"As we anticipated, the findings were not all positive," said Ed Fouhy, executive director of the Pew Center. "Perhaps the most vexing to me was that the four projects were more warmly received in the communities than in most of the newsrooms that produced them. Citizen responses to civic journalism in their communities were consistently enthusiastic. Newsroom responses were frequently ambivalent or even negative."

The research was commissioned in January 1996 by The Pew Charitable Trusts. "We sought an independent assessment of what kinds of impact civic journalism was having and we are tremendously encouraged by the findings," said Rebecca Rimel, president of The Trusts.

The evaluators studied four projects selected to demonstrate how civic journalism worked in a variety of settings: large complex communities (San Francisco); mid-sized cities (Charlotte and Madison); and smaller towns (Binghamton, N.Y.)

This allowed the researchers to compare such older, developed sites as Charlotte and Madison with new ones, such as Binghamton, and projects that are primarily oriented toward public deliberation, such as Madison and San Francisco, with those that seek to engage citizens in a community problem, such as Charlotte and Binghamton.

In each case study, the researchers looked at five areas: Who has been affected in the communities? How have they been affected? What has been the content of the projects? How have the news collection, selection, reporting and communication processes been affected? And what is the impact of using media partners?

"It's the first comprehensive look at civic journalism across sites and provides a terrific foundation for further understanding the role and impact of civic journalism," said Tamar Datan, the Venture Fund officer at The Pew Trusts, which funds the Pew Center for Civic Journalism. Among the key findings:

The percent of people aware of the projects and the impact of these efforts on civic attitudes indicated that the projects had achieved excellent "reach."

Citizens who were aware of the projects said the initiatives made them think more about politics, gave them a better idea about important community problems, made them want to be more involved in the community, and made them feel more strongly they should vote.

Projects that focused on a specific community issue over a period of time were more effective in mobilizing both public deliberation and civic engagement than projects that episodically addressed a range of general issues.

The active civic core in all the communities were most aware of and most motivated by the civic journalism efforts, and, once mobilized, gave the efforts strong ripple effects throughout the communities.

Minority communities where targeted--in Charlotte and San Francisco--responded strongly and well.

Although the civic journalism reporting became repetitive to those in the newsroom, citizens interviewed had a strong appetite for more such reporting.

Civic journalism efforts studied appeared to work better in simpler media environments but are still effective in more complex cities.

The effects of the initiatives within newsrooms were less significant than in the communities at large.

The Pew Trusts plan to publish the results for formal release in mid-February after additional data are collected, according to Don Kellerman, director of communications.

The research comes as the Pew Center begins its fourth year as an incubator of innovative civic journalism efforts. With the recent selection of 13 new projects, the Pew Center, to date, has helped to support 47 efforts around the country.

Undertaking the research were Prof. Esther Thorson, Associate Dean of the University of Missouri School of Journalism and Director of the Center for Advanced Social Research; Prof. Steve Chaffee, of Stanford University; and Prof. Lewis Friedland, of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication and the Mass Communications Research Center of the University of Wisconsin.

In each community, the researchers interviewed key journalists, central community figures, and citizens in neighborhoods particularly affected by the efforts. Phone surveys followed.

On the whole, the researchers found that the civic journalism efforts were succeeding in benefiting the communities served and the overall democratic process. Most people surveyed who were aware of the four projects said the efforts helped them become more knowledgeable and concerned about their communities and gave them a stronger sense of their civic responsibilities.

The researchers also reported being "impressed" by the reach of the projects. In each community studied, recognition of the effort by local leaders and residents was excellent--higher than the researchers had anticipated, even in San Francisco, a particularly competitive media environment.

The researchers also said they were impressed by what the projects had accomplished in their communities--again, more than they had expected. They found that the projects opened options in the community and gave both leaders and citizens a greater sense of possibilities for solving local problems.

In Charlotte, in particular, the researchers said they were struck by how deeply the crime project "had penetrated into the corners of community life and how it had diminished barriers between people of different races and classes."

Within newsrooms, the projects were viewed in various ways depending on underlying labor-management relations, and whether there was early acceptance by respected reporters and editors.

In all but one case the initiatives were poorly introduced into the newsrooms, the researchers said, and were widely perceived as "management gimmicks."

Yet, the researchers found paradoxically that the uneven newsroom commitment didn't necessarily hurt the projects in the community.

"One of the most important effects of the projects were that they got reporters back out onto the street talking and listening to citizens," Friedland said. "It's something newspapers and TV stations always say they do, but frequently don't."

Moreover, the researchers noted, the journalists viewed citizens not as devices for telling larger stories--a habit of contemporary journalists--but as sources who knew better than the experts what was important to them in their own lives and in this democracy.

"One could argue," the researchers concluded, "that these projects represented a return to good reporting in the classic sense."