Civic Catalyst Newsletter
Winter 1998

Where's Grandma?

By Mike Jacobs

Two things can be said for a flood. One is that it creates opportunities for service.

The Grand Forks Herald learned that while flood water was still lapping at the embers of our burned-out building. Grand Forks, N.D., and its sister city, East Grand Forks, Minn., were empty. More than 50,000 people had fled the rising Red River. Many didn't know where our friends and families had gone.

The Herald established an 800 number, and individuals called to leave messages for loved ones. The Herald printed this material every day in the week after the flood, and thousands of people found one another in the Herald's pages and on its Web site, gfherald. com.

As people returned to the flooded cities, the Herald published many column inches of tips about how to muck out basements, what ratio of bleach to water would best kill mold, how to restore wet pictures, whom to call about a warped piano bench. Much of this material was provided by the Cooperative Extension Service at North Dakota State University.

As homeowners began dumping ruined possessions onto city streets, the Herald printed useful information -- schedules of when trucks would come through neighborhoods to take stuff to the landfill and warnings about securing appliance doors so that children would not crawl inside.

When it became clear that recovery had passed some people by, the Herald worked with a local church group, the Victory Coalition. Victory provides lists of what people need, and the Herald prints the lists. As a result, people in need get refrigerators, hot meals, help moving furniture, warm clothes.

As another winter closes in on the Red River Valley, the cities face new challenges involving residents in planning the future. The Herald will try to be of service there, as well.

The Herald will reopen its "community conversation." The conversation was among the first public journalism projects funded by the Pew Center. In 1995, thousands of Grand Forks residents took part in discussions about the city's problems and its opportunities. At that time, residents were worried about the condition of streets and about public safety.

Here's the plan for the renewed conversation (which will proceed without Pew's financial help this time):

On the last Sunday of 1997, the Herald will print a status report detailing how the city is doing on its recovery priorities: housing, flood protection, downtown redevelopment and economic growth. Then, in January the Herald will convene a series of neighborhood meetings at which residents will be asked to express concerns and ideas about flood recovery and the future of both cities. A series of public opinion polls will follow to gauge support for the ideas. From this process, a public agenda will develop.

The Herald's role will be to listen, gather ideas, present information that can be helpful in addressing issues, and report on the process. We'll also try to help the community agenda along on the editorial page. Our goal is to create a way for people to talk about our future together, and then to act together to make things happen. In other words, the Herald wants to help our community work.

The renewed community conversation is meant to be part of the Herald's program of "journalism in the first person plural," in which "we" means not those of us who work at the paper, but all of us who live together in this place.

The Herald and Grand Forks have been returned to the condition that confronted George Winship when he founded the paper in 1879. His success depended on the community's success, and so does the Herald's success today.

So that's the other thing that can be said about a flood. It fosters clarity of purpose.