Stormy Weather
Just as sure as the sunshine and warm weather will bring tourists to Virginia Beach, residents of the Hampton Roads area of Virginia know, it will also bring storms, hurricanes and, by August, the threat of major floods. Situated at the junction of the Atlantic Ocean and the Chesapeake Bay, the area is extremely vulnerable […]
TV Stations Try New Political Coverage
By Laura Tutor Special Projects Editor The Anniston Star For nearly a decade, the state of city public schools has stymied the social and economic progress of Anniston and Calhoun County, Alabama. Earlier this year, when the City Council proposed that the state consider merging the two school systems, The Star wanted to know where local residents […]
Mapping Pay Off: Better Stories
By Pat Ford Pew Center The Star-Gazette’s Kati Phillips immersed herself last spring in learning how to penetrate a community – find “third places” where people gather, learn how to approach them, how to engage in meaningful conversations that yield community stories. The Elmira, N.Y., reporter felt like she had a lot of work ahead of her […]
Bringing New Immigrants into the Debate
By Pat Ford Pew Center The traditional picture of Minnesota as the land of earnest, fair-haired Norwegians and Swedes has been cemented by humorist Garrison Keillor through his nationally broadcast radio show, “A Prairie Home Companion.” So a visit to Roosevelt High School in Minneapolis might be a startling revelation. About one-third of the students […]
Mapping Key Moments in Young Lives
By Pat Ford Pew Center There was Jody, a drug-addicted, teenage runaway. There was David, a 9-year-old tormented by the effects of fetal alcohol syndrome. There were Micke and Jonn, childhood friends who grew apart as one drifted to sports and the other to jail. Reporter Jeanette White found these dramatic subjects to illustrate The Spokesman-Review project […]
Neighborhood Newsroom’s First Grads
By Pat Ford Pew Center “You go, girls!” read the headline on the feature story that dominated the front page of a recent edition of Closeup, the weekly community news insert in the Savannah Morning News. The story profiled four women in non-traditional jobs: a pipefitter, a sanitation worker, a truck driver and a flight instructor. […]
Computer Kiosks: New Feedback
By Rob Chaney The Missoulian After the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club paid a visit that sparked a near-riot in town last summer, The Missoulian had its first chance to test its latest idea for reaching out to the community – home-grown computer survey kiosks. One kisok left near the clash site collected more than 30 comments in […]
Marion’s Moment of Truth
By Dana Clark Felty Pew Center Page one of the Marion, IN Chronicle-Tribune on New Year’s day featured the standard photo: the first baby of the millennium. In this case, twins had been born and the photo showed a happy mother and father with the newborns and a stash of gifts. Marion appeared to be twice […]
Case Study: Savannah Schools
By Eileen Putman Special to the Pew Center Like many southern cities, Savannah has seen white residents flee city schools for the suburbs. A strong parochial school base also skims students from public schools, where test scores are well below par. And despite Savannah’s growth rate, several businesses have abandoned the city because public schools […]
Scoring High Marks on Schools
By Eileen Putman Special to the Pew Center Standardized test scores rise in Baltimore. A testing gap between white and minority students narrows in Madison, WI. A much-needed school bond, given no chance of passage, wins by a landslide in Wichita. Did civic journalism in those three cities cause such dramatic changes? It’s a tantalizing […]