Proposals Merge New Reporting Techniques with Internet, New Technologies and Traditional Journalism Practices

Aim is to Deepen Regional Reporting;
Develop Alternative News Sources

Washington, DC, Nov. 11, 1998 — More sophisticated merging of new technologies and traditional journalism techniques with civic journalism practices are at the forefront of 15 news initiatives in 12 states that will be funded in 1999, the Pew Center for Civic Journalism announced today.

The initiatives were proposed by the news organizations and selected by the Pew Center’s Advisory Board. They reveal three underlying aspirations in the nation’s newsrooms:

• Providing readers, listeners and viewers with new ways to address neighborhood and regional problems
• Nurturing a broader range of news sources, especially those most impacted by issues being examined.
• Using the Internet, two-way TV and other technologies to involve more citizens in creating public policy and to report on citizens’ views and ideas.

“Again, this year, we see how innovators at regional news organizations are devising ways to make their journalism more useful and relevant to their communities — while adhering to core journalism values,” said Jan Schaffer, executive director of the Pew Center for Civic Journalism.

“These news organizations are developing an interactivity in their news reports that gives citizens the opportunity to participate in discussions, make recommendations or offer solutions to community problems. The citizens are striving to have a voice in their community; the news organizations are striving to craft coverage that rings truer,” Schaffer said.

“Many of today’s most interesting, innovative and important advances in good journalism spring out of civic journalism projects in local and regional media,” said Jack Nelson, Chief Washington Correspondent of the Los Angeles Times and chairman of the Pew Center’s Advisory Board. “Often, however, editors and reporters who want to experiment with new ways to do a better job of understanding their communities and reporting their findings need extra funding to do it. These projects usually don’t need much money. The Pew Center often can fill the gap for really solid projects,” he said.

The Pew Center supports some of the extraordinary costs of trying to engage readers and viewers in issues of concern — costs not covered in normal newsroom budgets. Approximately $300,000 has been allocated for the 15 initiatives selected for 1999, an average of $20,000 each. The ideas and the newsgathering techniques were proposed by the participating news organizations.

Civic Mapping

The Harwood Institute, Denver, CO
To launch the Harwood Civic Mapping Seminars.

News organizations seeking to go beyond official and quasi-official news sources are literally “mapping” communities and their complex layers of public life. This aims to help reporters uncover new listening posts and untapped sources of news. News organizations will nominate three journalists to work on a year-long mapping project and to attend a series of workshops. Five news organizations (15 journalists) will be selected.

The Spokesman-Review, Spokane, WA
To launch “Fixing Failing Families.”

This builds upon an investigative series, “City of Second Chances,” that examined the exploding prison population’s impact on Spokane’s civic life. The paper will work with civic mapping expert Dr. Lew Friedland of the University of Wisconsin to identify and report on neighborhood-based support and intervention systems for families in trouble.

The Anniston Star, Anniston, AL
To develop a system for identifying the “invisible” leaders in Anniston.

The Anniston Star seeks to develop ways to include more ordinary voices in the paper and unearth new stories that bubble up where citizens meet in the community. It also wants to create a database of these sources that would live on, even as young reporters move to other jobs. The newsroom will use polling, focus groups and a new “Tell it to” series, that will give readers a place tell local officials “what’s right and shouldn’t be messed with and what’s wrong and ought to be changed.”

On-Line Initiatives

New Hampshire Public Radio, Concord, NH
To engage state residents in creating an alternative tax base for the state.

New Hampshire’s tax system has been declared unconstitutional by the state Supreme Court. The “New Hampshire Tax Challenge” will solicit citizen input and ideas for an alternative tax system and create an “On-Line Tax Calculator” to give people an idea of what might happen to their taxes under various scenarios for a broad-based tax.

The Weekly Planet, Speak Up Tampa Bay, University of South Florida, University of Tampa, Tampa, FL
To help create an on-line neighborhood news “wire” for the Tampa Bay region.

The news service will be used by local media,, including the public access television station and the alternative weekly, to inform citizens and link local and neighborhood civic efforts with larger regional undertakings. University journalism students will use the “wire” to develop in-depth stories about neighborhood issues. These will available to local news organizations and be posted on the Weekly Planet’s Public Life web page.

The Portland Press Herald, Maine Sunday Telegram,Portland, ME
To help the teen community expand civic journalism in cyberspace.

The daily and Sunday papers will use KOZ software to enable teens to self-publish news and features on-line. Working with the papers’ staff, they will create a teen-centered web site. The papers also will bring the teen community together for four roundtables around the state. The intention is to combine an emerging medium (Internet) with teens’ emerging view of news. The newspaper will become a springboard to spark interest in public life among young citizens.

Changing Communities

NewsChannel 8, Springfield, VA
To examine remedies for the traffic congestion that plagues metro Washington, DC.

“Target: Transportation” will report on solutions-oriented suggestions culled from public input and discussion via regional polling and town meetings. The result will be community-based programming focusing on community-based solutions.

BronxNet, The Bronx Journal, Bronx, NY
To help create a “virtual town square.”

The Bronx community-access cable channel and the new tabloid published by the Multi-Lingual Journalism Program of Lehman College will create a clearing-house for community discussion and debate, anchored in a new Lehman Community Journalism Center. The effort will link the borough’s multi-ethnic communities via print, television, radio and the Internet.

Community, Social Issues

Internews Interactive, KTCA-TV, Minneapolis, MN
To use two-way video-conferencing to involve citizens in news coverage.

The Minneapolis public television station will build on its “Citizens’ Forum” project by using emerging video-conferencing technology. By providing fixed sites for the cameras, such as a neighborhood restaurant, residents will know where to go to express their views.

Seattle Times, KCTS-TV, KUOW-FM, KPLU-FM, Seattle, WA
To explore how the region’s cultural vision and values will affect future leaders.

The “Front Porch Forum” media partnership will explore leadership at the Millennium, including such topics as: how future leaders will meet the challenge of growing community fragmentation and shared power; how consensus-oriented leadership affects progress; how non-profit concerns affect leadership; and how philanthropy gets redefined in a region of more than 59,000 millionaires.

WSKG Public Broadcasting, the Press & Sun-Bulletin,Binghamton, NY
To examine “end-of-life” care and decision-making.

The multi-media partnership will reframe the end-of-life issues in south-central New York and north-central Pennsylvania. It will look at the medical, legal, financial, spiritual and ethical concerns through citizens’ eyes, assisted by town meetings, forums and outreach via the regional public library system.

Elmira Star-Gazette, The Radio Group, Elmira, NY
To launch “Kids & Character 2000.”

Should schools have a role in teaching values to children? The paper and the group of five radio stations will seek citizen input into how values should be taught in the community.

The Savannah Morning News, Savannah, GA
To examine the impact of the region’s growing elderly population.

The paper will use surveys, focus groups, forums and task forces to round out its reporting on the impact of the elderly on taxes, provision of services for senior citizens, nursing homes and life styles.

The University of California-Berkeley, The Oakland Post, KALX-FM, Berkeley, CA
To publish an eight-page newspaper supplement on an under-covered community.

An advanced reporting class at Berkeley’s School of Journalism will create “Inside Oakland,” an eight-page supplement to the weekly Oakland Post, which covers the city’s African-American community. The class will use focus groups and other civic journalism techniques to get feedback and story ideas.

The Chicago Reporter, Chicago, IL
To examine police-community relations .

In the aftermath of the death of 11-year-old Ryan Harris in Chicago’s Englewood community, a South Side neighborhood that frequently is the subject of news stories about murder, rape, poverty and other urban ills, the paper will seek examine the state of police-community relations.

Since its inception in 1993, the Pew Center has helped support 77 civic journalism initiatives that have sought to give ordinary people a voice in coverage of their communities, helped them identify problems and deliberate solutions, and empowered them to become active civic participants

The Center shares the lessons learned from these experiments Ð and other civic journalism initiatives underway in the nation’s newsrooms — with the rest of the profession through its workshops for journalists and journalism educators, through its publications and videos, in newsroom and classroom training, and in speaking and writing about the evolution of civic journalism.

The Pew Center is an initiative of The Pew Charitable Trusts. The Trusts, based in Philadelphia, makes strategic investments to help organizations and citizens develop practical solutions to difficult problems. In 1997, with $4.5 billion in assets, the Trusts granted $181 million to 320 nonprofit organizations.