Introduction

April 2000

This ToolKit is about how journalists can tap into their community’s civic life. How they can report first, and best, what is happening in the community – and do it with authenticity.

Folks like you at The Denver Post, the Tampa Tribune, the San Jose Mercury News, The San Diego Union-Tribune, the Tacoma News Tribune, The Wichita Eagle, Tampa Bay Online and WFLA-TV, the NBC affiliate in Tampa, have done civic mapping. You can too.

And it is well worth it – if you are willing to venture into public life. For when you do, a window opens and you will see what really makes communities tick: the underlying forces and trends that shift and evolve; people’s concerns as they struggle to make sense of things around them; people’s hopes and aspirations and how they connect their lives to the larger world.

A memo to reporters at The San Diego Union-Tribune put it this way: “By widening your sources to different civic layers and by deepening your sources within each layer, you expand your ability to quickly assess both breaking news stories and emerging issues in your community.”

Mapping a community’s civic life requires understanding and dealing with the entirety of civic life, which is dynamic and complex and is made up of a host of voices, perspectives and experiences.

So, you might ask, is this not just about doing more interviews?

The difference between doing an interview and tapping into civic conversations is the difference between knocking on a family’s front door to ask a few questions and seeking to sit in their living room to understand their lives.

Indeed, journalists tend to spend a lot of time in just two layers of civic life: the official layer and the private layer. They cover the official layer routinely. They cover the private layer when they need to get individual reaction to a news story, write profiles or cover individual tragedies or triumphs. Not nearly as much time gets spent in the other layers of community life.

Steve Kaylor at the Tampa Tribune says, “Think of them as a pyramid with city officials at the top. The deeper we probe into a community – past the bureaucrats and then through the civic activists – the broader the pyramid gets. At its base is the greatest number of people, readers and sources – and our best and most grounded stories.”

In short, civic mapping helps identify those other layers and the people and news in them. And it helps journalists better understand the layers they typically work in already.

The implications for reporting are real. A concern that bubbles up from the community will sound quite different from one that is discussed at a public meeting. And once a concern does get to a public meeting, journalists may need to provide a sense of connection between what is being discussed “officially” and people’s original concerns.

“You get to go deeper in the community and meet different people, which is the beauty of all this,” said Jack Keith at The News Tribune. “And the next time you’re on deadline, your improved source network and beat knowledge will save hours and instantly make your paper more credible with readers.”

Indeed, you will get the story first. You will write harder-hitting stories and find that you will have a lot more sources and voices to use.

“Mapping really taught us that just because it hasn’t hit city hall doesn’t mean it’s not worth covering,” said Frank Scandale of The Denver Post.

And the depth of knowledge you will develop will help generate a host of new story ideas that will improve story planning meetings. At The San Diego Union-Tribune, Karen Lin Clark tells reporters, “The techniques you’ll learn for doing civic mapping will help you quickly identify and write the types of stories that will connect you with your readers in real ways.”

Civic mapping is not about boosterism. It is not a fad or one-time project. It is not about getting sources for just a few reporters. And it is not about man-on-the-street or vox pop to add citizen voices to stories. It is for the entire newsroom.

Civic mapping “is a real good way to bond a team. I hear reporters talking to each other asking questions that relate to civic mapping. It encourages more inter-reporter discussion about beats, which is healthy,” said The News Tribune’s Keith.

The ToolKit

Use this ToolKit to train yourself and create a training program for others. It is not just for reporters; it’s for editors, news teams, photographers, producers and on-air talent.

Newsroom leaders will find a ready-reference chart that will guide your news team through civic mapping decisions you’ll need to make. You can think of it as your “game plan” for civic mapping.

You will find a poster that is a quick reference for doing civic mapping. Post it by your desk.

You will find this workbook with real examples and step-by-step suggestions to help you do the mapping in-depth.

“Civic mapping changed my life.”
– Karen Lin Clark, The San Diego Union-Tribune.

You will find a collection of actual civic maps used by journalists and clips that resulted from their mapping work.

You will find a video that brings civic mapping to life.

Your civic map might look like a map on the wall; it might simply be a list. It might be on your web site or linked to you and other reporters in some other way. The goal is for these maps to help you move beyond the “usual suspects” into a deeper and broader understanding of your community or an issue.

In the end, it is simply about doing better journalism. As San Diego’s Clark said, “It’s smart, it’s efficient. It quickly leads to stories with greater depth and perspective and helps you put community issues in context.”

By Steve Kaylor, Public Life Team Leader, Tampa Tribune

We write a great many stories using the same sources over and over again. And we quote city officials, bureaucrats and key civic activists as the main – and sometimes only – sources in too many stories.

We have too few stories that reflect the true concerns of a neighborhood or give a voice to a wide segment of residents within our towns. Often the first we hear about an important community issue is when it reaches city hall, instead of learning of it from the people most closely affected when it first arises.

Readers tell us, and viewers tell television stations, that we’re too often missing the point.

As a result, our coverage sometimes falls flat.

Instead of flat, we need to be round – inclusive, plugged in and grass roots. We need to ask better questions and learn to listen. To not settle for a pithy quote but to concentrate on what’s being said.

To try and correct some of our shortcomings, the Tampa Tribune, WFLA-TV and Tampa Bay Online jointly applied for training to better understand and cover our communities.

In March 1999, Deb Halpern and Steve DeGregorio from Channel 8, Rick Scheuerman from Tampa Bay Online, and Bayard Steele and I attended the first of three Denver conferences on civic mapping. Underwritten by the Pew Center for Civic Journalism, the conferences are run by The Harwood Institute.

The San Diego Union-Tribune, the San Jose Mercury News, The News Tribune in Tacoma, WA, and The Denver Post joined us in this effort to learn new approaches in reaching a greater diversity of sources.

In applying for the training, we knew we wanted to use the multimedia strengths of television, online and paper to reach more people and in a greater variety of forms. And we wanted to learn more about two communities – Citrus Park and Tampa Heights.

We decided to narrow our focus to a single community, the rapidly changing area of Tampa Heights. It’s a community rich in history. Racially diverse, the community faces redevelopment and gentrification because of its prime location near downtown and Hillsborough River.

We’re trying to learn Harwood’s methods for finding sources and places where people meet and discuss the issues of their towns. Think of it as a pyramid – with city officials at the top. The deeper we probe into a community – past the bureaucrats and then through the civic activists – the broader the pyramid gets.

At its base is the greatest number of people, readers and sources – and our best and most grounded stories.

And we’re learning why more open-ended questions – rather than pointed questions to get narrow responses – will help us learn more about what’s most important to the people we should be writing about.

It’s not that we don’t do some of these things now. It’s that we don’t all do them often enough.

If you have questions about those concepts, ask any of us. We’ll be happy to share what we’re learning, as we’re learning it.

Reprinted from the Tampa Tribune, March 31, 1999