Shining a Light in Dark Corners
By Pat Ford Pew Center Imagine the St. Louis Post-Dispatch inviting readers to join in serious conversations about important public issues in a section every Sunday. The section would have to include background on the issue and opportunities to join the discussion. There you have the basic ingredients of “Imagine St. Louis,” the Post-Dispatch’s redesign of its Sunday […]
Unconventional New Tool: Dialogue Connects Readers with Suffering Children
By Pat Ford Pew Center “I’m hungry. When does the bread people come?” — Bobby, age 3 “Don’t you know a lot of people die here?” — Jimmy, age 10 “They’re taking our daddy away.” — Lovon, age 4 “Didn’t anybody ever tell you life isn’t fair?” — Angelica, age 4 These are the voices of the “Motel Children,” […]
Philadelphia Inquirer Gives Voters a Voice and WPVI-TV Gets a Debate Ratings Hit
By Pat Ford Pew Center Sidney Toombs had been preparing for this moment for months. It was May 8, the final televised debate of the hotly contested Democratic Mayoral Primary in Philadelphia. All five candidates were there. Toombs and other voters taking part in The Philadelphia Inquirer’s “Citizen Voices” project would be asking the questions – […]
A Soapbox for the Common Person & Tell Us What You Are Thinking
By Pat Ford Pew Center A young man, all in black, with hair moussed into a wild halo, wants to talk about homelessness. Another, dressed in suit and tie, wants to talk about parking meters and how “they wait there ’til the meter is just about to expire so they can write you a ticket.” […]
Crime: The Oregonian Creates New Reflexes
By Pat Ford Pew Center With a big city like Portland to cover, The Oregonian has no short supply of conventional police stories – homicides, fatal car accidents, crimes of passion, random violence. But it wasn’t until the story about a two-bit car break-in that the paper knew it had really reached its readers. The story, […]
Health: Making a Difference in Allentown
By Pat Ford Pew Center They may not read every word of every story but there will be very few readers of The Morning Call who aren’t at least aware of “A Change of Heart,” the newspaper’s ambitious project to lower heart disease in the Allentown, PA, area. The Morning Call has promised stories on the topic every […]
Rethinking the Old. Trying Something New.
By Tom Still Associate Editor Wisconsin State Journal MADISON – “We the People/Wisconsin” (WTP) isn’t the nation’s longest-running civic journalism project for nothing. We have continually had to reinvent how we connect and engage with citizens. And last year, we took our biggest step yet away from our tried-and-true reliance on town hall meetings and […]
New Sensibilities Always Vie With Old Habits
By Pat Ford Pew Center Before she got her electronic database, Diane Whitaker used to hang out in a lot of gas stations. They were one place she could find commuters to comment on stories about the region’s highways. Now, she hits a few keys on her computer and sources come tumbling out– without those […]
Teens Go for “TeenGo” Web Site and Series
By Jessica Tomlinson Community Coordinator The Portland Newspapers It all started months before Columbine. The Portland Press Herald wanted to do a project that would give Maine teens a voice while creating a unique collaboration between print and online media. Then came the Colorado high school shooting that left 15 dead. “What is going on with our […]
New Sensibilities Always Vie With Old Habits
By Jan Schaffer Executive Director Pew Center There was sobering news for journalists in the new Pew Center surveys: Whites and minorities differed very significantly on whether important local institutions, such as police, schools, the local government – and the news media – treat minorities fairly. Nationally and regionally, the local news media scored the […]