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 […]
Civic Design: Involving Readers at Every Turn
By Pat Ford Staff Writer, Pew Center It’s shorter, it’s newsier and it seeks to involve readers at every turn of the page. The striking redesign of The Gazette in Colorado Springs is still being tweaked, but its goals and tools are part of a national trend toward what might be called “civic design.” The Gazette and other […]
Lexington Builds Common Ground on Growth
By Pat Ford Pew Center When Pete Baniak began covering development for the Lexington Herald-Leader, he never thought it would lead to a second career in pizza delivery. But that’s what happened when he tried to find the common ground in the divisive public debate over growth in “the Bluegrass,” the area around Lexington. The […]
Extra: Getting a Handle on Civic Journalism
By Pat Ford Pew Center An hour and a half till deadline and Idaho Interactive Editor Ken Sands of The Spokesman-Review is still waiting to hear from the writers of his lead story about a major development project in Coeur d’Alene. They’ve had a week to write their stories and yet, here he is, sweating bullets, […]