Medical Ethics: Tough Choices, Lincoln, NE 2000

Partners:

Lincoln Journal Star
Nebraska Public Television
KMTV (CBS)

The partners launched a project on the ethical questions surrounding research at the University of Nebraska Medical Center after the surprise disclosure that the facility was using fetal tissue in its labs. A statewide poll of 323 adults found most generally supported the kinds of research the center was doing, though many opposed harvesting cells from aborted fetuses. The partners hoped to spark a civil and thoughtful discussion of the ethical implications, informed by a thorough understanding of the research.

The paper ran a four-part series on Sundays in January 2001, looking at cloning stem cell research, xenotransplantation (harvesting organs for transplant from animals) and gene therapy. KMLTV aired a five-part series on the topics.

On Thursday, Feb. 1, Nebraska public television broadcast a live panel discussion of the issues by ordinary citizens. Experts sitting in the front row of the audience - which was open to anyone -I interacted with the panel for part of the show. Viewers were invited to share their opinions online, on a Web site that included the newspaper stories and lists of contacts and resources.

Some 6,000 viewers watched the show on public television and another 5,000 watched a rebroadcast on KMTV, Feb. 3. The Web site received 8,000 visits from Jan 8 to April 8. Later that year, the Nebraska legislature set aside a bill that would have banned fetal tissue research at the university. Lawmakers quoted citizens who'd participated in the project during debate on the measure. The project won First Place for Enterprise Reporting from the Nebraska Associated Press.

Contact:

David B. Stoeffler (former Editor, Lincoln Star Journal)
Vice President
Lee Enterprises
215 North Main Street
Davenport, IA 52801-1924
Phone: (563) 383-2139
Email: david.stoeffler@lee.net

Computerized Polling Kiosks, Missoula, MT 2001

Partners:

Missoulian

Using modest Pew funding, Missoulian reporter Rob Chaney refitted three government surplus computers to become portable polling kiosks, suitable for gathering instant reaction to news events or for determining which issues voters are most interested in.

Software installed in the computers allowed Chaney to program in survey questions on any topic and choose the type of answer he wanted - multiple choice, true-false, short answer - even essay questions. The computers were placed in simple wooden cabinets so they could be taken anywhere - senior citizen centers, high school cafeterias, even street corners if a power supply was available.

Originally conceived as an election coverage tool, the computers turned out to have a number of uses. When firefighters from all over the West raced to stop forest fires raging in Montana, Chaney took a kiosk to the Ninemile Fire Camp and collected comments from 50 people about the rigors of battling the blazes. After a Hell's Angels gathering near Missoula resulted in a near riot, Chaney conducted a flash survey near the scene of the clash and turned up several eyewitnesses among respondents, who left their names and phone numbers for more extensive follow up interviews.

Chaney used the results of the kiosk surveys in several different ways. Voter responses on issues surveys helped guide his election coverage. Sometimes specific comments from the kiosks were used in stories. Occasionally, Chaney devoted an entire story to the responses the kiosks generated, such as the one featuring the sometimes humorous and sometimes touching observations of the firefighters trying to save Montana forest.

Contact:

Robert Chaney
Local Government Reporter
The Missoulian Newspaper
500 S. Higgins
Missoula, MT 59801
Phone: (406) 523-5382
Email: rchaney@missoulian.com

Community News Digest, Portland, ME 2001

Partners:

MaineToday.com

The online service, the portal for the Portland Press Herald, the Morning Sentinel, the Kennebec Journal and WMTW Broadcasting, built and customized an innovative software system that allows community groups to generate content. MaineToday originally received funding to use existing KOZ software to improve opportunities for citizens to contribute news, responses and questions to the site. The Portland Press Herald had been using KOZ software to help community groups establish their own Web sites hosted on MaineToday and began the project seeking wider applications of KOZ's easy-to-use format. Just months into the project, however, KOZ filed for Chapter 11 bankrupcy. By that time - early 2001 - nearly 2,000 community groups were publishing on MaineToday. The staff turned its efforts to building a new software system and also figuring out the best way to use it to enhance community participation.

The result was "Bulletin Board," software that connects the community directly to the site. Through an online application, groups can register to be regular contributors. The news they send in is posted on a special section of the site's highly trafficked news pages in a box headlined, "Bulletin Board." Initially, MaineToday incorporated Bulletin Boards onto three of its pages: Sports, 20 Below (aimed at teen users) and Outdoors. Contributions from those involved in such activities as youth soccer or snow-mobiling allow the site to serve thousands of users who are intensely interested in niche activities, which the paper has neither the staff nor the space to cover adequately. The site planned eventually to expand Bulletin Board to any other news page where it makes sense to have users providing content.

Contact:

Jessica Tomlinson
Online Community Organizer
MaineToday.com
50 Monument Square
Portland, ME 04101
Phone: (207) 822-4072
Email: jessica@mainetoday.com

Civic Ways to Use Wire Stories, Richmond, IN 2000

Partners:

(Richmond) Palladium-Item
Dayton Daily News
Earlham College

The partners developed strategies to make wire stories - the main source of national and international news for most small papers - more engaging and relevant to readers. Earlham professor Cheryl Gibbs and her students created special pages of international news for the Palladium-Item, using wire stories and other readily available sources. Unlike traditional wire-dependent foreign news pages, the Palladium-Item's "Big Picture" page included reading lists, local organizations linked to the story and ways to get personally involved through donations or other outreach efforts.

The pages were critiqued by focus groups of readers and later pages were further refined. Gibbs and her students found readers became more engaged if they felt a personal connection to a story and suggested that papers could help readers make that connection using a few simple steps. They include translating statistics and demographic information into more local and familiar terms, telling readers how they can help or communicate their views to decision-makers and suggesting reading lists that include literary and cultural content as well as politics and history.

Contact:

Cheryl Gibbs
Assistant Professor
Earlham College
Drawer 62, 801 National Road West
Richmond, IN 47374-4095
Phone: (765) 983-1506
Email: chergibbs@aol.com

Geneforum.org, Portland, OR 2000

Partners:

Oregon Public Broadcasting
Albany Democrat-Herald
The (La Grande) Observer
Newport News-Times
Geneforum.org

Because Oregon is the only state in the nation that treats an individual's DNA as private property, its genetic privacy law is frequently under discussion and review. The project increased public knowledge of this unique law and created opportunities for public input into the ongoing discussions using a variety of tools:

• Three produced stories and five call-in shows on Oregon Public Radio.
  
• Seven focus groups around the state of 12-15 people each.
  
• A Nov. 14, 2000 town hall meeting in Portland that attracted 25 people including three state legislators.
  
• The creation of geneforum.org, an interactive Web site dedicated to the topic.

Morgan Holm
Director of News & Public Affairs
Oregon Public Broadcasting
7140 S.W. Macadam Ave.
Portland, OR 97219-3013
Phone: (503) 293-1905
Email: morgan_holm@opb.org

Neighborhood News Network, Tampa, FL 1999

Partners:

Tampa Bay Weekly Planet

Using a database of more than 300 community groups and media organizations, the Weekly Planet created an email "wire service" for community news to compliment the "Public Life" newsletter launched earlier with Pew support. Grass roots organizations would send the Planet staff news about what they were doing and, about once a week, the Planet would package those stories and send them out via email to some 650 subscribers. The hope was that the community groups would find out where they had projects in common and how they could work together, while at the same time their stories would receive attention from more mainstream media organizations.

As part of the project, journalism students from the University of South Florida and the University of Tampa were tapped to write up the best stories for the Weekly Planet. The partners also planned to use broadcast journalism students to produce a monthly "Neighborhood News Hour" on the public access cable station and were seeking further funding to cover production costs.

Contact:

Ben Eason
President and CEO
Creative Loafing
1310 E. 9th Avenue
Tampa, FL 33605
Phone: (813) 248-8888
Email: ben.eason@creativeloafing.com

Reinventing Beat Reporting, Spokane, WA 2002

Partners:

The Spokesman-Review, spokesmanreview.com

Pew support allowed the paper to experiment with interactive on-line journalism tools that improved connections between reporters and readers and users. One of the most successful tools was an automated email system that was being widely used by reporters and editors within months of being created in early 2002. The system allows reporters to send out queries to a large database of readers and users. By the end of 2002, the Spokesman-Review's database had 4,000 names in it. This was used in many ways.

For example, a reporter working on the Sept.11 anniversary story asked readers to share their thoughts about the events of that day. She found the best sources, including the person in the lead, through responses to her email. Another reporter covering the controversy over hormone replacement therapy found valuable sources though an email sent to women over 50.

Also in 2002, the paper moved to Blogs (Web logs) to interact with readers on stories of broad interest. A blog on the State B basketball championship was wildly popular with fans and even some players who were able to interact with the site in real time. A similar approach made coverage of a vote on the incorporation of a new city more engaging. Turn-out in the election was higher than predicted by local officials.

Another new feature the paper's Web site began offering in the summer of 2002 consisted of multi-media, on-line obits: feature-length profiles of recently deceased local residents, including a slide show of family pictures with background audio from a family member talking about the deceased. Public response was extremely positive.

The paper lacked the software to count how many users were going to the newly added features but traffic to the site was increasing through 2002. And the ideas were spreading to other papers. Interactive editor Ken Sands helped 27 newspapers involved in the Associated Press Managing Editors (APME) Credibility Roundtable to install some version of the database email system. He expected the tools the paper created to lead to continued innovation, including a portable producing station for creating real time, multi-media coverage of events.

Contact:

Ken Sands
Managing Editor, Online and New Media
The Spokesman-Review
999 W. Riverside Ave.
Spokane, WA 99201
Phone: (509) 459-5014
Email: kens@spokesman.com

Harwood Civic Mapping Seminars, Denver, CO 1999

Partners:

The Harwood Institute
Pew Center for Civic Journalism

This series of three two-day seminars taught reporters and editors from six newsrooms how to improve their capacity to understand and interpret their communities, using the tools and techniques of civic mapping. Mapping helps journalists go beyond official and quasi-official sources of news by identifying and exploring other, less formal layers of civic life. The approach was first outlined by The Harwood Institute (formerly The Harwood Group) in "Tapping Civic Life: How to Report First and Best What's Happening in Your Community," a workbook based on 1994 research at The Wichita Eagle supported and published by the Pew Center.

The Harwood staff led the seminars. Participants included five newspapers and one television station.

The participants each selected areas to map and researched the nature and depth of their newsroom's existing knowledge for those areas. They visited their target areas to interview a range of community leaders and citizens. The resulting maps varied widely in scope and format but each helped strengthen the newsrooms knowledge of the community.

The project proved so successful that the Pew Center published a second edition of "Tapping Civic Life," to reflect the participants' experiences. The center also partnered with the Harwood Group for several more seminars that eventually involved 24 news organizations across the country in civic mapping training.

Contact:

Richard C. Harwood
President
Harwood Inst. for Public Innovationbr> 4915 St. Elmo Ave, Suite 402
Bethesda, MD 20814
Phone: (301) 656-3669
Email: rharwood@theharwoodinstitute.org

Jan Schaffer
Executive Director
Pew Center for Civic Journalism
7100 Baltimore Avenue, Suite 101
College Park, MD 20740-3637
Phone: (301) 985-4020
Email: jans@pccj.org

Civic Mapping, Anniston, AL 1999

Partners:

Anniston Star

The Star used civic mapping techniques to generate a database of more than 600 informal community leaders from churches, parent-teacher groups, civil rights organizations and other sources. The database could be searched by organization, community and area of interest and it was centrally located in the newsroom so any reporter could use it to find community sources for a story.

The first big pay-off came March 2, 1999, the day the Alabama Legislature began its annual session. Instead of the usual lawmakers and lobbyists, the front page featured ideas gathered from a forum where 12 of these informal leaders met with all five members of the area's legislative delegation and raised issues they wanted addressed by the lawmakers.

Similar issues forums continued to be a major use of the civic map. The Star would convene discussion groups of one to two dozen informal opinion leaders on a given topic and use the ideas they generated to guide coverage of that topic.

The database proved useful in a number of other ways as well. The paper used the civic map to generate a series of savvy, in-depth community profiles. It generated sources for local comment on major national events. And it provided sources of material for The Star's Community Page, launched in 1999.

Contact:

Chris Waddle
Executive Editor
The Anniston Star
P.O. Box 189
Anniston, AL 36202-0189
Phone: (256) 235-9208
Email: cwaddle@annistonstar.com

Cyber Mapping, Anniston, AL 2000

Partners:

The Anniston Star

The paper sought to become more interactive by creating new opportunities for reader exchanges through its online service, and it made some strides in that direction, but technical difficulties kept reporters from taking full advantage of the project's potential.

The paper gathered about 800 e-mail addresses for a "cyber-map" to complement its civic map of community sources. However, the database has not been used as a reporting tool. Online editor Geni Certain explained the information was centralized on one newsroom computer so reporters did not have easy access to it and never got into the habit of using it.

The paper has continued to work on creating the online discussion groups and forums it hoped for. Working with the three other newspapers owned by its parent company, Consolidated Publishing, it has mounted an online message board for discussions about news events. Certain said regular users of the board reflect a "great sense of community on that board," referring to themselves as "we" when discussing the views expressed on the board.

Contact:

Chris Waddle
Executive Editor
The Anniston Star
P.O. Box 189
Anniston, AL 36202-0189
Phone: (256) 235-9208
Email: cwaddle@annistonstar.com

Citizens' Links for News, St. Paul, MN 1999

Partners:

Internews Interactive
KTCA-TV

Pew Center funds supported the use of videoconferencing technology that allowed KTCA to originate broadcasts from new and unconventional locations and to connect citizens from far-flung parts of the large, rural state. The result was innovative programming with groundbreaking levels of interactivity.

The first broadcast to use the new technology, in January 1999, linked newly elected Gov. Jesse Ventura, in the KTCA studios in St. Paul, with citizens in Bemidji, Mankato, Duluth, Windom and Minneapolis for a discussion of his new tax policies.

The program was so successful, the governor's office agreed to an ongoing series of discussions. Later programs featured discussions of education and agricultural policy.

The technology was also used to link citizens from a Minneapolis soul food restaurant, Lucille's Kitchen, with white residents of a depressed farming community for a series of riveting discussions about their similarities and differences.

A live show in June 1999 linked two families with teenage children from the living rooms of their homes to the KTCA studios for a discussion of underage drinking. During the broadcast, the teens took a test, published in the Star Tribune, designed to identify teenage drinking risk factors.

Use of the technology to allow ordinary citizens to participate in public discussions from their own zones of comfort - the restaurants, shopping malls and other "third places" in their own communities - became a permanent and popular fixture in KTCA programming.

Contact:

Bill Hanley
Executive VP, Content
KTCA-TV (PBS)
172 East 4th Street
St. Paul, MN 55101
Phone: (651) 229-1380

Email: bhanley@ktca.org

Evelyn Messinger
Director
Internews Network
705 Mission Avenue
San Rafael, CA 94901
Phone: (415) 457-5222
Email: emessinger@internews.org

Eyes on the Bronx, Bronx, NY 1999

Partners:

BRONXNET
The Bronx Journal

BronxNet extended its efforts to link the borough's multi-ethnic communities with the creation of several new broadcasts, utilizing its four public-access cable channels and its Web site. The broadcasts took advantage of the newly built Bronx Journalism Center at Lehman College, opened in 1999 and featuring both audio and video production facilities that allowed it to serve as a kind of "town square" for broadcast community discussions on issues of importance.

"Bronxtalk AM," a daily, two-hour, interactive call-in show about community news and public affairs, was televised on cable while the audio portion was streamed through the BronxNet Web site. A second program, "The Bronx Today," provided in-depth analytical discussions of issues such as community policing, the privatization of New York City hospitals and other grass roots issues. The show included a live call-in segment to allow viewer participation.

Some of the Pew Center funds also went to support the publication of a pull-out section for children in The Bronx Journal, a tabloid published by Lehman's Multi-Lingual Journalism Program which earlier Pew funding helped to launch.

Contact:

Jim Carney
Executive Director
Bronxnet- Lehman College
Carman Hall Room C-4
Bronx, NY 10468-1589
Phone: (718) 960-1180
Email: jcarney@bronxnet.com

Patricio Lerzundi, Ph.D.
Director, Multi-Lingual Journalism
Lehman College
250 Bedford Park Blvd. West
Carman Hall 266
Bronx, NY 10468
Phone: (718) 960-8215
Email: lerzundi@alpha.lehman.cuny.edu

Front Porch Forum, Seattle, WA 1998

Partners:

The Seattle Times
KCTS
KPLU-FM
KUOW-FM

Following up on the 1997 mock trial on growth in the Puget Sound, the partners confronted longstanding assumptions about the issue with a series called, "Growth: Enough already?"

The mock jury in the 1997 "Puget Sound 2020" project had startled the partners by ignoring the common wisdom about growth - that it can't be avoided; only managed. Participants said they favored stopping growth altogether. So the partners decided to explore whether that was really possible.

Beginning May 17, 1998, the partners produced stories exploring five broad themes: 1) Is growth inevitable? 2) Does growth pay for itself? Should it? 3) The impact of government economic development incentives. 4) Immigration and growth. 5) The birth rate and growth. Each installment invited reader feedback, which was published in subsequent issues or broadcasts.

In October, the partners gathered 30 demographically representative citizens from the region to discuss policy alternatives for managing growth. Three county Executives observed the session and offered comments afterward. Reporters included the citizen and politicians' comments in a final wrap up report in the Times, Nov. 22 and on radio and television Nov. 23.

Contact:

David Boardman
Assistant Managing Editor
The Seattle Times
PO Box 70
Seattle, WA 98111
Phone: (206) 464-2205
Email: dboardman@seattletimes.com

Sanford Phase II: The Search for Solutions, Portland, ME 1997

Partners:

The Portland Newspapers
WGME-TV
Maine Public TV
Maine Public Radio

What started as an election year effort to get citizen voices in campaign coverage entered a new phase in 1997, as some 40 residents of Sanford, Maine, who’d been empaneled for the “Maine Citizens Campaign” refused to disband when the journalism project was over. The group began a second year exploring issues and meeting with public officials in hopes of taking action for positive civic change.

With Pew funds, the Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram continued to provide facilitators and other support for the citizens group but there was much less regular coverage by both the papers and broadcast partners.

WGME produced three legacy videos on the group; one distributed to junior highs and high schools throughout Maine for use in a civic involvement curriculum, another aired on WGME and a third distributed to media around the country as a model of the citizen engagement process.

The partners teamed up again to use the citizen consultation model for covering state government with the “Beyond the Ballot” series. The partners polled 1,100 people from five different regions of Maine to determine which issues people felt were most important and how they varied from region to region.

The series began Aug. 23, 1998, with stories showing the issues of jobs, education and taxes transcended regional differences while interest in social issues such as child abuse, health care and poverty differed from region to region. Follow-up stories gave the five candidates running for governor in 1998 a chance to address the citizens’ issues.

Through the fall, separate town meetings were held in each of the five areas surveyed. Seventy-five demographically selected citizens deliberated the issues for a day and questioned gubernatorial candidates who attended the sessions. The information gathered was published in book form and distributed to key leaders throughout the state. The paper also used the book as a guide for reporting on what progress Gov. Angus King made in addressing citizen issues after his election to a second term.

Jeannine A. Guttman
Editor and VP
Portland Press Herald
PO Box 1460
Portland, ME 04104
TEL: (207) 791-6310
FAX: (207) 791-6931
EMAIL: jguttman@pressherald.com

Jessica Tomlinson
Online Community Organizer
MaineToday.com
50 Monument Square
Portland, ME 04101
TEL: (207) 822-4072
FAX: (207) 879-1042
EMAIL: Jessica@mainetoday.com

Civic Discourse, Tampa, FL 1997

Partners:

The Weekly Planet
Speak Up Tampa Bay
University of South Florida
Study Circles Resources Center

The partners continued their quest to bring civic journalism to the Tampa Bay with the convening of a "framing" conference in the spring of 1997. About 350 citizens attended three days of town hall meetings with experts and journalists and generated a 20-page list of the area's strengths and weaknesses.

The project suffered a setback, a short time later, when the lead partner, WTVT, dropped out after a change in leadership, leaving the alternative, entertainment-focused newspaper, Weekly Planet, scrambling to keep the momentum going. Editor Ben Eason launched a more serious alternative paper, a quarterly called Public Life, which carried news from neighborhood associations and civic groups and explored issues such as the media's responsibility to the community. Eventually, with additional Pew support in later funding cycles, Eason used the network of civic organizations he'd connected with to start an email based wire service, helping the groups connect to each other as well as get wider circulation for their concerns and events among media organizations.

Ben Eason
President and CEO
Creative Loafing
1310 E. 9th Avenue
Tampa, FL 33605
TEL: (813) 248-8888
FAX: (813) 248-9999
EMAIL: ben.eason@creativeloafing.com

Leadership Challenge, Peoria, IL 1996

Partners:

Journal-Star
WMBD-TV (CBS), WMBD-AM
WCBU-TV (PBS), WCBU-FM (NPR)
Illinois Central College
Bradley University

Noting a decline in civic leadership and community involvement, the partners embarked on "Leadership Challenge," a project that met its ambitious goal of inspiring citizens to take leadership roles in the community.

Designed from the beginning to become a community effort, the media partners invited civic institutions to join the steering committee that framed the project. Through a series of targeted mail surveys, a random sample telephone survey of 509 Peorians and four community roundtables involving some 50 people, the partners were able to document the reasons people were becoming less involved in community activities.

They included a lack of time, a feeling of being unwelcome and a fear of being criticized. But the surveys also showed that getting involved gave people a sense of satisfaction and more people would get involved if asked by a relative, friend or employer. A series of stories laying out and exploring the findings began on Jan. 21, 1996.

The series included weekly profiles of ordinary Peoria residents who took on leadership roles. It culminated in a Nov. 18 town meeting, in which 120 people participated in a search for solutions and generated 147 ideas for reversing the trend. Some of the ideas were picked up and put into practice, as hoped, by a member of the steering committee, the director of the Center for Non-Profit Excellence at Illinois Central College (ICC). ICC received funds from the Pew Center for Civic Change to extend the work of the journalism project and trained several neighborhood activists in skills needed to lead organizations. The resulting Neighborhood College continues to train emerging leaders.

The series also inspired a local businessman to run for mayor and, when he took office, prompted him to develop a Neighborhood Development Commission that tapped new segments of the community for leadership roles.

Jack Brimeyer
Managing Editor
Journal Star
1 News Plaza
Peoria, IL 61643
Phone: (309) 686-3121
Email: jbrimeyer@pjstar.com

Terry Bibo-Knight
Columnist/Special Projects Director
Journal Star
1 News Plaza
Peoria, IL 61643
Phone: (309) 686-3121

Daily Civic Journalism Initiative, Charlotte, NC 1996

Partners:

The Charlotte Observer
WSOC-TV (ABC)
WPEG-AM
WBTV (CBS)

After the success of their major crime project, "Taking Back our Neighborhoods," the media partners spent a year trying to incorporate the civic journalism principles they had learned into daily reporting. Applying such tools as polling, public forums, listening posts and community partnerships on a quick-turn-around time frame, the partners found ways to improve coverage of breaking news.

For example, on March 24, 1996, the paper and WBTV published the results of a super-quick, random-sample pool - conceived on Thursday and published on Sunday - about nudity in the play "Angels in America." A touring production of the play stirred debate when a group of citizens demanded that an actor who appeared nude on stage be arrested for indecency. The poll found most people supported the director's right to include the scene and the controversy diminished.

A month later, the paper joined with WPEG to cover a dispute between local residents and young drivers who cruised in a neighborhood park. The paper covered a flare-up on Friday, April 26, with a package of explanatory stories and people suggesting solutions. The following Sunday, it co-sponsored a 90-minute broadcast forum at the radio station that included WPEG reporters taking questions from cruisers in the park.

One of the most successful experiments in civic coverage of breaking news was the partners' reporting on a new state law requiring schools to increase parent participation. In addition to the straight reporting, the paper published a graphic that listed the kinds of things volunteers could do even if they were available for short periods or only at night and a phone number to call to sign up. More than 300 people called a special phone bank, manned by local school districts, to volunteer.

Jennie Buckner
Editor and Vice President
The Charlotte Observer
600 S. Tryon St.
Charlotte, NC 28202
Phone: (704) 358-5001

Chuck Clark (Former government editor, The Observer)
City Editor
Orlando Sentinel
633 N. Orange Avenue
Orlando, FL 32801
TEL: (407) 420-5468
EMAIL: cclark@orlandosentinel.com

Fannie Flono
Associate Editor
The Charlotte Observer
P.O. Box 32188
Charlotte, NC 28202
TEL: (704) 358-5079
FAX: (704) 358-6166
EMAIL: flono@charlotteobserver.com

We the People/Wisconsin, Madison, WI 1996

Partners:

Wisconsin StateJournal
Wisconsin Public TV
Wisconsin Public Radio
WISC-TV (CBS)
Wood Communication Group

In the spring, a forum allowed citizens to question candidates for the Wisconsin Supreme Court in "You Be the Judge," broadcast from the high court's chambers. Citizens got the chance to assess the performance, structure and financing of the state's public university system and recommend a course for its future in "The Future of the UW System." Town hall meetings were held on campuses statewide and citizen recommendations were given to the UW regents.

In "Campaign for Control," citizens from across Wisconsin descended on Madison to "take over" the state Senate chambers for a live, one-hour forum that allowed them to question legislators. "Talk of the House" gave citizens an unprecedented opportunity to add their voices to congressional campaigns. About 300 citizens in three sites were linked with the Republican and Democratic candidates for three hotly contested U.S. House seats. The forum, broadcast on five commercial and public television stations and statewide public radio, was viewed by more than 100,000 households statewide.

The State Journal and WISC_TV also started their "Schools of Hope" series, which has been credited with helping to improve Madison schools and won a Batten legacy award in 2002.

Deborah Still
Project Director
We The People/ Wisconsin
PO Box 5534
Madison, WI 53705
Phone: (608) 833-8545

Thomas W. Still
President
Wisconsin Technology Council
PO Box 71, 615 E. Washington Ave.
Madison, WI 53701-0071
TEL: (608) 442-7557
FAX: (608) 256-0333
EMAIL: tstill@wisctec.com

Tom Bier
General Manager
WISC-TV
7025 Raymond Rd.
Madison, WI 53719
TEL: (608) 271-5171
FAX: (608) 271-0800
EMAIL: tbier@wisctv.com

David Iverson
Executive Director
Best Practices in Journalism
2601 Mariposa St.
San Francisco, CA 94110
TEL: (415) 553-2489
EMAIL: iverson@wpt.org

James B. Wood
President
Wood Communications Group
700 Regent St.
Madison, WI 53715-1233
Phone: (608) 259-0757

Soapbox: A Guide to Civic Journalism at The Spokesman-Review, Spokane, WA 1996

Partners:

Spokesman-Review

One of the early innovators in developing and using civic journalism tools, the Spokesman-Review embarked on a project to foster their growth in other newsrooms. With Pew support, the paper hired an intern specifically to advance civic journalism outreach. During her year in Spokane, the intern worked with community groups, helped organize a forum to make the paper more accessible to citizens, helped edit contributors to the paper's reader-written opinion pages and wrote opinion pieces herself.

A major focus of the internship was the production of a civic journalism handbook, "Soapbox," which explained the paper's decision to try civic journalism, the techniques it employed and the results it got. The handbook included a message from then-Editor Chris Peck about a credibility study by the American Society of Newspaper Editors and examples of the way the paper tried to form closer connections to its community, such as remaking the editorial page to include citizen voices and exploring public issues through informal "pizza party" discussions among small groups of ordinary people.

The paper distributed the book to other newsrooms with a letter from Peck about what a positive change civic journalism had brought to the Spokesman-Review.

Chris Peck (Former Spokesman-Review editor)
Editor
The Commercial Appeal
P.O. Box 364
Memphis, TN 38101
TEL: (901) 529-2390
EMAIL: peck@gomemphis.com

Rebecca Nappi
Interactive Editor
The Spokesman-Review
999 W. Riverside Ave.
Spokane, WA 99201
Phone: (509) 459-5496

The Public Agenda, Tallahassee, FL 1996

Partners:

Tallahassee Democrat
WCTV6 (CBS)
Florida State University
Florida A&M Universities

The third year of the "Public Agenda" project ended with a hand-off to the community. Over its three-year span, the project involved more than 1,000 people in 15 discussion groups. A final poll of 353 adults in the Tallahassee area showed the project appeared to have contributed to positive changes in community attitudes and behavior. The poll found that about one third of area residents had heard of the project. Participation in some aspect of the project - whether joining a discussion group or attending a public meeting - registered at seven percent but that represented a doubling over the three years of the project, from three percent in 1995.

More than half the respondents said the project was effective in getting people to discuss community concerns, making people feel they have a voice and identifying solutions for community problems. Respondents in 1997 were more likely than respondents in 1994 and 1995 to see the community pulling together and less likely to be at odds. They were more willing to listen and work toward compromise and strongly agreed that people could make a difference by taking an active role on important issues in their community. For more details, see Year One projects, 1994.

Mimi Jones
Project Manager
The Public Agenda
1713 Silverwood Dr.
Tallahassee, FL 32301
Phone: (850) 942-7199

Michael W. Smith
News Director
WCTV-TV (CBS)
4000 County Rd. 12
Tallahassee, FL 32312
TEL: (850) 893-6666
FAX: (850) 668-3851
EMAIL: mike.smith@wctv6.com

Tampa, FL 1996

Partners:

WTVT-TV (Fox)
Weekly Planet Alternative Paper
WMNF Community Radio
Tampa Chapter of National Conference

The partners sought to bring civic journalism to the Tampa Bay area through a series of four jointly sponsored town hall forums and the encouragement of smaller "kitchen table" discussions in citizens' homes. The forums were aided by "Speak Up, Tampa Bay," a group of citizens brought together as an advisory board on civic journalism to WTVT and the Weekly Planet. The group evolved into an independent body focused on engaging citizens in deliberative dialogue by hosting forums and small group discussions on Bay area issues and on connecting the media with citizens and their issues.

In addition to the forums, the partners inaugurated the Good Community Alliance, bringing together a group of civic organizations and social service agencies to share resources and work on joint projects. The Alliance included the partners and other media organizations and sought to improve coverage of activities and events that were the basis for much of the community's civic life.

Ben Eason
President and CEO
Creative Loafing
1310 E. 9th Avenue
Tampa, FL 33605
TEL: (813) 248-8888
FAX: (813) 248-9999
EMAIL: ben.eason@creativeloafing.com

Grand Forks Herald
WDAZ-TV (ABC)
Northern LightsPublic Radio

The partners held a series of "Community Conversations" via coffee klatches, focus groups and polls, assessing quality-of-life issues and forging a vision for the future of Grand Forks, a city of 60,000. The partners kicked the project off by driving a van to various public places around the city for a month. They interviewed some 120 people in coffee shops, bowling alleys, shopping malls and a U.S. Air Force base. They used comments from these conversations to devise a poll of 400 residents. The surprise consensus, reported by the partners on June 2, 1995, was that people believed Grand Forks officials could make the city a better place by fixing the streets.

Through the summer and fall, the partners held and reported on a series of focus groups, during which four issues emerged as key to the town's future: crime, jobs, family activities and, of course, better streets. The finale of the project was a public hearing and citywide block party at which citizens discussed the city's future and generated possible solutions for the city to study.

The paper felt the community impact was so positive, it returned to the community conversation model in 1998, involving some 1,500 people in conversations about how to revive community spirit after a devastating flood wiped out parts of the city and left residents divided about how to rebuild.

Mike Jacobs
Editor
Grand Forks Herald
120 N. 4th St.
Grand Forks, ND 58206
Phone: (701) 780-1103
Email: gfherald@grandforks.polaristel.net

The Public Agenda, Tallahassee, FL 1995

Partners:

Tallahassee Democrat
WCTV6 (CBS)
Florida State University
Florida A&M Universities

The second year of the three-year "Public Agenda" project trained more citizens to lead and participate in small group discussions and continued polling to be sure the concerns of all members of the diverse community were surfacing. For more details, please see Year One (1994) project descriptions.

Mimi Jones
Project Manager
The Public Agenda
1713 Silverwood Dr.
Tallahassee, FL32301
Phone: (850) 942-7199

Michael W. Smith
News Director
WCTV-TV (CBS)
4000 County Rd. 12
Tallahassee, FL 32312
TEL: (850) 893-6666
FAX: (850) 668-3851
EMAIL: mike.smith@wctv6.com

Manhattan, KS 1995

Partners:

The Manhattan Mercury
KQLA-FM

The partners in "The Public Mind" project took a civic approach to exploring one local issue a month in depth and inviting citizens to discuss possible solutions. The series began, May 7, 1995, with an exploration of teenage binge drinking. In June, the topic was neighborhood associations; July, the student rental housing market and in September, a look at child care.

In the first week of the month, the Mercury devoted a page to a status report on the issue; in the second week it gave experts' perspectives; the third week it published case studies of individuals affected by the issue and the fourth week it invited the public to address the issue in a community forum, usually attended by six to 10 people. Follow-up stories explored solutions that were suggested.

Bill Felber
Executive Editor
The Manhattan Mercury
318 N. Fifth Street
Manhattan, KS 66502
Phone: (913) 776-2300
Email: manmerc@konza.flinthills.com

The Public Agenda, Tallahassee, FL 1994

Partners:

Tallahassee Democrat
WCTV6 (CBS)
Florida State University
Florida A&M Universities

A three-year project, "The Public Agenda" involved thousands of Tallahassee citizens in discussing and seeking solutions to a wide range of issues facing the city.

Project leaders at the Democrat and WCTV used a host of tools - small group discussions, frequent polls, large forums and on-line chats, among them - to determine which issues citizens considered most critical and then engage those citizens in addressing the issues in a variety of ways. A community coordinator, Mimi Jones, organized citizen participation.

The partners kicked off the project in the summer of 1994 with a series of "living room conversations." A total of 29 people were interviewed in 10 separate small groups of two to five. These findings were paired with a more formal survey of 800 residents conducted by phone in the fall. The results were reported in the Democrat in a four-part, front-page series explaining the project and inviting participation. The first large public forum, attended by more than 300 people, was held Nov. 16, 1994 - the final day of the series - at the state Capitol and broadcast on WCTV. The paper ran special reports on issues identified in the public discussions: crime, growth, jobs, education and values, race relations and teen concerns. WCTV regularly ran stories about people and ideas that surfaced.

Citizens were invited to voice opinions and submit questions to public officials through the Democrat's "Public Agenda" page which ran periodically on the front of the Sunday editorial section and included "how you can help" boxes. The partners also held National Issues Forum training seminars to create a pool of facilitators for small group discussions on each issue. Six of the groups, each with six to 20 people, began meeting on their own and some continued to meet after the project formally ended in April 1997.

Polling continued throughout the project, in part to get feedback on how the project was perceived in the community. By year three, it found about one third of Tallahassee residents knew about the project and most of them had a favorable impression of it. Respondents also registered a positive change in their perception of Tallahassee as a city that pulls itself together.

Mimi Jones
Project Manager
The Public Agenda
1713 Silverwood Dr.
Tallahassee, FL 32301
Phone: (850) 942-7199

Michael W. Smith
News Director
WCTV-TV (CBS)
4000 County Rd. 12
Tallahassee, FL 32312
TEL: (850) 893-6666
FAX: (850) 668-3851
EMAIL: mike.smith@wctv6.com

Civic Leadership Project, Bangor, ME 2001

Partners:

Bangor Daily News
The Margaret Chase Smith Center for Public Policy
University of Maine

A six-part series on leadership identified the most active behind-the-scenes community leaders in the Bangor area, what traits they held in common and the importance of their work to the life of the community. The paper began the project by compiling a database of 1,600 community leaders. The list included the directors, trustees and top officers of the 100 largest non-profit organizations and the 50 largest locally owned companies in Bangor and 20 nearby communities, as well as the local managers of the 30 largest national and regional chains with a local presence. They also included town council members, school board members, school superintendents and town managers in the area.

The paper ranked the most active leaders by how many times their names appeared on the list. Reporters interviewed the 20 most active men and women about the challenges the area faced, potential solutions and the role of civic leaders in the process. The series included profiles of five of the leaders.

In addition to the stories about leaders, editors said the database was useful in reporting other major stories, notably coverage of the 2000 census, by providing a ready list of sources for interviews. The project also built the paper's capacity for computer-assisted reporting. This paid off in a number of ways, including an investigative report on Maine restaurants using state health inspection records.

Contact:

A. Mark Woodward
Executive Editor
Bangor Daily News
491 Main St.
Bangor, ME 04401
Phone: (207) 990-8239
Email: mwoodward@bangordailynews.net

Daytona Beach, FL 1997

Partners:

The Daytona Beach News Journal
WCEU-TV (PBS)
WESH-TV (NBC)
Stetson University

At the Pew Center's request, the partners returned their funding when the project became stalled because of newsroom changes.

Illinois Voter Project, Chicago, IL 1993

Partners:

University of Illinois
League of Women Voters

The partners teamed up for the Illinois Voter Project (IVP), an effort to make election coverage more issues-focused and responsive to voters rather than candidates. The university conducted a statewide opinion survey before the March 1994 primary to determine citizens' major concerns. In June, the partners began a series of 14 focus groups designed to refine those findings, identifying in greater detail what citizens see as problems in their communities and possible solutions.

The research showed that key election issues were crime, education, jobs and tax spending. In September, after six weeks of recruiting members, the partners convened two Citizen Agenda Panels - one city and one suburban - to interview experts in the problem areas and develop a set of policy recommendations to present to candidates. Members of the panels were included among the questioners in a town hall-style debate sponsored by the partners Oct. 19.

The partners hoped that most Chicago-area media would use their research and citizen panels in election coverage and, thus, did not create a formal alliance with any particular media partner but reported their findings at press briefings. Interest was especially keen at the city's three daily newspapers. The suburban Daily Herald embraced the process and created its own citizen panel in addition to covering the IVP. The process also received coverage in the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun Times and several radio stations. ChicagoLand Television (CLTV), a regional cable news service, produced a 30-minute documentary about the IVP that aired three times prior to the November election.

Tapping Civic Life, Wichita, KS 1993

Partners:

The Wichita Eagle
The Harwood Group

This groundbreaking project created what might be called the infrastructure of civic journalism - a set of tools for uncovering the civic life of a community and tapping into it. The Eagle set out with no less a goal than improving the quality of civic life in Wichita by strengthening and promoting public dialogue and better reflecting that dialogue in the newspaper's pages. It asked The Harwood Group (now the Harwood Institute for Public Innovation, of Bethesda, MD) to help it identify the origins of public discourse and determine how journalists could use the information in a meaningful way.

Harwood developed five steps for finding civic spaces and coined the term "mapping" to describe how newsrooms can use these steps to enrich their reporting. The idea is that a newsroom can create a roadmap for how different areas of a community's civic life work and how journalists can connect with those areas.

A team of Eagle reporters and editors tried out the materials in reporting on two very different Wichita neighborhoods. Their experiences were captured in a workbook, "Tapping Civic Life: How to Report First, and Best, What's Happening in Your Community." The Pew Center distributed the book to thousands of reporters and editors across the country. Civic mapping became a key tool in the efforts of many newsrooms to practice civic journalism. The book was updated in 2000 to reflect those efforts and was used to guide a series of seminars on civic mapping that involved 24 U.S. newsrooms.

NPR Election Project 1994

Partners:

NPR Election Project

National Public Radio, known for the extraordinary depth and seriousness of its public issues coverage, made changes in its approach to political reporting to improve its coverage of the 1994 election campaign.

The Washington, DC-based network worked with member stations in five cities and two statewide networks to provide high quality, issue-directed reporting based on an agenda determined by citizens.

The network helped its member stations form partnerships with other local news organizations to poll citizens, hold issues forums and town meetings, create advisory panels and use call-in shows to generate citizen input and deliberation, which was used to enhance national and regional political reporting. Specific activities and results varied from area to area:

• The Front Porch Forum, Seattle, WA
  Partners:
  KUOW-FM, KPLU-FM (Tacoma), The Seattle Times

  The partners considered the election project such a success, they launched a long-term civic journalism partnership, called "The Front Porch Forum," after a focus group participant suggested people need to sit on their front porches and talk to each other more.

  The partners held four focus groups for the project, in May, then followed up with a statewide poll of 500 citizens in June. They found crime, growth, schools, health care and the economy to be the biggest issues. Each partner explored these issues in stories leading up to the election. On Oct. 26, 1994, the partners invited five undecided voters to quiz the two U.S. Senate candidates during an hour-long radio show. The Times ran a transcript of the event. Reader and listener feedback were generally positive and the partners continued to work together on other issues such as growth and leadership, in addition to later elections.

• Voice of the Voter, San Francisco, CA
  Partners:
  KQED-FM, KRON-TV (NBC), San Francisco Chronicle

  The partners commissioned a poll of 633 Bay Area residents in advance of the 1994 gubernatorial primary and found the economy, the environment and education were the issues of greatest concern to voters. Each partner produced stories on the issues and cross-promoted each other's coverage. The partners also set up voice mail boxes where citizens could call in questions for candidates. Candidates answered the questions in weekly columns broadcast on KQED and KRON and printed in the Chronicle.

  Just before the May primary, the partners sponsored a televised, statewide debate among the gubernatorial candidates-the only one held. As the general election approached, the Chronicle launched a voter registration project, followed by several other large Bay Area papers, that resulted in 40,000 new voters.

• The People's Voice, Boston, MA
  Partners:
  WBUR-FM, WBZ-TV (CBS), The Boston Globe

  The partners used a combination of forums, focus groups and a poll of 400 citizens to identify issues that voters wanted candidates to address for the project it dubbed, "The People's Voice." The Globe told readers the project was "the beginning of a pointed dialogue between candidates and voters." Through the summer and fall of 1994, the paper ran extensive stories on the citizens' issues and, in a regular feature, ran a citizen's question, the candidates' answer and the citizen's analysis of whether the candidate had answered the question. It also ran citizen critiques of campaign ads.

  WBUR regularly broadcast comments from the focus groups and candidate reaction, as well as talk shows with local experts and community leaders fielding calls. The partners hosted a live broadcast of five citizens questioning candidates for senator and governor, and the Globe helped sponsor a gubernatorial debate and two debates between the senate candidates, including one in which citizens were the questioners.

• Texans Talk: The People's Agenda, Dallas, TX
  Partners:
  KERA-FM, The Dallas Morning News

  The partners sponsored a series of monthly public forums, broadcast on KERA and covered by the Morning News, based on issues identified as voters' chief concerns by a statewide poll. ""The Public Agenda" also featured a series of newspaper stories on each issue - some devoted to Texans affected by the issue and others devoted to the candidates' position on the issues. Questions from citizens surveyed for the poll were passed along to candidates and their responses were run regularly.

  The partners also worked together on a Senate and governor's debate, the only one of the campaign. About two dozen people who took part in the issue forums made up a citizens panel that posed questions to the candidates, along with KERA and Morning News reporters.

• Your Vote Counts, Wichita, KS
  Partners:
  KMUW-FM, The Wichita Eagle

  A poll of 600 Kansans at the beginning of the "Your Vote Counts" project not only identified key voter issues, but also provided a pool of people for public radio reporters to turn to for comment on those issues. Those reporters used voters interviewed for the survey to provide perspective on virtually every aspect of campaign coverage. Poll participants took part in regular discussion forums on subjects such as crime, jobs and the economy. Several of those polled were tapped to conduct their own broadcast interviews with gubernatorial candidates. Reporters followed up those interviews with summary pieces on how citizens believed the candidates responded to their questions.

  The Eagle used the issues identified by the poll as the framework for its election coverage and added some new elements to its report. One new feature was a side-by-side chart summarizing and comparing opposing candidates' stands on issues. Post election research indicated that these were the most-read aspect of the paper's coverage and that most readers found them helpful.

• Voters' Voice, New Hampshire
  Partners:
  New Hampshire Public Radio and TV, WGOT-TV, The (Nashua) Telegraph, the Concord Monitor, the Valley News, The Keene Sentinel, University of New Hampshire

  The partners in the "Voters' Voice" project conducted two extensive issues polls - interviewing 500 New Hampshire residents each time - and used the results in two ways. First, the results of each poll were reported in both short and feature length stories. Then, the second poll was used as the basis for areas to explore with candidates during three statewide, live debates. The citizen panels for each debate were selected from among poll respondents.

  The partners also sponsored three citizen-driven town meetings with candidates for governor and the state's two congressional seas. These were broadcast live statewide on public radio and TV and WGOT in Manchester and then rebroadcast at different times of day. NHPR saw no direct evidence that the project increased voter turn-out but thought it did make a difference in the quality of the public debate.

• Campaign '94, Maine
  Partner:
  Maine Public Radio

  Maine Public Radio began its "Campaign '94" election project with a poll of likely voters. A public forum on jobs and the economy aired in October and special reports summarizing candidates' remarks on the issues ran in local segments of NPR's "Morning Edition."