Summer 1997
ASNE Survey: Support for Civic Journalism Techniques
Journalists surveyed for the American Society of Newspaper Editors registered solid approval of four approaches to civic journalism. The first two approaches, most like traditional journalism, received overwhelming approval, according to the April report.
The report, “The Newspaper Journalists of the ’90s,” found that:
- 96% approved or somewhat approved of a paper reporting on alternative solutions to community problems, pointing out tradeoffs that might be involved.
- 88% approved of newspapers developing enterprise stories, supported with editorials, to focus public attention on a community problem and helping the community move toward a solution.
- 71% approved of a newspaper polling the public to determine the most pressing community issues, then trying to get candidates to focus on those issues.
- 68% approved of a newspaper conducting town meetings to discover key issues and following up with stories focusing on some possible solutions.
A staffer at one Eastern metro paper explained the support for such levels of newspaper involvement by volunteering this comment: “Many papers, while remaining objective, led in some way the struggle for civil rights. Now, we do not lead as much as we try to simply report… Unless newspapers make people in their communities feel a part of them, as if they have a stake in them, they will disappear. Papers cannot be observers and reporters of a community. People no longer want to be merely observed. People want to be cared about.”
This caveat, however, came from a journalist at a small New England paper: “A newspaper and the stories it reports should reflect its surrounding communities and should always seek out the input of its readers. It is not a paper’s role to ‘lead’ its readers, but to listen to its readers. There is plenty of room for our own agenda and suggestions of alternative solutions via the editorial and op-ed pages.”