This is Not Your Father’s Newsmobile

 in Summer 2000  tagged Defining Civic Journalism

Summer 2000

This is Not your Father’s Newsmobile

By Jan Schaffer
Executive Director
Pew Center

What is civic journalism? Isn’t it just good, old-fashioned journalism? Not if you look at this year’s Batten Award winners and the semi-finalists on page 7. Nope, this is not your father’s newsmobile.

Throughout these projects, we see many common characteristics that make civic journalism very different from traditional journalism, at least the kind I grew up practicing.

The differences are not only in how civic journalists did the journalism but also in how they thought about their journalism and in how they talk about their journalism.


Relinquishing Some Control

Sometimes, it involves the journalists relinquishing some control and giving citizens some editorial space, Batten Award winner Chris Satullo, editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer’s editorial pages, told the attendees at this year’s Batten Awards at Boston University.

“Part of what the public wants us to do, I think, is hand over to them a little more of this forum that we control, which is a magnificent utility,” he says. Satullo has found several ways to allow his readers to weigh in and have a voice.

Sometimes, civic journalism involves empowering people to wrestle to the ground issues that are important and also emotional so that they can deal with complicated subjects at their own speed and in their own way.

“Rather than be swept away by this fire hose of information that is daily journalism, [people] get a chance to say: This is important. I want to get my arms around it,” says New Hampshire Public Radio editor Jon Greenberg, who spearheaded this year’s winning online tax calculator.


A Civic Journalism Checklist

So, let’s consider some of these differences.

Civic journalists think of their readers, viewers and listeners not as passive recipients of facts and happenings, but as civic assets who are capable of doing more than simply heightening their awareness with a news story. These news consumers might actually elect to take some action – especially if the journalists gave them a menu of things they could do.

Here’s a checklist that can help you identify civic journalism – or practice it.


  • It builds in some interactivity for readers, viewers and listeners. They can talk, deliberate, meet, question – even, as in New Hampshire, calculate.

  • It forgoes some traditional journalistic control and gives citizens some space to have a voice.

  • It positions citizens as stakeholders, capable of doing something about an issue.

  • It advances a discussion of useful ideas or solutions to address a problem.

  • It gives citizens some entry points to take various actions.

  • It frames issues in terms of people’s values and the choices around those values.

  • It looks for the internal – not just the external – tensions around tough topics.

  • It braves those issues that make your community squirm.

  • It holds citizens – not just public officials – accountable for civic life.

  • And it rewards journalists with different points of passion. It’s not about attaching another scalp to your belt. It’s about that delicious moment of knowing when you got the right story.

All of this makes the journalism particularly useful, relevant and engaging. And it may give us some clues about why readers and viewers and listeners are responding so positively. They don’t have trouble noticing the difference.

“They won’t use the nomenclature we journalists use – they won’t use the words civic journalism or public journalism. But they will remark about how different the story felt to them. They’ll say it had more authenticity, more relevance. It really resonated with them,” observes Jeannine Guttman, editor of The Portland Press-Herald, which won last year’s Batten Award.

I like the way Anniston Star editor Chris Waddle puts it: “Public journalism does not tell people what to think. Rather, it lets them think out loud.”