Project Topic: Project Topic

Illinois Voter Project, Chicago, IL 1993 

Partners:

University of Illinois
League of Women Voters

The partners teamed up for the Illinois Voter Project (IVP), an effort to make election coverage more issues-focused and responsive to voters rather than candidates. The university conducted a statewide opinion survey before the March 1994 primary to determine citizens’ major concerns. In June, the partners began a series of 14 focus groups designed to refine those findings, identifying in greater detail what citizens see as problems in their communities and possible solutions.  Read more

Taking Back our Neighborhoods/Carolina Crime Solutions Charlotte, NC 1994

Partners:

The Charlotte Observer
WSOC-TV (ABC)
WPEG-AM
WBTV (CBS)

Pew funds supported the hiring of a community coordinator, Charlene Price-Patterson, who was instrumental in organizing town meetings and focus groups and coordinating reader response.

Reporting started with a computer-assisted analysis of two years of crime statistics that helped the partners select which neighborhoods to focus on. They then polled 400 neighb orhood residents about what they believed to be the root causes of the crime rate. The partners also asked residents of each neighborhood to join an advisory panel that would help frame coverage and define what they saw as the causes and solutions. Read more

Safer Cities, St. Paul, MN 1995

Partners:

St. Paul Pioneer Press
KARE-TV (NBC)
Wilder Research Center

Breaking out of the daily police blotter routine, the paper commissioned a poll of 2,853 Twin City residents that explored public attitudes toward crime and safety and assigned a team of four reporters to look at crime in the context of race, age, gender and geography. They also explored the media’s role in public perceptions of crime.

The 10-part series began in the Pioneer Press on Sept. 24, 1995 and ran Sundays through Nov. 26. With interactive features, such as a risk quiz and a neighborhood audit, the series guided readers through a psychological evaluation of their own fears, a reality check about the dangers in their lives, the best ideas from around the country for fighting crime and a look at the most promising local efforts, including a map of resources and lists of safety tips. The paper also sponsored two public forums – each with about 40 people – on crime issues and reported the results. Read more

Maine Citizens Campaign ’96, Portland, ME 1996

Partners:

Portland Newspapers Inc. 
Maine Public Broadcasting Network
WGME-TV (CBS)

The “Maine Citizens Campaign” followed a group of about 40 residents of Sanford, ME, a neglected mill town as they deliberated the issues and interviewed candidates in the 1996 campaign. Conceived as a way for the partners to get more citizen voices into their election coverage, the project took on a life of its own as the citizens became empowered by the process and tried to become an action group. Read more

Changing Tides, Aberdeen, WA 1997

Partners:

The Daily World of Aberdeen 
Channel 20
TCI Cablevision

Political, economic and environmental forces were changing life on the Southern Olympic Peninsula and its paper decided to help citizens join together to meet the resulting challenges. Partnering with cable channel 20 – the only station in the county – the Daily World launched “Changing Tides” in April 1997, a two-year effort to chart a new course for the region.

The series debuted in the paper’s annual “Perspectives” edition, with nearly 100 pages in six inside sections on the region’s logging and fishing history and how that history related to present day issues, when environmental laws had reduced opportunities in those areas. Then the paper engaged citizens in discussing the changes and their impact through a series of three focus groups with 30 people chosen randomly from three separate areas of the region. The paper covered the focus-group discussions in front-page stories in August 1997 and also invited readers to add their input to the citizens’ comments. The paper printed responses in a Sunday feature, “It’s Your Call,” which became a regular weekly feature. The paper also used the input to develop questions for a telephone poll of 400 people. Poll results were published in December and were discussed at community forums. A final survey of 130 people recognized as community leaders – elected officials, educators, union leaders and others – was conducted by mail in March 1998 and showed the officials struggling to arrive at a common vision for the region’s future. Read more

New Hampshire Tax Challenge, Concord, NH 1999

Partners:

New Hampshire Public Radio

An estimated 30,000 residents, or more than 4% of the state’s registered voters, used their computers to access the radio station’s online calculator to see how proposed new tax bills would affect them. 

In addition, NHPR used the site as a reporting tool, monitoring a Feedback Zone and interviewing some of the respondents for radio stories about the personal impact of various tax proposals. 

The nine-month project not only gave citizens the facts and figures they needed to participate in a public-policy debate, but brought a large online audience to the network’s Web site during daytime hours when its radio listener numbers are down.  Read more

2001: A Learning Odyssey, Savannah, GA 2001 

Partners:

Savannah Morning News
WSOK-AM

The paper brought together 60 citizens in August 2000 as the first step in its project on Savannah’s failing public schools. The 39,000-student district was among the worst in the nation. It had gone through three superintendents in five years, the school board was fighting with the governor over school reform, and six schools were about to be taken over by the state. Yet, the meeting was the first effort to involve citizens in developing strategies for school improvement.  Read more

2002

Neighbor to Neighbor, Cincinnati, OH 2001 

Partners:

The Cincinnati Enquirer,
WCET-TV (PBS),
WCPO-TV (CBS),
WKRC-TV (ABC), 
WLWT-TV (NBC),
Kettering Foundation,
National Issues Forum

A year of extraordinary racial tension in Cincinnati in 2001 prompted an extraordinary response by the city’s media, led by the Enquirer, which collaborated on a project that involved 2,000 local residents in solutions-oriented conversations about race.

The paper had begun focusing on race even before rioting broke out in Cincinnati, publishing a race project March 4, 2001 – just five weeks before mobs took to the streets over the shooting of an unarmed black teenager by a white policeman. With Pew support, the paper worked with its partners to go beyond traditional reporting and facilitate crucial citizen-to-citizen communication. Read more