Several of the initiatives grapple with the future of such communities as Myrtle Beach, S.C., Long Beach, Calif., and the Puget Sound region.

This round of projects marks the fourth year that the Pew Center has helped to support pioneering efforts to engage readers, listeners and viewers in community issues through journalism that seeks to involve them as participants rather than as spectators. To date, the center has helped to support 47 initiatives around the country.

"The Changing Tide" will undertake a year-long examination of the political, economic and environmental forces that have changed the structure of life on the Southern Olympic Peninsula. The media partners will examine the death of the logging industry and the re-training of thousands of loggers for lower-paying jobs, the ecological cutbacks that have crippled a once bountiful fishing industry, and the unprecedented bond default of the Washington Public Power Supply System that mothballed a major local project. In reporting on the big picture, the news organizations will, though polling and focus groups, examine attitudes and feelings and focus a conversation on solutions.

"Long Beach Beyond 2000--Unity in Our Community" proposes to engage a multi-cultural population in a blueprint for the future of a city built on the Cold War defense establishment. Long Beach has been economically battered. The Navy closed its base, once a home port to 25,000 sailors and a shipyard that employed 7,000. McDonnell Douglas Corp., the city's largest employer, has cut 30,000 workers. Plans for a seaside Walt Disney theme park have evaporated. And rioters have ransacked and torched dozens of city businesses. The partners hope to engage residents--and decision makers--in a discussion of what kind of city they'd like to build to replace the one that went away. The partners propose to add to a quality-of-life survey taken last summer with deeper telephone surveys in the city's African-American, Latino, Asian and Cambodian communities.

In building on its town halls, the partners propose a "Civic Discourse" project that would help them interpret better what they have heard in these forums and bring that information into their news coverage. They propose to convene three "framing" conferences with citizens, experts and the media to help the journalists report on the issue being framed and help citizens discuss options for acting on the issue.

"Racial Change in Chicago: A Case Study" proposes to bring the investigative and computer-assisted journalism skills of The Chicago Reporter, a leader in reporting on race and poverty, to an examination of Wrightwood, a blue-collar enclave on Chicago's Southwest side. The partners would compile demographic data and conduct interviews that would serve as the foundation for a "neighborhood agenda".

"Eyes on the Bronx" proposes to focus on a range of multi-cultural issues in New York City's largest borough. The community cable network plans to work with journalism students at Lehman College, which has the nation's only accredited multi-lingual journalism program, in using town meetings and community forums to create in-depth coverage of diverse communities often neglected by mainstream media. Issues to be addressed include environmental concerns; crime and crime prevention; the impact of local, national and international politics on the Bronx; health; affordable housing; and such legal issues as immigration and naturalization and ethnic diversity.

"Boom Town Faces its Future" will examine this resort's efforts to deal with a booming tourism industry, rampant development and an astonishing population growth. Such growth has led to traffic congestion, wetlands preservation and water-quality concerns, and an increasingly diverse population. It has also led to tensions between a development-minded business community and residents who want to preserve a more tranquil quality of life. Through polling, kitchen table conversations, and public forums, the media partners will mine the issues and explore solutions.

Can Arlington, Texas, create a new governing compact between city officials and citizens? This community of 280,000, located between Dallas and Fort Worth, is seeking to move from a "public hearing" model of government to a more "deliberative" model. Citizens in neighborhood focus groups are being asked to engage in deeper conversations about such basic civic concerns as personal safety, fire prevention, economic development, schools, parks and transportation--in hopes that citizens will become more engaged and commit to greater participation. The media partnershope to cover these efforts to forge a new city-citizen relationship and to assess the progress through citizen inventories and a forum of Arlington neighborhood groups.

"The Voters' Voice" proposes to move into a non-campaign phase to give citizens a voice as their elected officials begin to govern. The partners plan to identify critical issues on the minds of New Hampshire citizens through polling and focus groups and to report on them. The partners also plan to follow up on how politicians deliver on their campaign promises. Part of the project will involve the creation of forums where citizens can directly engage politicians and policy makers.

The "Front Porch Forum" partners propose to move beyond their well-established election efforts to launch a Puget Sound visioning project. They hope to engage citizens in defining an agenda for preserving the region's much-envied quality of life into the the next century. The partners will design a process where a demographic microcosm of the region's citizens (perhaps up to 100) would form a "citizen congress" that would deliberate and help create a public voice on such big-picture issues as traffic congestion, population growth, environmental hazards and the quality of the drinking water.

The "Wanted: Jobs" initiative will seek to define the scope of unemployment and underemployment in a community with an eroded manufacturing base and a decaying tourism infrastructure. Workers in the local economy suffer from chronic underemployment in the low-paying and highly seasonal tourism industry. The partners plan to survey public attitudes about the jobs environment and to report on key elements of job creation, including the roles of the county's economic development agencies, of the schools, and of government regulation. Then through community forms and panels of experts, they will help the community explore its job creation potential.

"We the People/Wisconsin" will launch "The Silent Minority" initiative, an effort to broaden the reach of this long-standing civic journalism effort to the state's black, Hispanic and other minority communities. The partners will try to measure how minority groups get their news and to learn what issues and concerns are most relevant to them. They will convene focus groups in cities with large minority populations and on Indian reservations. And they will look for minority media partners in these communities.

About one million citizens in Oregon don't vote despite their eligibility. The media partners propose to identify and profile the non-voting Oregonian, to determine why these people don't exercise one of their most fundamental rights, and to find out what it would take to bring these citizens back into the the system.

Portland, Me.
Partners: The Portland Newspapers, WGME-TV (CBS), Maine Public TV, Maine Public Radio

"Sanford Phase II: The Search for Solutions." One year after about 50 citizens of Sanford, Me., began meeting to discuss issues important to them in the 1996 elections, they are seeking to continue their efforts--to enter a new phase, a "solutions" phase. The news organizations hope to cover these efforts from the frame of how people in an old Yankee mill town rediscovered the power they had all along--a voice that could get the attention of government leaders and the togetherness that could make a difference in their community. In chronicling this journey from disaffection to empowerment, the news organizations will document the citizens' 1997 struggle to formulate solutions to specific policy problems.