2000 Batten Awards and Symposium
The People’s Choice: The Media, the Campaign, and the Citizens
Introduction
By Jan Schaffer
Executive Director
Pew Center for Civic Journalism
Choice. It is one of the most highly prized values of American society; an emblem of our culture. And it was very much at the heart of the three projects that shared this year’s $25,000 Batten Award for Excellence in Civic Journalism.
The winners produced journalism that didn’t tell people what to think but actively engaged them in choices and gave them information to understand and think about the values surrounding those choices. They also demonstrated impressive enterprise by both large and small news organizations in helping citizens understand their community and do their jobs as citizens.
The Savannah Morning News spent months listening to the community about the impact of an aging population and decisions that had to be made to accommodate these changes. The project resulted in increased volunteerism, new partnerships among community organizations and possible changes in legislation.
In Philadelphia, as voters began to consider which candidate should become the next mayor, The Philadelphia Inquirereditorial board created a year-long civic dialogue that kept a potentially divisive race focused on the issues.
And in New Hampshire, as the state faced a school funding crisis that required passage of a new statewide property tax, New Hampshire Public Radio provided an online tool that allowed taxpayers to determine just how each different tax proposal would affect them personally.
Choice was also a theme of the 2000 James K. Batten Symposium at Boston University. “The People’s Choice: The Media, the Campaign and the Citizens” focused on campaign coverage in the 2000 elections.
Panelists, including distinguished journalists from around the country, took on the task of evaluating how the media was doing with campaign coverage and offering advice for improving coverage of the general election this fall.
The Arizona Republic’s executive editor Pam Johnson had some praise and some criticism for the national media’s campaign coverage in her keynote address, “Campaign 2000: Pressure is on the Traditional Press.”
Robert Dallek, presidential historian, asked journalists for some self-examination about their relationship with the presidents they cover.
The symposium was held in the midst of great upheaval in the news media, with the growth of the Internet as a news source creating debate about what is good journalism and even what is journalism.
We, at the Pew Center, feel we have been able to bring valuable input to this conversation by nurturing and spotlighting experiments like those that won this year’s Batten Award.
Boston University provided an excellent venue for sharing some of these experiments. The symposium allowed us to hold them up to close scrutiny, show them to students, to practitioners and to educators.
They introduced another way of doing things in this changing news environment. Another choice.
Jack Nelson
Chairman, Pew Center Advisory Board
Chief Washington Correspondent,
Los Angeles Times
“Civic journalism hasn’t been around very long but it’s accomplished quite a bit. It’s got great support and cooperation from journalism schools and from news organizations throughout the country. I know it also has critics. Some of them are my friends in journalism. I simply think that they’re wrong.
“I think that civic journalism has had a profound impact on newsrooms around the country. It’s changed some of the culture of newsrooms, and I think that’s been very good. I just happen to think that this is one of the things that we needed to have come along in journalism, to make some sort of changes.”
Jon Westling
President, Boston University
“Civic journalism reflects the hope that the media can rekindle the deliberative spirit of a small society in our much larger, more complex society.”
Tom Winship,
Chairman, Batten Award Advisory Board
Editor Emeritus, The Boston Globe
Chair, International Center for Journalists
“I’m amused at this civic journalism movement. I never saw a movement that was simultaneously criticized and practiced at the same time… It really has had a huge impact, this movement you people have got going.”
Bill Ketter
Chair, Boston University’s Journalism Department
“I think that if we don’t find a way to engage more people in the process, we’re going to see a further drifting away from participating in voting in our local communities as well as when we get to the big national elections.”