Seattle’s Mock Citizens Jury Convicts
By Eric Pryne and Marion Woyvodich Guilty, guilty, guilty! That was the verdict when the “Front Porch Forum” staged a mock trial charging the citizens of the Puget Sound region with failing to do enough to preserve the area’s quality of life. The trial was the culmination of a year-long project titled, “Puget Sound 2020.” […]
Orange County Newsroom Conversations, New Approaches to News
By Dennis Foley Fifty reporters, editors, photographers, and page designers shift uncomfortably on hard wooden benches in a cramped room at the 226-year-old Mission San Juan Capistrano. Outside, the sun tries to fight through gray clouds and rain pelts the coin-filled plaza fountain. The blustery wind causes some of The Orange County Register journalists, chilled after seven […]
Newsroom Turnarounds: Civic vs. Traditional Approaches
By Glen L. Bleske Assistant Professor California State University, Chico Editors often opt for one model for remaking a troubled newspaper: They become mad bombers destroying walls and exploding comfortable traditions. Then they rebuild. One of the main props in rebuilding newsrooms in the 1990s has been civic journalism. But along the way, the conversation […]
Scouting Out Third Places: Framing for Depth
By George KennedyProfessor, Managing EditorThe Columbia Missourian The Missourian profiled various third places. Here at the Missouri School of Journalism, we’ve long believed in learning by doing. We’ve been doing civic journalism experiments for five years now, and we’ve learned a few things that might interest other pioneers. We began with Big Deal projects, usually multi-media. […]
In It Together: A Conversation about Race
By Pat Ford The Pew Center The Spokesman-Review didn’t shy away from reporting the community’s “dark side” in its series. Richard Butler announced the plans for his annual Aryan Nations Youth Congress with a lot of swagger last spring. The leader of the white supremacist group said a hundred of his members would march through Coeur […]
Reaching New Readers at the L.A. Times
Mark Willes takes questions. On Oct. 15, the Pew Center and The Atlantic Monthly hosted “Journalism into the Next Century: Mark Willes on the L.A. Times” before a high-level gathering of media representatives in New York City. The publisher of the Times answered a wide range of questions about his stewardship in Los Angeles and […]
Linking Community Groups Via the Web
By Pat Ford Pew Center for Civic Journalism Peaks Island, in the Casco Bay off Portland, Maine, is accessible only by ferry. It’s a lovely community of about 1,000 year-round residents but you wouldn’t read a lot about it in the local paper, the Portland Press Herald. There’s just not a whole lot of news […]
“Rethinking Philadelphia” Draws City into a Dialogue
By Pat Ford The Pew Center The Philadelphia Daily News is a paper with personality. Like many big city tabloids, it has fun zagging when its broadsheet competitor, The Philadelphia Inquirer, is zigging. Often, this takes the form of funny headlines or off-the-wall stories – or both. A recent story about rub-on treatments for impotence ran under […]
The L.A. Times Crusades to Make a Difference in Reading
By Pat Ford The Pew Center The Los Angeles Times “Reading by 9” project includes all the elements a newspaper can bring to bear on an issue: Front page stories, editorials, a special daily feature called “The Kids Reading Room” and a weekly page on Sunday devoted to reading. But it doesn’t stop there. The Times has a […]
Mapping Seminars Peel Back Layers of Civic Life
Mapping Seminars Peel Back Layers of Civic Life After only three months, journalists taking part in The Harwood Civic Mapping Seminars are making some discoveries. For one, they are finding that their initial views of the communities they’ve targeted are often far different than how these communities see themselves. And within the communities, journalists are […]