INTRODUCTION PAGE 3
INTRODUCTION PAGE 3 Indeed, it is more than dropping in on “quaint” places from time to time, something journalists often do during election seasons, to interview “the locals” at the rustic diner. And it is more than writing heart-wrenching human interest stories. It is more than just “listening.” The most fruitful insights from tapping […]
INTRODUCTION PAGE 2
INTRODUCTION PAGE 2 Covering civic life requires venturing into it. When that happens, a window opens onto the communities journalists cover. Journalists will see what makes the communities tick: The underlying forces and trends in play as communities shift and evolve; people’s concerns and their struggles as they seek to make sense of things around […]
INTRODUCTION PAGE 1
INTRODUCTION PAGE 1 This workbook is about how journalists can tap into their community’s civic life to report first, and best, what is happening in the community, and to do it with authenticity. Venturing into a community’s civic life will produce new story ideas, but that is just for openers. As noted on the inside […]
foreword
THE PUBLIC CONCERNS THAT drive issues in a community normally don’t arise at city hall or the courthouse. They bubble up from the rich and, to most journalists, dark and trackless swamp of public life. For the most part, they attract journalistic notice only when they near the point of getting on an official body’s […]
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Publications Civic Journalism: Six Case Studies SEATTLE, WASH. “Front Porch Forum” Tom Brown and the reporters at the Times were thinking along the same lines. “A lot of what you do still has to be that kind of journalism, reporting on campaigns and issues, problems. That’s where the newspaper can add value to the equation. There are […]
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Publications Civic Journalism: Six Case Studies SEATTLE, WASH. “Front Porch Forum” That Monday, KUOW began weekly four-minute reports based on the poll results. The reports aired twice every Monday through the primary, once during Morning Edition and again during the station’s mid-morning call-in show, Weekday. The second report was followed by an hour call-in show on the […]
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Publications Civic Journalism: Six Case Studies SEATTLE, WASH. “Front Porch Forum” Matassa explained civic journalism, using the Charlotte Observer’s 1992 election project as an illustration. Like Fancher, he didn’t pretend to have all the answers or even all the questions. Matassa’s tone signaled a change. Instead of the impersonal third-person, he wrote as though he were in […]
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Publications Civic Journalism: Six Case Studies SEATTLE, WASH. “Front Porch Forum” “At the first meeting somebody asked if it was a requirement that there be a TV partner, and the answer was no. There was a collective sigh in the room like ‘Oh, thank heaven’,” Fancher recalled. “Operatively, it was difficult enough to keep three […]
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Publications Civic Journalism: Six Case Studies SEATTLE, WASH. “Front Porch Forum” In a fall meeting with NPR editorial director John Dinges, Marcotte and Stillman promised to devote the equivalent of two full-time news people to the project, as well as part of their limited budgets. Acceptance in the NPR-Poynter Election Project meant both stations would […]
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Publications Civic Journalism: Six Case Studies SEATTLE, WASH. “Front Porch Forum” Washington State Trooper David Foxley, 42, is old enough to remember the days when neighbors chatted over a fence or moved easily among each other’s back yards. Foxley, a Kiwanis Club member and co-president of the PTA at his daughter’s elementary school, missed those […]