Global Issues - Media & Ethics

The Role of the Media in Building Community

By Jan Schaffer
Executive Director, Pew Center for Civic Journalism

The author advocates a new kind of journalism, challenging people to get involved, get engaged, and take ownership of community problems.


Civic journalism has come a long way in the six years since the Pew Center for Civic Journalism was created. Two things we now know:

  1. When the media does its job differently, citizens do their jobs differently.

  2. When you seed innovation in newsrooms, you get new ideas.

We live in an era today in which both journalists and the public in the United States are struggling to reach a consensus on what constitutes good journalism.

It's no longer enough for journalists themselves to think they are doing a good job. For journalism to continue to receive constitutional protection -- and continue to attract readers and viewers -- readers and viewers have to agree that journalism plays an essential role in our democratic society.

Recently, though, there have been disturbing data that this is not the case. National surveys document a reservoir of resentment toward the American press and its practices. Arrogant, insensitive, biased, inaccurate, and sensational are the words the public uses to characterize the media.

There appears to be a growing consensus that "news" is broken. Now the big question is: do journalists know how to fix it?

Newspaper circulation is flat or falling. Although people are reading more, they're not reading newspapers. And TV news viewership is plummeting.

The Freedom Forum, a nonpartisan, international foundation, recently conducted a survey on the state of the First Amendment. Overall, the press held its First Amendment rights in higher esteem than did the general public.

  • More than half of the respondents -- 53 percent -- said they believe the press has too much freedom. This is an increase of 15 percentage points from a similar survey in 1997.

  • Only 45 percent said they believe the media protect democracy, down from 54 percent in 1985. And 38 percent said the media actually hurt democracy.

  • Some 65 percent said newspapers should not be able to publish freely.

  • Disturbing numbers of people said the press should not be allowed to endorse or criticize political candidates, should not be able to use hidden cameras for newsgathering, and should not be able to publish government secrets.

What Can We Do?

This is troubling news if you're a journalist. I would also like to think that it is troubling news if you are a member of the public.

What can we do about all of this? One thing we are doing at the Pew Center is trying to go beyond simply diagnosing the problem; we are actually coming up with some prescriptions for solutions. In truth, many journalists are more comfortable with diagnoses than prescriptions, but feedback from the research is so overwhelming that even hard-bitten editors are starting to say "enough." But before we can fix things, we have to figure out what we seek to be. What is our role in building community?

Older models of journalism, especially in community and regional newspapers, were often tagged as "lapdog" -- under the control of publishers out to play civic booster and woo advertising dollars.

"Attack dog" is the model that now frequently comes to mind in the aftermath of some of the coverage of the Clinton presidency and from visions of photojournalists hiding in the bushes of the Kennedy family compound following the death of John F. Kennedy, Jr.

Then there's the "watchdog" model that journalists pay great lip service to. This is a role that is still valued by the community. But the public increasingly has misgivings about that role, and even journalists agree that the press is often doing more than simply covering stories -- they are often driving controversies, especially in looking at the personal and ethical behavior of public figures.

Some of the latest research shows that the press values its watchdog role more than the public does. Only 10 percent of the news media believe that press criticism of political leaders keeps these officials from doing their jobs -- but 31 percent of the public believes that it interferes with leaders doing their jobs.

Today some new models are being tested. One is that of "guide dog." Can there be a journalism that not only gives the people news and information but also helps them do their jobs as citizens? That doesn't just deliver the civic freak show of the day, but actually challenges people to get involved, get engaged, and take ownership of problems? That doesn't position them as spectators, but as participants?

This is where civic journalism has fostered numerous experiments. Civic journalism does not advocate abandoning the watchdog role, but rather adding further responsibilities to it.

The Pew Center for Civic Journalism

When the Pew Charitable Trusts decided to create the Pew Center for Civic Journalism, it was not concerned about journalism; it was focused on civic engagement. The Trusts feared that democracy was broken -- that citizens were not voting, not volunteering, and not participating actively in civic life; that people were not stepping forward to help tackle problems in their communities.

And they wondered if journalism might be a part of the problem. Were the media treating people in news stories as spectators at some civic freak show rather than as active participants of a self-governing society?

And they put forth a simple hypothesis: if journalists did their jobs differently, would citizens do their jobs differently? Could we nourish some experiments in newsrooms to see if there could be different models, models that still adhere to the core values of journalism -- accuracy, objectivity, independence, fairness -- but are also useful to citizens?

Civic journalism is now a broad label put on efforts by editors and news directors to try to do their jobs as journalists in ways that help to overcome people's sense of powerlessness and alienation. It aims to educate citizens
about issues and current events so they can make civic decisions, engage in civic dialogue and action, and, generally, exercise their responsibilities in a democracy.

Civic journalists believe that it is possible to create news coverage that motivates people to think and even to act, rather than simply enticing them to watch. And they believe it's their responsibility to do so.

I caution, however, that civic journalists don't want to tell readers and viewers what to think or how to act. They are simply creating a neutral zone of empowerment, arming citizens with information and sometimes with methods to shoulder some responsibility and offer some imagination or solutions for fixing a problem.

Civic journalists believe you can be a guide dog without relinquishing your watchdog role. And they are all too happy to abandon the attack-dog role.

Now, depending on your point of view, this is either a return to the fundamentals of good journalism or a revolutionary new approach to reporting the news. I personally believe it's more than just good journalism, at least the kind of journalism that I practiced for 22 years at the Philadelphia Inquirer.

It employs all the tools of good journalism, but it's not afraid to get more involved with the community -- in listening, in being a catalyst for activity, in helping the community build its own capacity. And it's not afraid to say: if the old journalism is not working, let's re-invent it.

What Is News?

One way that civic journalists try to do "different journalism" is to seek new definitions of news. Most journalists define news as conflict: incumbent vs. challenger, winner vs. loser, pro vs. con.

Civic journalism seeks to expand that definition. It seeks to go beyond covering an event, a meeting, or a controversy. It tries to convey knowledge, not just news developments. It's about covering consensus as well as conflict, success stories as well as failures -- stories that may help other communities deal with difficult issues.

Civic journalism is trying to come up with some new models of reporting that might be more in tune with new models of governance. Many local governing scenarios are moving away from a win-lose paradigm to a more consensus-based, win-win approach to solving local problems.

How can journalism be equipped to deal with that? We do a great job of covering the conflict, stalking, and keeping score of the winners and losers. But send a reporter out to cover a meeting in which everyone agrees on something, and he or she is likely to come back and tell the editor that "nothing happened." There's no story.

Civic journalists seek to examine where community players agree on something as well as where they disagree. That's new.

One of the Pew Center's more ambitious experiments was undertaken in Spokane, Washington, in 1999 when the Spokesman-Review newspaper used civic journalism "mapping" tools to chart the key moments in the lives of young people that determine whether they will succeed or fail in adulthood and possibly end up in prison. They came up with some interesting moments -- like the first day of fourth grade is when you will know whether a child is going to like school or not. Or the first day of seventh grade is when it's determined whether you're going to be a "nerd" or part of the "in" crowd.

The idea was not only to cover this subject, but also to uncover some intervention points for social service agencies in the community. This is a very different definition of "news."

Civic journalism is about reframing stories to make them more relevant to readers.

The Orange County Register in California experimented with a new narrative technique to tell the story of "Motel Children" -- achingly poor kids living in residential motels literally across the street from the Disneyland theme park. The story was told in dialogue, using the childrens' own words.

The response was overwhelming. It included $200,000 in donations, 50 tons of food, 8,000 toys, and thousands of volunteer hours devoted to helping "Motel Children." The county directed $1 million for a housing program to get families out of motels. A nonprofit agency launched a $5-million campaign to treat drug abuse among motel families.

Reporter Laura Saari said afterward that what amazed her was how everyone was working together toward a solution. "A similar story, told in a conventional way, would have put government agencies on the defensive. But because of the writing approach, no one felt like they were being blamed. So instead of wasting energy defending themselves, they've hit the street."

Civic journalism is about redefining balance.

Journalists report two sides of a story and believe it's fair and balanced. Civic journalists suggest that a better term is bipolar, not balanced, coverage. Balance is in the middle, not at the extremes. Civic journalists try to ensure that all the people affected by the issue have a voice in the story, not just the proponents of the most extreme viewpoints who send us their press releases. And civic journalists are not afraid to report on ambiguity, when people are still working out how they feel.

Finally, civic journalism is about providing entry points to involve people and encouraging interactivity between journalists and citizens. It seeks to create two-way conversations with readers, in contrast to a one-way downloading of information -- dumping a lot of facts on the public -- as is seen so frequently in traditional journalism.

This interaction can happen in the news pages, on the air, in cyberspace, and sometimes in real space -- at forums and town hall meetings. North Carolina's Charlotte Observer, while covering a major issue regarding school busing, found that it was getting some of its best story ideas in e-mails from readers.

In 1999, the Pew Center supported a program at New Hampshire Public Radio (WHPR) for an On-Line Tax Calculator. The courts had ordered this tax-free state to come up with a tax to fund public schools.

WHPR's Tax Challenge Web site had educational information, discussion space, and a nifty capacity that allowed people to enter the value of their home, their income, and the name of town they lived in, and actually calculate what three different tax reform proposals would cost them.

This was a very different, customized, individualized, and useful journalism that empowered people to play a role in a public policy choice. The Pew Center recently funded WHPR to develop a Utility Bill Estimator as a way to make the issue of utility deregulation more accessible to people.

The Bottom Line

So what's civic journalism's bottom line?

For the community:

  • We see quality journalism that also improves a community's capacity for dealing with problems.

  • We see that when you provide readers with the means to act, they will act.

  • We have seen in research that civic journalism efforts have measurably increased readers' knowledge of a particular subject.

  • We have seen that civic journalism efforts have positively influenced people's perceptions of the media.

  • We have seen other community groups adopt the model of civic engagement (through study circles and action teams, for example) that they learned from news organization involvement with civic journalism efforts.

  • And we are starting to see people running for elective office who never aspired to office until they became involved in a civic journalism initiative.

For journalism:

  • We see in-depth reporting that has resonated more authentically with the community, rather than journalism that parrots just two sides of an issue.

  • We see journalists rediscovering their communities -- and cracking some old stereotypes.

  • We see all kinds of innovations in newsrooms. New pages, new jobs, new criteria, new mission statements. A new vocabulary. At the Virginian Pilot in Norfolk, the mission statement of its reporters covering the state capital in Richmond, Virginia, promises to cover state government and elections "as an exercise in civic problem solving."

  • Finally, civic journalism has produced an environment that has allowed editors to take new risks.

I don't think civic journalism has all the answers to what ails the media. But it can take a big slice of credit for coming up with some remedies. And we believe, as St. Paul advised in one of his letters, that we need to "try all things and hold fast to all that is good."


The Pew Center promotes civic journalism experiments that enable organizations to create and refine better ways of reporting the news to re-engage people in public life.

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