By Jan Schaffer
Executive Director
Pew Center for Civic Journalism
Regional Reporters Association, Rosslyn, Virginia, December 9, 1996 – In seeking to give you a primer on civic journalism in the 10 minutes we have, I thought I’d focus on a particular mainstay of our profession — words.So let’s do a little language exercise brought to you courtesy of all the practitioners of civic journalism who have been experimenting with the concept and refining it over the last several years.
Think of this as a juxtaposition exercise, contrasting what bothers civic journalists about the way they see journalism being practiced today with how they are trying to improve it.
What you will see, I think, is an entirely different vocabulary being developed in discussing reporting, writing and purveying information — entirely different from the labels that have been applied to these efforts.
Let’s start with one of the most common complaints of civic journalists: That our news coverage, in striving for that journalistic grail of “balance,” has instead become “bi-polar.”
Bi-polar vs. Balanced
Journalists have gotten into the habit of focusing on the extreme viewpoints on a subject, the warring interest groups, the challengers vs. the incumbents, the areas of disagreement rather than the areas of agreement, the areas of conflict rather than of consensus. Indeed, conflict is the way we define many news stories.
We go to our Rolodexes and we know exactly who to call to get the quote or sound bite to “balance” our story — to get the “other side.”
But what if there are more than two sides? What if neither side really represents the views of most citizens? What if many people find some merit in the arguments of both sides? How do we report their voices in our stories? What if some people are still working out how they feel about an issue and we lock them in, midway through the process, with a snapshot quote when they are not yet finished working out their feelings?
We seem to have forgotten that balance is achieved at the midpoint, not at the poles. Civic journalists say it’s OK to quote people who haven’t quite made up their minds. It’s OK — but not easy — to report ambivalence (which, actually, is sort of an internal, rather than external, conflict). They say our stories will ring truer with readers if they also capture the “great gray middle” — not just the extreme viewpoints, because that’s where most people are. And if we journalists are there, too, we will benefit by getting the story a lot earlier.
The Charlotte Observer recently tried some civic journalism techniques in reporting on a controversy that flared up over a play that contained nudity, obscenity and homosexuality. The theater group had received tax money. Christian conservatives were pitted against freedom-of-the-arts allies. The District Attorney was preparing indecent-exposure warrants. Then the paper, in an experiment to find the views of the silent majority, decided to take a quick poll.
Well, guess what? To the surprise of many in the newsroom, most respondents thought the controversy was being blown out of proportion. And while most didn’t think nudity was particularly appropriate in the play, they felt strongly that adults should be allowed to see the play without restrictions on content. Quickly, what had been a front-page controversy, fanned by the media coverage, just kind of disappeared.
What are some other ways that civic journalists are trying to achieve a better balance? One technique, instead of looking for “opponents” on an issue, seeks out “stakeholders.”
Opponents vs. Stakeholders
Usually there are more than two sides to a story. More than two interests at stake. Some civic journalists actually sit down and do an exercise in which they write on a tablet all the stakeholders they can think of on a particular issue. Then they try to represent these parties in their stories.
Is a controversial proposal to build a shopping mall simply a growth-no growth debate that pits the builders against nimbys? Or is it a question of quality of life, of taxes, of traffic congestion, of low-paying jobs, of race and ethnicity. Does it stand to affect the school system, senior citizens, young people, taxpayers, the business community, minority groups, civic entrepreneurs, motorists, pedestrians, public transit –and so on.
Civic journalists simply put a wide-angle lens on their stories and broaden their coverage so as not to exclude others from the conversation.
Elites vs. Everyman
Now, in seeking to give more interested parties a platform in their stories, civic journalists acknowledge that it often comes at the expense of coverage of elected officials, community leaders, and so-called experts — the elites. They may get less space, while other stakeholders and ordinary citizens may get more.
It’s not that civic journalists abandon these traditional news sources, rather the journalists are trying to avoid being overly reliant on them. After all, citizens can be very smart about their own lives and civic journalists are not afraid to dignify the ideas of ordinary people. And that’s not the same thing as turning these citizens into experts.
Spectators vs. Participants
Another concern of civic journalists is the tendency to write stories as though only the most obvious players have a stake — either professional, political, or economic — in the outcome. The rest of us are just spectators to the particular cat fight, legislative battle, or election campaign being reported.
Now, what happens if instead of treating our readers and viewers as spectators we treat them as participants. Participants in an election, a budget debate, in welfare or health reform. Participants in the most important issue of all: the governance of our democracy. If we treat our readers as participants instead of as spectators, it forces us into an entirely different master narrative.
That’s what a lot of the issues-based coverage in the ’96 elections was all about. Could the media give readers and viewers the type of information they needed essentially to make a “hiring” decision, to participate intelligently in the process and decide who they wanted to hire to run their government. To these journalists, traditional horse-race coverage was too myopic.
Interview vs. Conversation
Now once you start thinking of your readers and viewers as participants instead of spectators, some interesting things happen. For instance, where do you gather information. Through interviews with the major players? Or through a conversation or dialogue that tries to tap into a broader base of participants?
How do you find out what kinds of issues are on the minds of your constituency? How do you find better voices without slipping into shallow man-on-the-street kinds of stories?
One civic journalism technique is to change the nature of the interaction with sources from a standard interview model — “Me ask, you answer, or else” — to a conversational model.
How to do that? Usually it involves a different kind of listening. Instead of listening for good quotes, or for the building blocks of a story, these journalists are listening for patterns and common threads that link one stakeholder to another.
Sometimes it may involve bringing citizens together in living-room conversations, in focus groups, in town halls — civic spaces where citizens can gather information on a subject from experts or from one another — and spaces that serve as listening posts for journalists looking for story ideas or areas where they need to do additional reporting.
At its most basic, instead of talking “at” readers and viewers — sort of downloading information on them — it’s talking “with” them. This is challenging yet another standard journalistic practice, the one-way model of news coverage.
One-way vs. Two-way conversation
Right now, reporters generally propose a story idea, figure out whom to interview, dig up whatever documents might be available, and toss a lot of information, generally wrapped in pretty words (some readers would say slanted words) — back at their readers. And if readers have anything to say about it they can try to call the reporter — and get lost in endless voice mail, or they can write a letter to the editor. The letter may or may not be seen by the reporter and may or may not get published.
Well, there have been important changes in the field of communications in the last 10 or 15 years. We’ve seen the advent of voice mail and e-mail, of fax machines and audio text, of the Internet and its home pages. And our readers and viewers have gotten used to these interactive devices, just like we have.
Civic journalists have become active pioneers in using all these tools to make their news stories more interactive — and I don’t mean just on-line interactive.
You can tap into people’s gripes, mine their experiences, solicit their ideas, and generate feedback on where they think you missed the boat, what question you didn’t ask that they’d like answered, what issue they’d like a political candidate to address, what qualities are most important to them in electing a particular public official.
The traditional reaction of many journalists is to treat callers as annoying interruptions in their workdays, frankly as “idiots” who don’t know what they’re talking about. Civic journalists have come to value the input of these people because a) it helps them start where citizens are starting on an issue and b) it gives them a road map to do what journalists do best, which is to gather more information, add context and analysis. It helps them find out where their news coverage has not “connected.”
One of the most formal interactions with citizens involves the use of polls or focus groups as listening posts. A big difference, however, is that instead of using these survey research tools to produce an end product — a story — civic journalists are using them as starting points in the reporting process.
What fresh insights can they reveal into issues or concerns? Where are there reporting opportunities? Where did a citizen’s take on a issue suggest a new perspective or a new angle for a story? Where are people lost or confused on a subject that seems eminently clear and even old hat to reporters? Take Bosnia, for instance. Or Rwanda. My guess is it would be hard to find a reader (and probably many reporters) who didn’t need a better road map to follow what’s going on in these hot spots.
Knee-jerk vs. New Reflexes
Civic journalism requires some different kinds of journalistic skills, including the ability to be creative — yes, even experimental — in adjusting news coverage to stay connected to our communities. We have a very high comfort level with what I call knee-jerk or fill-in-the-blank coverage. To some extent, we need to have fast reflexes just to get our newspapers published and newscasts produced every day of the week.
We see conflict and our gut says “news.” We fill in the blanks on our inverted pyramid of facts or we cobble up an anecdotal lede; we get a quote from the “other side” and we call it a “wrap.” That’s “30.”
Well, civic journalists are trying to make balance and interactivity and participation instinctive reflexes — to make it a habit to use a wide-angle instead of a telephoto lens and to consider some new ways of handling the master narrative of their stories that avoid the traditional conflict model. They are doing this self-consciously at first because it’s hard to break old habits.
In Tallahassee, Fla., last year a new school tax increase was overwhelmingly defeated by voters who had been exposed to a vitriolic pro vs. anti-tax campaign. A few days after the vote, a city desk reporter asked the school administrator: What now? Well, the official said, “Nothing.” So the newspaper took it upon itself to draw up a grid of questions and go back to the four most visible adversaries with a different hook. Instead of focusing on where they disagreed, the reporter sought to draw out where these opponents agreed.
The newspaper ended up with a story that demonstrated a lot more common ground than ever was revealed in the reporting before the referendum. It was a departure from the knee-jerk model of coverage — one that ended up producing some renewed conversation in the community.
Control vs. Connectedness
Of course, giving ordinary people a voice in your story and departing from the conventional ways of doing business mean that journalists are going to relinquish some control. It may even mean journalists have to give up some of their voice to give citizens some space. That story budget line you — or your editor — wrote before you started interviewing might no longer fit the facts. Citizens may inject an element of surprise in your coverage. They may want you to write about issues that candidates, for instance, would rather not address.
Citizens also have more of an appetite for repetition than do journalists, who expect readers to remember that the paper already did a story on that subject — six months ago. Or was that two years ago?
Giving up control may also mean less of an emphasis on “gotcha” stories that so empower journalists and give them a sense of one-upsmanship over their competitors — but often leave citizens scratching their heads, wondering what’s the big deal.
I recently met with a dear friend who is a key assigning editor at one of the premier East Coast newspapers. We were discussing civic journalism and she says to me, point blank: “Why would I want to do that? Tap into ordinary voices? I like having control. I like telling other people what to write. That’s what makes this job fun. I get paid a lot of money to know what’s best.”
Arrogance vs. Accessibility
Newsrooms have come to breed a stunning level of arrogance. It’s no wonder readers are turned off.
One way civic journalists are trying to overcome both the reality and readers’ impressions that newsrooms are arrogant and inaccessible is to find ways to help readers access to the news.
How do they do that? One way is by framing the story so that it is not an inside-baseball saga that is impenetrable to outsiders.
Another way is to build in graphic devices that invite and encourage readers and viewers to contact the news organization and react to an issue, a controversy, a public problem. That also means giving people space or air time to have a voice on the subject and feel that their efforts to provide the feedback were worthwhile.
When Kathleen Brown refused to debate her two opponents in the ’94 California gubernatorial race, the San Francisco Chronicle, KRON-TV and KQED radio invited people to call and e-mail their thoughts on her stand. The resulting outcry brought her to the table and the debate was held.
Yet another way of building access gives readers and viewers more than a voice, it shows them some roles they can play. For instance, can they volunteer to do something, join a task force, belong to a roundtable discussion, come up with a solution, respond to a questionnaire.
In August, The Charlotte Observer did a story on how the state this year was requiring school districts to recruit parent volunteers and ramp up parent participaton. To help make the story accessible, the paper ran a chart that showed just what parents could do if they only had 30 minutes to give, or they could only volunteer on weekends. And the paper published a telephone number to call. The schools got more than 300 volunteers.
Similarly, the paper’s successful “Taking Back our Neighborhoods” project regularly published lists of very specific things that individual neighborhoods needed, plus a phone number to volunteer. Over the project’s 18-month life span, more than 1,000 Charlotte residents volunteered to fill those various needs.
Feel Good vs. Feel Accountable
A lot of our news coverage tends to fall into the feel-good or feel-bad models. We tend to write warm and fuzzy, human-interest stories that make folks feel real good. Or we write about the worst of human crimes, corruption, or tragedies that make people feel real bad — even sick to their stomach.
Civic journalists are striving for another type. Coverage that makes citizens feel accountable.
Generally, journalists do a great job of holding public officials accountable. What about citizens themselves? Do they feel no accountability for some of the problems because we’ve allowed them to believe that they have no role to play? That they are, indeed, spectators and not participants?
Give them space: For ideas, solutions, recommendations, feedback, media criticism, action teams. If they can buy into the problem in some way, feel some ownership of it, they are much more likely to get involved in finding a solution — their solution, not the news organization’s.
Detached vs. Attached
All of this means that journalists move from a sterile detachment that has no interest in the outcome of a public issue, to an objective attachment that reflects a belief that the news media, if we do our jobs well, have a role to play in helping citizens do their jobs as citizens.
It still involves being independent, objective and accurate in purveying information, but it also involves delivering information in ways that readers and viewers can find their connection to the story — why they should care and what they could do about it.
Market Driven vs. Market Connected
Some of the critics say that civic journalism is market driven. That it calls for just giving readers and viewers what they want to hear. From the model I’ve just outlined to you, I would suggest that the correct description is that it is market connected.
It restores to journalism a centerof gravity, a sense of mission, and a justification for why the U.S. Constitution gives the press First Amendment protection.
And while some of these tools may seem self-conscious at first, I’ll echo what Karen Weintraub, a city government reporter and civic journalism practitioner at the Virginian-Pilot, recently said:
“If you can tell it’s civic journalism, you haven’t done it well.”