinct identity for its part of the campaign, WSOC named its project “Carolina Crime Solutions.”)

  Neighborhood coverage began in the African American community of Seversville, one of the most neglected sections of Charlotte. Though this neighborhood had a core of older, working-class home owners, local housing was increasingly under the control of absentee landlords, with an attendant rise in crime and decline in city services. With little result, the neighborhood organization had been petitioning the city for improved policing, street curbs, and enforcement of housing codes. A new public magnet school on a prime neighborhood lot was effectively closed to neighborhood children because it emphasized the teaching of German.

  A core team of four Observer reporters spent six weeks reporting on Seversville. With the reporting already under way, The Observer recruited a coordinator to handle town meetings and community outreach. An African American with an intimate knowledge of Charlotte’s neighborhoods who had worked in television as a community affairs manager, Charlene Price-Patterson was instrumental in assembling the needs lists, a doorway through which citizens previously inactive in community affairs could take an important first step.

  With input from others, she organized two important events in Seversville: an initial gathering of community leaders and longtime residents with reporters and editors who wanted to explain the project and hear about the community’s problems; and a town-hall meeting in Seversville for which 200 residents turned out to discuss community problems with experts and representatives of agencies that could help solve these problems. At this meeting, the United Way sponsored a resource fair to showcase such agencies as Legal Services and Crime Watch. On the spot, more than 60 residents signed up to participate in a new Crime Watch in Seversville–a number that quadrupled within weeks.

  Meanwhile, as Observer reporters pounded the pavements in Seversville, WSOC ran stories, public service announcements, personal safety tips, and regular reports on both crime solutions and individuals and organizations trying to make a difference in Charlotte.

  On July 17, The Observer devoted nearly seven full pages to an examination of life in Seversville, including a needs page with a phone number in bold type for individuals or groups wishing to offer help. On the same day, WPEG and WBAV aired taped discussion shows; and WSOC-TV ran a half–hour prime-time special featuring powerful segments from the Seversville town meeting. WSOC also broadcast a number for a phone bank where United Way volunteers took dozens of calls and matched volunteers with needs.

  On Monday, The Observer ran reports pairing Seversville with a nearby progressive neighborhood that had made headway in solving its problems. Follow-up coverage occurred as news developed.

  The pattern established in Seversville evolved as reporting continued in other neighborhoods, but essentially it had become the template for the entire project.

  By spring of 1995, the effort ultimately called “Taking Back Our Neighborhoods/Carolina Crime Solutions” had sponsored half a dozen town meetings in inner-city neighborhoods attended by hundreds of residents. It had also inspired more than 700 groups or individuals to volunteer help; prompted the city to raze dilapidated buildings, open long-promised parks and recreation facilities, and clear overgrown lots that were havens for illegal activity; and moved several local law firms to file public nuisance suits, pro bono, to close neighborhood crack houses.

  Success extended the project for six months to a total of 10 neighborhoods.

  In a retrospective look at Seversville in July 1996, The Observer noted that overall crime there had fallen 24%. During the first half of 1996, just 27 violent crimes were reported in this part of Charlotte–a 48% drop from the same period of 1995–and no one had been murdered in Seversville, according to The Observer piece, since 1994. At least between 1994 and 1996, the neighborhood grew safer. In our opinion, “Taking Back Our Neighborhoods,” though certainly not the only factor, clearly contributed to this reduction in crime.

  Evaluation Findings
  Overall, we found the effects of the project in Charlotte to be clearly and unequivocally positive.

  Along with its concrete accomplishments, “Taking Back Our Neighborhoods” achieved the following:

  • Raised awareness of the problems of the City Within a City among people who previously knew little or nothing about that part of town.
  • Prompted residents of the neighborhoods covered to discuss their common problems and join forces on behalf of better services.
  • Stimulated a wide-ranging group of residents to cross racial and class boundaries to begin working together in new ways.

  As Seversville represented the first phase of the project and thus offered the longest perspective, we focused our evaluation on that community. According to virtually all the residents we interviewed there, the results in Seversville were as follows:

  • Community police patrols increased almost immediately.
  • As fear declined, neighbors began sitting on their porches again; attendance at community meetings increased.
  • First Union donated a temporary double-wide trailer as a community center.
  • The magnet school opened its doors to neighborhood children after school and during the summer.

  In general, “Taking Back Our Neighborhoods” catalyzed a “virtuous cycle” in Seversville, a kind of domino effect in which one improvement spurred others.

  Comparable results occurred in each of the other nine neighborhoods eventually profiled, but to a lesser degree. As the first neighborhood profiled, Seversville benefited from being first in the spotlight. It also had an organizational framework, however fragile, and stronger institutional assets–the magnet school, a university on its border–than did other neighborhoods featured.

  However, in all 10 communities touched by the project, citizens and leaders reported that neighborhood organization was stronger as a result.

  Results beyond Seversville included the following:

  • The Charlotte Mecklenburg Housing Partnership stepped up its rehabilitation of run-down absentee homes.
  • Habitat for Humanity put up five new houses.

    The media focus on community needs enabled Habitat to mobilize new volunteers and builders.

  • The United Way reoriented its volunteer program to what neighbors said they needed and wanted.
  • Neighborhood leaders began to talk among themselves as they had not talked before, and new networks opened among them.

    These developments grew out of the coverage that made leaders aware of common problems. A leadership training session held at the close of the project and provided by Grassroots Leadership, a local nonprofit agency, helped to cement these ties. Neighborhood leaders interviewed about the training afterward said it gave them a better understanding of their common problems and the confidence to act in concert.

  • Links have begun to form between previously unconnected groups in black and white neighborhoods.

    One example: members of a white congregation gave money and labor to build a facility under Habitat auspices for an innovative, primarily black preschool program without a home.

  • Charlotte’s police chief said he hoped the project would “hold our feet to the fire.”

    Similar language was used by officials in city/county government and the civic sector.

  We were especially interested in these comments in light of initial response to “Taking Back Our Neighborhoods” on the part of some officials.

  Without claiming that everything was fine in Charlotte or suggesting that the media shouldn’t be taking on the city’s problems, these leaders nonetheless conveyed some defensiveness about the project, saying that they themselves were already attempting to make changes they recognized as necessary.

  Still, the overall evaluation of the project by city and civic officials was positive. Some officials, however, persisted in the view that many of the changes that had taken place during or since the project had already been planned, claiming that the media involved had underplayed city efforts.

  In general, we did find a strong official commitment to change. In our view, however, the project set up a framework that connected the people already working to solve problems in Charlotte and enabled them to coordinate their efforts. Official response to the problems reported by the media was quick because the city had resources and plans already in place.

  In the neighborhoods, two criticisms surfaced during the evaluation. Some citizens objected to the handling of televised town meetings by the TV anchors involved, complaining that the anchors seemed both ill-informed and interested primarily in neighborhood conflict. One predominantly white group said that the reporting had exaggerated both crime and vigilantism in their neighborhood.

  Even so, the citizens in this neighborhood, catalyzed by the project, organized to clean up a local park, pressed for more policing, and renovated a community center.

  As an effort to increase civic engagement, “Taking Back Our Neighborhoods/Carolina Crime Solutions” yielded a rather intriguing finding. Though it targeted specific problems, the project also increased community reflection–proof that action can prompt thinking as well as result from it. While our research was not designed to assess whether community deliberation about the CWAC spilled over into other matters of concern in Charlotte, the project did seem to stimulate discussion generally.

  We close with a word of caution about reporting that attempts to effect community change. The project in Charlotte raised reasonable expectations in that city for continuing media attention to local problems. Aware of these expectations, Jennie Buckner began a series of follow-up articles in The Observer this past summer. But many citizens and civic leaders interviewed expressed concern that if media attention flags, frustrated expectations could lead at least some citizens to feel abandoned.

  Citizens surveyed in Charlotte who were aware of “Taking Back Our Neighborhoods” said that the project had affected them in the following ways:

  • Made them think more about politics (59%).
  • Made them angry about people who do nothing to make this city a better place to live (72%). 
  • Given them a better idea about problems important to people in this area (86%).
  • Made them want to be more involved in making Charlotte a better place to live (78%).
  • Made them feel more strongly that they should vote in every election (67%).
  • Made them think more about the causes of crime (81%; a question specific to this city).

  “Facing Our Future”

  The Place
  Located in upstate New York’s Southern Tier, Binghamton was a high-tech center until a decade ago, its residents wholly dependent on IBM and a few other companies that were themselves highly dependent on huge U.S. Defense Department contracts. As these companies were not well diversified, the end of the cold war forced them into a rapid decline beginning in the late 1980s that left the community in shock. Though Binghamton has begun to rebuild and redefine itself, the waning of its defense and electronics industries spawned social, cultural, and leadership problems that have put a severe strain on the city’s ability to solve its own problems.

  This situation has been complicated by an extremely fragmented government structure–the mirror opposite of Charlotte’s. This larger metropolis of just over 200,000 comprises 13 townships ranging from Binghamton itself to very small villages, all self-governed, all with separate police departments, school systems, downtowns, and industrial histories. Not surprisingly, the community is extremely factionalized. Local inhabitants have a very local identity, seeing themselves as residents of Binghamton, Johnson City, Vestal, Endicott, and so on.

  Two business groups dominate business and civic life: the Broome County Chamber of Commerce and Partnership 2000, a group of powerful business leaders that shares with the chamber some members and goals but is constituted as a roundtable. A third group, the Economic Development Alliance, is the major business incubator, funded through a combination of public-private partnerships, and brings together business leaders and public officials.

  Community leadership is in transition. Once in the hands of older leaders who essentially administered the secondary business infrastructure that was left when the major players faded, leadership is now devolving onto a younger group who grew up in the banking, health, and service industries, or in a few high-tech spin-offs.

  The Project
  “Facing Our Future” has undertaken a daunting task: to begin to reweave the social fabric of the Binghamton area.

  The civic infrastructure there has been seriously damaged. Social trust has suffered. The citizens we interviewed were sometimes scathing in their criticism of the local business elite, feeling that these leaders had sat on their hands while the community deteriorated around them and had offered few if any creative solutions to economic decline.

  Such damage takes a long time to repair. While “Facing Our Future” enjoys the participation, energy, and goodwill of some very dedicated journalists and staunch support from the upper echelons of the Press & Sun Bulletin, the project’s founding partner, even the best civic journalism can only contribute to what will inevitably be a long-term rebuilding process.

  Furthermore, though the project enjoys good support from some local business and community leaders, it also encountered initial hostility in these quarters. Some leaders expressed resentment of the project for scanting their community efforts. Still others wonder how citizens can solve problems that elude the leaders themselves. By raising these difficult issues and putting them on the public agenda, in some instances, “Facing Our Future” initially exacerbated tensions in Binghamton. This risk is, as noted earlier, implicit in any civic journalism that asks hard questions.

  Still, we can say that the project had already stimulated widespread discussion and debate at the time of our visit in a community badly in need of a public forum. As in Madison and Charlotte, the partnership was able to saturate the market, guaranteeing almost blanket recognition; and as in the other cities studied, we found citizens strongly positive about the project in Binghamton. One reason: though Binghamton’s economic collapse had prompted several previous cycles of major enterprise reporting on the city’s economic future, “Facing Our Future” represented the first time citizens had been invited to participate in the development of solutions.

  Along with the Press, the other project partners are PBS affiliate WSKG-TV, NPR affiliate WSKG–FM, CBS affiliate WBNG-TV, the leading commercial station in the market, and State University of New York-Binghamton University (SUNY-Binghamton). “Facing Our Future” began with a survey conducted by the newspaper and television station and focus groups led by BU in the fall of 1995 asking citizens to name the area’s most important problems. The survey yielded a list of 11 issues ranging from business development to the needs of seniors. Early in 1996, the Press did a three-part master series on these issues, urging citizens to sign up for action teams on coupons printed in the paper. WSKG and WBNG aired specials and news spots on the project, ensuring that almost everyone in the community would be reached.

  Eleven action teams were formed at a large televised town meeting in April. Three hundred citizens signed up to participate. Leaders were drawn largely from Leadership Broome, an ongoing leader–training program sponsored by the Broome County Chamber of Commerce. Michelle Berry, a project coordinator hired with Pew Center funds, worked closely with the team leaders.

  The teams were charged with studying their assigned problem and developing specific recommendations. With project partners reporting periodically on their efforts, about 200 citizens stuck with the project through the summer and handed in their written reports in September. They later presented these reports in October at a community meeting.

  In October, the Press did a large write-up summarizing these reports for the entire community. At public meetings in November and December, citizens and discussion leaders considered the teams’ recommendations and began mapping out a plan of action. Under new leadership, the Broome County Chamber of Commerce has incorporated several of the recommendations into its own agenda. Press Managing Editor Martha Steffens believes that the community has moved “from hand-wringing to action.”

  Meanwhile, the Press has begun a series of editorials on the recommendations; and project partners have been working with the Chamber of Commerce to establish a “Building Our Future” foundation. Its purpose will be to help integrate into a gameplan the ideas and suggestions developed by the citizen teams.

  Evaluation Findings
  Almost all citizens involved in the task forces were enthusiastic about working together to sketch out solutions to complex problems.

  Predictably, the quality of these teams varied widely. A good handful of single-issue constituents offered simplistic answers. But some came up with workable solutions to difficult problems. We were impressed with the ability of task force leaders to allow everyone a voice while keeping discussions focused on solutions for the entire community.

  In the business community, as already noted, the project encountered a mixed reaction.

  Before starting “Facing Our Future,” the Press & Sun Bulletin publisher, a member of both the Chamber of Congress and Partnership 2000, sought support for the project from each of the three major business groups. Chamber response was divided. While the president favored the project, certain sectors were somewhat hostile to it, as was, on the whole, Partnership 2000 leadership.

  The response in the Economic Development Alliance was bemused. Leaders voiced an irritation with the Press that predated the project and reflected a view held by some leaders in all three groups. In essence they saw themselves as the economic development experts and said that their efforts should be covered sufficiently before covering the “Facing Our Future” project. (The newspaper had cut back its business beats at some point before “Facing Our Future,” and some efforts of the leading business players in the community were not necessarily being covered at the levels they had been before.)

  Parties on both sides attempted to transcend the tensions provoked by the project. But disputes persisted between the business groups and the local media about publicity and credit.

  Response to “Facing Our Future” from local mayors ranged widely from strong support by the mayor of Binghamton to hostility on the part of the mayor of Endicott, the former home of IBM.

  Among religious, cultural, and other community leaders, there was a major fault line. Some of these leaders felt that the business groups were the logical agents for economic redevelopment in the area, that citizens had little to contribute and ought not to try, and that the paper was undercutting business efforts while blowing its own horn.

  More progressive younger leaders felt that citizens should have a say in redevelopment and that without some ownership of it, the residents would never be motivated to follow the lead of the business groups. Proponents of this view held that “Facing Our Future” could be positive for everyone–and maybe decrease citizen criticism of the business sector–if it educated residents about the complexity of economic development and stimulated a dialogue across the community.

  Overall, the reaction of leaders in Binghamton was that since citizens were unlikely to find answers or solutions that the business elite would not discover on its own, the project wouldn’t help, but it also wouldn’t hurt.

  In Binghamton, even more than in Charlotte, we were concerned about follow-up to the project. While focusing community attention on community problems was the strength of “Facing Our Future,” its success in doing so also creates certain risks.

  The task in Binghamton is very large. Community change is a slow process. As in Charlotte, public journalism raised community expectations. While “Facing Our Future” holds the promise of strengthening civic life in Binghamton, and while we believe that the project has been and will be positive overall, we also fear that if the problems it tackles turn out to be too great to resolve before citizen patience wears thin, if the institutional framework to solve those problems is too weak, and if there is inadequate follow-through on the part of the project partners, public cynicism could increase.

  Citizens aware of “Facing Our Future” reported that it had affected them in the following ways:

  • Made them think more about politics (53%).
  • Made them feel angry about people who do nothing to make this city a better place to live (58%).
  • Given them a better idea about problems important to people in this area (80%).
  • Made them want to be more involved in making Binghamton a better place to live (67%).

  ---

  Civic Journalism in the Newsroom

  Among the news organizations participating in the four projects we studied, support for civic journalism was strongest among top or middle-level managers. At The Charlotte Observer, Wisconsin Public Television, segments of the San Francisco Chronicle, and the two public radio stations we studied, the concept has penetrated deeply into newsroom rank and file. But in most cases it has not been integrated into news coverage beyond the projects themselves.

  The Observer has moved to incorporate the principles of civic journalism into daily reporting, but even these efforts are fairly new. In the three other newspaper partners we studied, the concept of civic journalism had not been well integrated, even though “We the People” is considered by the Madison partners to be a permanent fixture.

  Television institutionalization was low. Despite upper-management commitment on the part of all TV partners, we found virtually no observable impact on daily TV reporting outside of the funded projects. The major work of WSOC-TV in Charlotte was done largely by one producer-reporter–a pattern typical of every TV newsroom we studied.

  In the case of public radio partners, Wisconsin Public Radio and KQED-FM in San Francisco evinced a relatively deep commitment to project concepts consistent with what they were already doing as public stations. Both have a strong news and public affairs orientation. At both stations, civic journalism seems likely to remain central for the foreseeable future.

  The only commercial radio partners we assessed were WPEG and WBAV in Charlotte, which are jointly owned. While these stations maintained a sound and cooperative relationship with the other partners, this seemed less a function of their commitment to civic journalism per se than of the benefits to them in pairing with the two most powerful news organizations in the city.

  Responses in Individual Newsrooms

  The newsroom interviews we conducted in each city yielded the following information about and insights into newsroom reaction to civic journalism:

  Charlotte
  Both the introduction of the project and its eventual integration into daily routine were unquestionably strongest at The Charlotte Observer. Thanks to then–CEO Jim Batten’s early interest in such efforts, the parent company has had a national commitment to civic journalism since the form began to emerge; and though “Taking Back Our Neighborhoods” was given no formal introduction at The Observer, the concept of public journalism and Knight-Ridder’s commitment to it were widely understood in the newsroom.

  Moreover, to carry out the project, Executive Editor Jennie Buckner had chosen editors and reporters respected by their peers. They understood project goals, and they were given the necessary time to report properly on areas of the city that were unknown territory to most of them. Though “Taking Back Our Neighborhoods” had its critics in the newsroom, the project was nonetheless deeply rooted in Observer culture. Critics and supporters alike expressed widespread pride in the paper, and there was relatively little newsroom griping.

  Perhaps for these reasons, Charlotte offered the strongest correlation of institutionalization within the newsroom and effects on the community at large.

  Some within The Observer newsroom resented project coordinator Charlene Price-Patterson, asking why an outsider was needed to perform functions they believed reporters could and should perform themselves. Certainly the paper could have conducted the project without her. But her knowledge of the community proved very useful. Though the reporters assigned to “Taking Back Our Neighborhoods” were competent, smart, and thoughtful, none but the crime reporter had consistently been in any of these neighborhoods. Price-Patterson opened pathways, providing some starting points for all of the reporters that would have taken them more time to develop on their own.

  Madison
  All the news managers involved in “We the People/Wisconsin” are deeply committed to the project and likely to continue it for the indefinite future.

  Nonetheless, and notwithstanding the project’s duration, “We the People” had not penetrated as far downward into the newsroom as we would have expected at either the State Journal or WISC-TV. Perhaps because no introductory meeting was held on the subject, the project was widely perceived in both newsrooms as a management effort. Though support was strong even so, we found less sense of ownership or understanding of civic journalism principles in either newsroom than we’d have expected.

  Wisconsin Public Television is a special case. Adjusted for its relatively small size and budget, the station does more news, public affairs, and documentary programming than any other station in the PBS system. Furthermore, its news and public affairs unit is small and tightly knit. Almost inevitably, all key personnel were in on the decision to found “We the People.” Consistent with the broader mission of public television in this state in particular, WPT staff strongly subscribed to the goals, ideas, and objectives of civic journalism.

  San Francisco
  At KQED-FM, where “Voice of the Voter” originated, and where the staff is small and the atmosphere collegial, the project, its approach, and its rationale were laid out to staff at the outset.

  The commitment to the project of the two larger partners related partly to the fact that though jointly owned, the Chronicle and KRON-TV had no history of cooperation and were actually somewhat wary of each other. Both sets of managers had entered into the project as an experiment in collaboration as well as civic journalism.

  At the Chronicle, the project was introduced to the principal participants–mostly political editors and reporters–in a seminar described to us by all partners as difficult. In the words of one reporter, who voiced a sentiment widely shared at the time, “They came in and tried to tell us how to do our job.” Reporters especially resented being urged to use citizen sources, asking “Why tell us how to do what we already do well?”

  In the end, most of these same Chronicle staffers became strong supporters of civic journalism. This may have been due to a policy decision of Managing Editor Daniel Rosenheim who remained an active member of the partnership committee and a strong project supporter. But after the seminar, although he guided and supervised coverage, he let his lead editors and reporters find their own way into “Voice of the Voter,” allowing them to develop a genuine sense of ownership. Partly as a result, the Chronicle today has a core of mid-level editors and senior reporters more strongly committed to civic journalism than at any other paper assessed except The Observer.

  At KRON, General Manager Amy McCombs and Local Programming Director Janette Gitler were and remain strong advocates of “Voice of the Voter,” and Gitler was an active and guiding member of the partnership coordinating committee. The station as a whole put significant resources into the project, including a number of town-hall meetings on KRON and its local cable news outlet, Bay Cable. Its institutional commitment to civic journalism is, perhaps, stronger than that of any other commercial television station. But through all of 1994 and much of 1995, an associate producer named Stacey Owen did the lion’s share of the work on the project. Though she was widely recognized as extremely competent and was promoted shortly after the project, the failure to assign more senior staff and reporting resources sent a signal in the newsroom that “Voice of the Voter” was not a high internal newsroom priority. Most KRON reporters expressed only limited awareness of it. Those aware of it criticized the newsroom’s failure to take it more seriously.

  Binghamton
  Of all the newsrooms studied, the Press staff were the most disconnected from the civic journalism project they had spearheaded. Many in the newsroom expressed some cynicism toward management initiatives and suggested that a Gannett corporate system of judging newspaper performance according to a point system that rewards certain kinds of community coverage motivated “Facing Our Future.” We found no evidence to suggest that this was the case. To the contrary, Publisher Bernard Griffin, a longtime area resident, and Editor Barry Rothfeld were genuinely supportive of the effort. Managing Editor Martha Steffens had been hired, in part, to move the paper in this direction. Still, newsroom dynamics at the time of our fieldwork made her efforts more difficult. Even reporters and editors who agreed with the general goals of civic journalism expressed some skepticism about the paper’s commitment to the enterprise.

  At WBNG, “Facing Our Future” was implemented as a community service project. Station staff exhibited a good-faith commitment to the project but relatively little understanding of civic journalism and little desire to incorporate it into general coverage. The project was seen as part of a strong community-service tradition.

  At WSKG-FM, the radio news director initially opposed participation in the project, taking the position that covering events the station itself was sponsoring constituted a potential breach of journalism ethics. The station resolved this dilemma by hosting on-air talk shows and forums with listener call-ins.

  Other Newsroom Findings

  • Newsroom critics at all sites asked why outside funding was necessary for the news organizations to undertake projects that were being promoted as central to their organizational missions.
  • Reporting became repetitive to those responsible for it.
  • Though intensive coverage created a citizen demand for more reporting, editors and reporters feel they are “done” with an issue when they have covered it exhaustively. “We’ve said all we can say; it’s up to the community now” was a common newsroom refrain.
  • Coordinators funded by the Pew Center in Charlotte, Binghamton, and San Francisco were central to project success.
  • Coordinators provided critical outreach from newsrooms to communities, brought community information into newsrooms, connected disparate social networks, and coordinated work among media partners. In Madison, Wood Communications played a central, but somewhat different role, and Madison now also has a coordinator.
  • Newsroom support for civic journalism projects inevitably depends to some extent on factors unrelated to the projects per se. But our findings strongly suggest that a clearly defined newsroom introduction at the outset should be a prerequisite for any such enterprise.