Take a Walk in the Woods … Listen to the Public
Forty seasoned civic journalism practitioners gathered Nov. 7-9 for a retreat, sponsored by the Pew center and hosted by the Poynter Institue. The goal was to assess past experiments and explore new ones. Here are some highlights from their conversations. Dennis Hartig, Managing Editor, The Virginian-Pilot, Norfolk,in explaining the paper’s new dedicated civic journalism pages […]
How to Keep Civic Journalism Working
By Frank Denton The Wisconsin State Journal has been practicing civic journalism longer than many newsrooms in the country. Its well-established media partnership, “We the People/Wisconsin,” explores issues quarterly, and its newsroom has undertaken two other long-term efforts — “City of Hope” and “Schools of Hope”– that have engaged the community. Here are some tips for […]
Challenging Assumptions One Preorter’s Experiences
By Eric Pryne For me, the mock citizens’ trial wasn’t the centerpiece of this exercise. It was merely a device — or gimmick — to get people thinking and talking with each other about the region’s future. It worked. The deliberation it provoked was the real centerpiece. I guess what impressed me most about the […]
Cracking the Spiral of Silence, Empowering People
By Frank Denton Editor Wisconsin State Journal I got a powerful lesson in framing recently when I went to a town hall meeting to hear some citizens complain about a group halfway house for federal white-collar felons being planned for their neighborhood. It was the kind of story that we cover all the time – […]
Sifting through Perceptions, Seeking the Truth
By Jim Perez The Chicago Reporter From the beginning, I knew my year at The Chicago Reporter would be spent doing a civic journalism project on Wrightwood, a neighborhood on the city’s Southwest Side that was experiencing racial change. In many ways this was one of the most difficult assignments a reporter can tackle. It […]
A View from the Civic Journalism Trenches
By Kate Parry Senior Editor, Politics and Special Reports St. Paul Pioneer Press The first controversial accounts of civic journalism experiments in Wichita made their way north across the frozen plains and into the newsroom where I work nearly 10 years ago. They challenged the traditions of daily newspaper journalism and fueled intense debates over […]
The Examiner Maps the Remaking of The New City
By Sharon Rosenhause Managing Editor/News San Francisco Examiner When we started “The New City,” our yearlong series in 1998 about the dramatic remaking of San Francisco, I never imagined that more than 100 Examiner staffers would celebrate The City’s changing neighborhoods over lunch at Al’s Good Food Cafe. The coffee shop in the Outer Mission is […]
A Citizens’ Eye View: Civic Journalism. Civic Engagement.
By Zack Stalberg Editor and Executive Vice President The Philadelphia Daily News Highlights from Batten Awards Dinner keynote speech by Zack Stalberg, editor and executive vice president of The Philadelphia Daily News, a tabloid with a circulation of 200,000 – 90 percent of it from street sales. So, it has to speak the people’s language. […]
Why “the Informed Citizen” is Too Much to Ask – and Not Enough
By Michael Schudson Professor University of California-San Diego Excerpts from the keynote address of journalism scholar and author Michael Schudson, Professor of Communication and Sociology, at the University of California-San Diego, at the Batten Symposium, May 3, in Minneapolis. Schudson is a former Guggenheim Fellow and recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant. His most […]
The Batten Winners: Journalism that Took Risks
By Jan Schaffer Executive Director Pew Center Taking Risks. This year’s Batten Award winners all took them. Quite a few. Unlike other journalism contests, the Batten Awards are distinguished for heralding work that not only moves the needle in the community-but also moves the journalism to some new places. Unbidden, this year’s winners all talked […]