Civic Journalism Is… True Stories from America’s Newsrooms
Civic Journalism Is…
About delving deeper into the community.
Dave Zeeck
Executive Editor
News Tribune, Tacoma, WA
Several years ago, the News Tribune re-established its mission statement and it is this: “Our mission is to be the pre-eminent source of news in the South Puget Sound and to be regarded as a great newspaper by our readers and by our peers, in that order.”
It’s that last part that speaks to civic journalism: Before being regarded as a great newspaper by other journalists, we want to be regarded as a great newspaper by our readers.
We’ve recently begun exploring “civic mapping,” trying to chart informal sources of information in a community, and it is changing the way we view reporting. It’s introducing us to others in the community we might not have met. We’re getting stories we wouldn’t have gotten otherwise and from perspectives we wouldn’t have had.
For instance, we found out about a white supremacist picnic on the Fourth of July from just an ordinary citizen who’d heard about it. Now, we might have gotten that story eventually from a first- or second-tier source like the police or a civic group, but we cut many layers lower. We got to the organizers and their families.
The story was much better as a result. It had greater authenticity. It was a truer story than we could have gotten trying to cover it from one or two levels away.