TAPPING INTO A COMMUNITY'S
roots can make your journalism more complete and
compelling. That's because it will allow reporters and editors to:
GET IT FIRST
Journalists will hear about events, trends, and people's concerns long before
they
reach the community's official world of politics and institutions, where they
tend to
get framed in official jargon and technical terms. In Wichita, for example, a
Harwood
Group researcher found that a local supermarket was planning to close - and what
the
closing meant for the people and their neighborhood. This was months before
Eagle reporters knew, and before the story had become part of the
official
community debate, where people's concerns often get overshadowed.
EXPAND SOURCES AND VOICES
As journalists dig deeper into their communities they will discover an expanded
group
of "Go To" civic spaces and sources to understand community concerns and events
better. These sources will provide authentic community voices and perspectives,
allowing a newspaper to reflect more accurately the "wholeness" of the
community.
ASK BETTER JOURNALISTIC
QUESTIONS
This work can help journalists gain insight to frame tougher and more probing
interviews, not only with citizens, but with a mayor, business leaders, and other
sources for news. For instance, having a deeper understanding and sense of
context, of
people's concerns on a particular problem like youth violence can prompt a
journalist
to ask a superintendent of schools probing questions about how a recent proposal
reflects people's concerns; and if not, how the proposal relates to those
concerns.
SEE MORE POSSIBILITIES FOR FRAMING
STORIES
By tapping into civic life, journalists can gain a rich sense of the dimensions
of
community concerns, issues and events; the context in which people think about a
topic
or challenge; the various perspectives that are in play (moving from perhaps two
to
many perspectives); the emotions at work; the ambivalence people experience and
the
nature of their struggle to make sense of things; and the language people use.
These
and other kinds of insights can lead to new possibilities for framing news
stories.
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WRITE HARDER-HITTING STORIES
Often when journalists hear about tapping into civic life, they groan and say,
"We
don't want to write 'soft' stories. We need to keep our edge!" doing this work
can
help journalists create an even sharper edge by knowing what and how the
community
thinks; gaining a clearer sense of the underlying tensions that are at
work;
uncovering the different dimensions of concerns, perspectives and voices. These
and
other insights can help journalists produce stories that report authentic tension
rather than conflict that is based on extreme views and often leads readers to
turn
away from a newspaper's pages.
IMPROVE STORY AND PLANNING
MEETINGS
By tapping into civic life, journalists can bring deeper insights, more probing
questions, a stronger sense of personal engagement, and new ideas to story and
planning meetings. This is a critical part of how tapping into civic life can
truly
help to strengthen the newsroom's daily product.
CREATE MORE MEANINGFUL NEWSROOM
CONVERSATIONS
Informal newsroom conversations are where a lot of daily work and breakthroughs
occur
for journalists. Tapping into civic life - and encouraging the newsroom to talk
about
what is being learned in every-day conversations - will improve the ability of
individual journalists and teams to work smarter and harder.
BRIDGE CIVIC LAYERS
People in communities often have trouble connecting, for instance, their
neighborhood
conversations to discussions they hear in civic meetings or public hearings.
Newspapers can help people see those connections (when they indeed exist) by
coverage
that bridges the different layers of civic life. For instance, as people talk
about
education in their neighborhood, they also want to know how their concerns
connect to
a civic association or a school board discussion.
UNCOVER JOURNALISTS' PRECONCEIVED VIEWS OR
BIASES
People who gather information and write come to their jobs with their own
personal
experiences, ideas, and beliefs. By aggressively tapping into the dimensions of
civic
life - its rich mixture of voices, perspectives, tensions - journalists can begin
to
uncover and understand their own preconceived views and, while not abandoning
them,
perhaps be more aware of them in their reporting.
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