Project Topic: Project Topic

Kids & Character 2000, Elmira, NY

 in Youth/Children

Kids & Character 2000, Elmira, NY 1999

Partners:

Elmira Star-Gazette

The Sabre Radio Group

The Star-Gazette’s focus on teaching values to children turned out to be eerily prescient. Just weeks after its series on the subject ran, two teenagers opened fire on classmates and teachers at Columbine High School in Colorado. The event gave the Star-Gazette’s project an added intensity, prompting more area school districts, chambers of commerce and non-profit agencies to pick up the call for character education. Read more

Key Moments, Spokane, WA

 in Youth/Children

Key Moments, Spokane, WA 1999

Partners:

The Spokesman-Review

A team of reporters and editors used (and helped refine) civic journalism “mapping” tools to chart the key moments in the lives of children that can make the difference between success and failure in adulthood. Building on its “City of Second Chances” project, which told the story of Spokane’s expanding ex-felon population and how prisons were not solving the problem of troubled people who are incarcerated, the newspaper wanted to answer the question: What would it take to change the lives of people who end up in prison?  Read more

The Death of Ryan Harris: A Community Responds

 in Youth/Children

The Death of Ryan Harris: A Community Responds, Chicago, IL 1999

Partners:

The Chicago Reporter

The newspaper revisited the 1998 slaying of 11-year-old Ryan Harris and its aftermath, finding it a critical point in police-community relations in Chicago’s crime-ridden Englewood neighborhood. Reporters reconstructed the police investigation of the crime, which led to the brief and controversial arrest of two young, neighborhood boys. (An adult was later charged with the murder.) They also analyzed nearly a decade of crime statistics and police calls in the neighborhood, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.  Read more

New Hampshire Tax Challenge, Concord, NH

 in Governance

New Hampshire Tax Challenge, Concord, NH 1999

Partners:

New Hampshire Public Radio

An estimated 30,000 residents, or more than 4% of the state’s registered voters, used their computers to access the radio station’s online calculator to see how proposed new tax bills would affect them. 

In addition, NHPR used the site as a reporting tool, monitoring a Feedback Zone and interviewing some of the respondents for radio stories about the personal impact of various tax proposals. 

The nine-month project not only gave citizens the facts and figures they needed to participate in a public-policy debate, but brought a large online audience to the network’s Web site during daytime hours when its radio listener numbers are down.  Read more

Front Porch Forum, Seattle, WA 1998

 in Engagement

Front Porch Forum, Seattle, WA 1998

Partners:

The Seattle Times
KCTS
KPLU-FM
KUOW-FM

Following up on the 1997 mock trial on growth in the Puget Sound, the partners confronted longstanding assumptions about the issue with a series called, “Growth: Enough already?”

The mock jury in the 1997 “Puget Sound 2020” project had startled the partners by ignoring the common wisdom about growth – that it can’t be avoided; only managed. Participants said they favored stopping growth altogether. So the partners decided to explore whether that was really possible. Read more

Beyond the Ballot: Maine’s Issues in the New Millennium, Portland, ME

 in Elections


Beyond the Ballot: Maine’s Issues in the New Millennium, Portland, ME 1998

Partners:

Portland Newspapers
Central Maine Newspapers
WGME-TV (CBS)
Maine Public Television

“Beyond the Ballot” not only dramatically changed the way major media in coastal Maine covered the statewide 1998 elections, it set the course for their coverage of politics and government for the four years that followed.

Beginning with a poll of 1,106 Maine residents in the summer of 1998, the partners let voters decide which issues determine which issues candidates should address and the partners should cover. The poll uncovered a divide between prosperous southern Maine, where taxes and sprawl were most troubling, and the rest of Maine where jobs were the major concern. The partners then organized and covered a series of six day-long meetings in different areas of the state to probe deeper into the findings. Some 1,500 citizens contributed their input to the partners’ understanding of the issues. Other media also took an interest in the citizens’ views. Daily papers in Lewiston and Bangor, along with more than a dozen weeklies and local radio stations, covered the forums or wrote about the project.  Read more

The Election Connection, Los Angeles, CA

 in Elections

The Election Connection, Los Angeles, CA 1998

Partners:

Orange County Register 
Riverside Press Enterprise
KCET-TV (PBS) 
KCRW-FM in Santa Monica 
KPCC-FM in Pasadena 
Orange County News Channel

The partners, who’d been working together since the 1996 “Voice of the Voter” project, called their third joint effort “The Election Connection” to emphasize the goal of helping voters feel connectedto the electoral process. The project began with a poll of 600 voters to determine which issues were their highest priorities. Reporters from each news organization then spoke with respondents for stories on the poll and on each issue. Coordinated coverage among all the partners began March 16, 1998 with an overview of poll results. Issues stories ran every two weeks through the June 2 primary.  Read more

Race Relations in El Paso, El Paso, TX

 in Race Relations

Race Relations in El Paso, El Paso, TX 1998

Partners:

KVIA-TV (ABC) 

In this largely Hispanic town on the Mexican border, the media partners opened a conversation on race, immigration and language with a series built around a poll of 1,008 residents in English and Spanish.

The first step the partners took was to convene a panel of academic and civic leaders, who met almost weekly through December and January of 1997, crafting the language of the poll’s questions. For example, a question on bi-lingual education was changed from “Do you favor ending bi-lingual education?” to “Do you support bi-lingual education?” Read more