Civic Catalyst Newsletter
Spring 1997

Developing New Reflexes in Framing Stories

From remarks by Steve Smith, Editor, Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph, at the Pew Center/RTNDF workshop "Civic Journalism: Doing it Daily," Chicago, March 15, 1997.

In my view, how we frame stories may be the most important, undiscussed issue in our newsrooms.

By training and practice, journalists frame their stories reflexively. Any veteran reporter knows, almost by instinct, how to write a meeting story or a speech story or a breaking cops story. Many of these reflexes are driven by production demands -- meeting deadline or writing to length.

One standard reflexive frame -- perhaps the dominant professional frame -- is the conflict frame. Most of us graduated from journalism school with the understanding -- make that a core belief -- that conflict makes news. So one of the frames we reflexively use is to focus on the conflict -- A to Z -- as if that frame can define a complex issue.

Another standard frame is the dispassionate observer frame, which I think is the template for breaking news, especially police news. That frame suggests there is meaning in a bare recitation of facts presented in a distant, third-person voice and in a certain order.

But there are many, many possible frames for any story. And most of them fall outside our natural reflexes.

Choosing the frame for any story is the most powerful decision a journalist will make. Identifying and developing alternative frames is, I think, a high journalistic practice.

To illustrate the concept of framing, I go back to the first years of my professional career, at the Register-Guard in Eugene, Oregon. I covered seven communities -- seven city councils, nine school boards, the works. At each meeting, there would be a raised platform for the board or council and for the administration and, always, a small press table set up off to the side, often on the same riser.

I would sit at the press table, buried under the advance information -- the agendas, budgets, policy reviews. The meeting would then happen and when it was over, the audience would leave and I'd go up to the board members and ask my questions and get my answers, go back to the office and write the story.

In recent years, I've begun to wonder what I was missing. Out in that audience, they didn't have the briefing materials from the board members. They didn't have the agenda packet. They didn't have the budget numbers. How many times over the two years that I did this were folks in the audience asking, "What did he say?" "What does that mean?" "I don't understand, this is a mystery to me."

To me, that is an example of framing that I can relate to. If I'm trying to cover from the center of the community, if I'm trying to understand the community, I need to sit in the audience, not at the press table. From the press table, my frame inevitably was institutional. From within the audience, my frame would, inevitably, be civic.

In my view, there are two types of framing -- civic framing and personal or personalized framing. They share certain attributes and tools, but are different in important, fundamental ways.

Civic framing is defined more by process and is identified more closely with areas of public life: politics, government, elections.

Personal framing is defined more by the feelings, attitudes and voices of individuals and can relate to stories that have nothing to do with government.

The process of framing a story civically helps us understand and report in more meaningful ways on how the community interacts with, interrelates to, and potentially solves a pressing community problem. Much of the experimentation in civic framing involves projects rather than day-to-day coverage.

Personal framing can actually begin to affect the way we do business on a day-to-day basis -- how we covercops, arts and entertainment, the way we handle visuals, photography and graphics. Maybe even the way we write obituaries.

Civic framing requires a thorough understanding of the institutional landscape in the community and a thorough understanding of the conflicting values at work that may prevent or forestall the resolution of pressing problems.

Personalized framing requires a much more personal association with the community so that a journalist can understand its people, their hopes, their fears, their ambitions. It requires more involvement on the part of staff. It requires letting our defenses down and sometimes bringing our own personal experiences and values to the table in the discussions that we have.

The point of framing is to capture the complexity of civic dialogue and avoid the simplicity. "What is the essence of this story?" That's different than "What is the conflict of this story?"

That is what framing is all about -- better stories based on a better understanding of people and their community rather than journalistic reflex.

There are tools (practices) that can help you do a better job of framing. Two of the most important:

Public Listening
(a Jay Rosen concept): That is the ability of journalists to listen with open minds and open ears; to understand what people are really saying. Not getting the superficial quotes or soundbites but moving very deeply into the conversation. It's different from the kind of listening journalists traditionally engage in. Public listening involves open-ended interviewing. It's asking people about their hopes and fears and values rather than asking them their opinions.

Civic Mapping
(a Harwood Group concept): Civic mapping is a process that helps a newspaper staff understand where in a community discussions are taking place on issues yet to surface in the body politic. Civic mapping suggests there is a way to tap into those conversations at a point below our typical line of sight. If we can find and tap into those conversations, it might be possible to understand what is being said before ideas, attitudes and opinions gel into something approaching public judgment.

There are many other good framing tools. They include ongoing community conversations; stakeholder meetings; beat advisory groups; press table bans; role-playing exercises to frame stories; appropriate staff involvement in the community; programmatic contacts between news staffers and citizens.

I believe that quality framing discussions -- discussions that have the power to change our reporting and writing reflexes -- are the key to the daily practice of what we call civic journalism. But there is considerable experimentation to be done before the theory is proven.