Civic Journalism: Six Case Studies
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF.
"Voice of the Voter"

Putting it Together

Other projects were in Boston, Dallas, Seattle, and Wichita. In each city, the public radio and newspaper partners were free to design their own projects, which could include recruiting television partners.

San Francisco's NPR affiliate KQED-FM was the first partner in place; news director Raul Ramirez had taken part in the national NPR planning. But Ramirez would be on a Nieman fellowship at Harvard University for the first six months of 1994, leaving assistant news director Sally Eisele to make the project happen.

"I wasn't sure what this project was going to be," said Eisele, aware that the very flexibility that encouraged each NPR-Poynter project to invent itself also meant she and the other newsroom coordinators would be winging it right from the start.

Before he left, Ramirez, along with NPR editorial director John Dinges and Poynter's Ed Miller, talked about several possible newspaper partners, but, according to Ramirez, they "couldn't escape the fact that the San Francisco Chronicle is the paper of Northern California."

For Chronicle executive editor Matt Wilson, the project's aim made sense: "Political campaigns have become very adept at setting agendas that might not be the agenda the public would choose. [In the NPR project,] voters are part of the process, not something the process is aimed at."

Wilson and managing editor Dan Rosenheim knew they were making a commitment without the full backing of their own staff.

"Our curiosity, interest, and enthusiasm was not shared by our rank-and-file reporters," Rosenheim recalled. There were three areas of concern: "Are you telling us we've been doing a bad job? How much of what we'd be doing is really news? We're the experts; we're in the best position to determine."

Indeed, several staffers recalled outright hostility to the idea of the initiative -- and to having advisers big footing it into their newsroom.

Chronicle political editor Susan Yoachum, the paper's lead political reporter, said she felt like she had a target on her back when Miller met with the partners to explain the need to change the way journalists cover elections. "Somebody was going to come in from the outside and tell me how to do my job better?" Yoachum said, recalling her irritation.

"I think it's not good when an outside institution comes in and says, 'You've been doing it wrong,' " assistant national editor Jim Brewer said. "We said, 'Bull. . . we've done this before.'"

Looking back, Rosenheim said he would change the way he introduced the project to the newsroom. Someone from the Chronicle should have explained the ideas and goals to a broader cross section of the newsroom emphasizing that the goal was to augment traditional political coverage, not replace it.

At the outset, Yoachum had other reservations. "Are we doing the right thing here? Is this the role of a newspaper? There was a lot of talk about making the public our partners, and my feeling was that abdicated our responsibility. We are like a flour sifter for people. We are supposed to take information and analyze it."

As the project progressed, Yoachum's attitude changed and she began to see the value of opening a dialogue with her readers.