By Edward M. Fouhy
Founder
Pew Center for Civic Journalism
May 17, 1996 – I have three minutes to tell you about civic journalism. I’m a man of few words so I’ll be brief. This reminds me of the story about the guy who left the world and joined an order of cloistered monks. They observed strict silence except that every five years they were allowed to say two words to the Abbott. One monk bided his time until it was his turn to see the Abbott. He said to him, “Lousy food.” Five years went by and he had his second opportunity to speak and he said, “Hard bed.” Finally, fifteen years after he joined the order, his third meeting with the Abbot, he said simply, “I quit.” The Abbot responded, Doesn’t surprise me. You’ve been bitching and moaning ever since you got here.”So in three minutes a few words about civic journalism. My work in it stems from a thirty year love affair I have had with journalism and it’s inspired by my sense that there is a serious problem with my old craft.
First the problem. Let me put it bluntly: I think the American news business is broken, busted, in deep doo-doo to quote a famous American. I hold that belief because of what I see and hear every day in the press and on the air. And because the best social science research has been telling us about this breakdown for a decade.
Now we’re seeing the problem more starkly in the numbers of people who say they have stopped watching and reading (though not listening). Andrew Kohut’s Pew Research Center for People and the Press has been tracking the data for a long time. Consider the numbers they released earlier this week. Fewer than half the public — 42% — to be exact, now say they regularly watch one of the nightly network news broadcasts. That’s down from 60% just three years ago. Credibility, the currency of a news organization, is also down. Both Dan Rather and Peter Jennings have suffered small but significant erosion of their believability. CNN and ABC News, who have been the most highly rated networks for credibility in recent surveys, have also seen their credibility slide.
What about the newspapers? They had a very bad year last year with 17 of the top 25 newspapers suffering declining circulation, including some of our best — The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, they have all seen their circulation decline. And newspapers died in New York, Milwaukee, Houston and elsewhere.
The good news for the people in this room is that the number of hours people spend listening to the radio seems to be holding firm. Could it be that substance sells???
One of the most chilling findings about the state of our nation was contained in a recent study done by the Mellman Group, a Democratic firm, and Public Opinion Strategies, a Republican research firm, that found more than half the people they asked said that it is the special interests who really controlled things in Washington. That’s more than Congress, President Clinton and the parties all added together. And that finding signals a dangerous degree of national cynicism. When people become cynical about civic life, they stop reading and watching. They don’t need what we’re selling every day.
And that seems to be happening — both newspapers and television are losing their grip on their future. Young people simply are not developing the news habit. Less than a third of people aged 18-34 say they read a newspaper or watch a network newscast on a regular basis. Does that demographic group ring a bell with anyone? It’s the group advertisers care most about.
OK so there’s the problem–the audience for big media journalism is going away. In significant numbers Americans are shunning the news media. So what, you may say? Just market forces at work and like buggy-whip makers the people who work in the news business are just going to have to adapt to the future, find new jobs. That might be a reasonable reaction to most market pressures but the news media are simply too important to the success of our form of government to be allowed to fail under the pressures of the market or anything else. Journalism may not be popular but it is absolutely essential. News is the oxygen of a self-governing society.
So what’s the solution to the problem of a failing industry?
My answer to that question is civic journalism. Civic journalism is a label for an approach to journalism I believe to be a reasonable solution to the problem.
How about a definition? The soundbite definition is this — civic journalism is an effort to get the concerns of ordinary people, the citizens, to get their concerns into the newspaper and on the air. It is an effort to turn away from the arrogance, the insularity, the self-promotion and, yes, the ethical failures that have corrupted many journalists.
Public affairs, public life, civic engagement, call it what you will, has come to mean government officials and politicians talking to journalists. An insiders game and the public has been left out of that conversation.
The news has become a place for experts, not ordinary people and their concerns. It is synonymous with conflict, with a polarized discussion that’s akin to a talk show in which people from only the most extreme ends of the spectrum get invited.
Take the issue of abortion, for 20 years the flash point of American politics. If you listen to a talk show — present company excepted — you hear the pro-lifers against the pro-choicers, bumper sticker philosophies — while even the most superficial look at where the American people stand on abortion shows that about 7 out of 10 are very conflicted about the issue and reject both points of view.
Civic journalism is about framing stories through a different lens, through a lens that includes the citizens’ perspective not just the journalists’, not just public officials’. Civic journalism is about inclusion, about getting the people into the tent. If you believe in democracy, you have to hope that happens.
Does civic journalism work? Yes, we think so, and I would be happy to talk about how it’s working during the q and a.
But in the few seconds I have left, let me just answer the question that’s usually asked next. Is it a fad? You might want to ask Bob Oakes and Sam Fleming at WBUR in Boston, Sally Eisele and Raul Ramirez in San Francisco, Marla Crockett and Jeff McCrehan in Dallas. They have been using the techniques every day for several years. Where else is it working? In Tallahassee; Charlotte; Bergen County, New Jersey; Rochester and Binghamton, New York; Spokane and Seattle, Washington; and Cleveland, Ohio to name a few. There are statewide partnerships at work in Florida, North Carolina, and Wisconsin, and there were successful civic journalism partnerships in Iowa and New Hampshire during the presidential primary season and we see one coming together in the biggest state — California — for the fall.
Two final words: I’m finished.