Long Beach Beyond 2000 -- Unity in Our Community, Long Beach, CA 1997

Partners:

Long Beach Press-Telegram
Cablevision Industries, Inc.
Long Beach Community Partnership
Leadership Long Beach

First, 25 reporters and columnists each hosted three focus group of about 10 people each. They asked open-ended questions about what issues most concerned people, what solutions they'd propose and how government and other institutions could help. From the approximately 750 people participating in the 75 focus groups, six issues emerged as chief concerns: education, safety, neighborhood quality, race, immigration and youth. The findings were used to formulate a survey of 1,400 Long Beach residents, divided into four groups: 350 Asian, 350 African-American, 350 Latino and 350 white.

An eight-part series informed by the survey and focus groups ran in November and December 1997. Cablevision produced a two-hour program on the initiative.

Rich Archbold
Executive Editor
Long Beach Press-Telegram
PO Box 230
Long Beach, CA 90801-0230
TEL: (562) 499-1285
FAX: (310) 437-7892
EMAIL: rarchbold@sgvn.com

Dallas, TX 1997

Partners:

The Arlington Morning News
The Dallas Morning News
KERA-FM
KERA-TV
The University of Texas, Arlington

The partners seized on an initiative by the city of Arlington to increase citizen participation with "We the City," a civic approach to covering the city's move toward a deliberative model of government. The first stories, Feb. 7, 1997, explained how the media partners' civic approach would track and complement the government's efforts to engage citizens, which included the convening of neighborhood focus groups to replace the more limited public hearings before City Council. Through the spring, the partners sponsored a "civic inventory" of 900 residents, conducted by the university's School of Urban and Public Affairs, to uncover the role of informal community leaders, the importance of incidental meetings among neighbors, and the impact of absentee landlords and renters on a community. The inventory provided a baseline for assessing and comparing the quality of life in various neighborhoods. The partners did stories on issues that surfaced through the inventory and the neighborhood focus groups, including code enforcement, growth and development. Their stories also reviewed what the city's efforts had accomplished and looked at how the city could further involve citizens in their government.

The project proved to be a watershed for the Morning News, which had been in existence less than a year when the project started. The previously skeptical lead reporter attended a Pew Center training seminar when the project was launched and, as a result, spent more time in Arlington's neighborhoods, talking to residents, rather than with public officials. Her reporting stood out in the highly competitive Dallas-Fort Worth market for its richness of sources and voices. Not only did the Arlington experiment prompt more people to get involved in government, it broke down barriers with the media, as more residents began calling the paper with story ideas, attending editor's meetings and writing columns and letters.

Marla Crockett
Asst. Dir., News & Public Affairs
KERA-FM (NPR)
3000 Harry Hines Road
Dallas, TX 75021
TEL: (214) 740-9349
FAX: (214) 740-9369
EMAIL: kerafm@metronet.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

Maine Citizens' Campaign Documentary Video, 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.

Gary Legters
Operations Manager
WGME-TV
1335 Washington Avenue
Portland, ME 04104
Phone: (207) 797-9330

Jim O'Rourke
Acting News Director
WGME-TV
1335 Washington Avenue
Portland, ME 04104
Phone: (207) 797-9330

Lois Czerniak
Executive Producer
WGME-TV
1335 Washington Ave
Portland, ME 04130

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

Portland, OR 1997

Partners:

The Oregonian
Oregon Public Broadcasting

That most fundamental of civic activities, voting, was the subject of a three-part series in the Oregonian and a special call-in show on public radio. Though Oregon had one of the highest voter turn-out records in the nation, there were still nearly a million eligible Oregonians who did not vote. Through a survey of 733 people and three focus groups, reporters learned that voters and non-voters had a great deal in common and that not voting was not an indication of detachment or alienation. In fact, they found 80 percent of non-voters were active in their community, with many involved in three or more civic activities.

The survey divided respondents into three groups: frequent voters, occasional voters and non-voters. Results found that non-voters tended to be younger and less well-educated than frequent voters but all groups felt cynical about elections-that they are about choosing the lesser of two evils and that voting changes very little. All groups were put off by negative campaigning.

The findings were reported on three consecutive days beginning Oct. 26, 1997. The series included the pros and cons of ideas to curb negative campaign ads, lists of opportunities for community involvement and each part invited caller comment. Oregon Public Radio aired a call-in show just before the series ran, inviting suggestions about what needs to be addressed to get people to vote.

Sandra Mims Rowe
Editor
The Oregonian
1320 S.W. Broadway
Portland, OR 97201
TEL: (503) 221-8400
FAX: (503) 294-4175
EMAIL: srowe@news.oregonian.com

The Voters' Voice, New Hampshire 1997

Partners:

New Hampshire Public Radio
The Keene Sentinel
The Portsmouth Herald
UPI of New Hampshire

Inspired by the success of its election year project, "Voter's Voice," New Hampshire Public Radio sought citizen participation in coverage of non-election issues through a series of "Citizens Exchange" meetings in different communities, in association with local newspapers.

The network began the project in early 1997, with a series of call-in shows from its Concord studios, where citizens asked questions of the new governor, their congressmen and senators and engaged in discussions of campaign finance reform, race relations and health care issues.

NHPR then took the show on the road. The first stop was the Nashua Public Library on May 12, where about 90 citizens participated in a forum with the governor. The forum was taped and aired the next morning and again the next evening. It was also broadcast on Media One and stories ran in the Telegraph. Later forums allowed citizens to question other key elected officials about a wide range of issues.

Mark D. Handley
President/General Manager
New Hampshire Public Radio
207 North Main Street
Concord, NH 03301-5003
TEL: (603) 226-0850
FAX: (603) 224-6052
EMAIL: mhandley@nhpr.org

Racial Change in Chicago, Chicago, IL 1997

Partners:

The Chicago Reporter
WGN-TV
WNUA-FM

The partners drew a subtle and nuanced portrait of Wrightwood, a previously white neighborhood that had become 50 percent African-American fairly quickly in the early '90's, as a case study in racial change in a community. The Reporter, a monthly paper that uses investigative techniques to cover race and poverty, led the team, conducting a statistical analysis that showed the impact of racial change on neighborhood schools and home values. Then, reporters added civic tools to their reporting - convening a meeting of 30 civic leaders and ordinary residents to get input and spending months in Wrightwood interviewing and re-interviewing dozens of residents about their concerns, problems and need, about how they get information, about where conflict exists and what is behind it.

The package of stories was published in the April 1998 edition of The Reporter. On April 15, WBEZ-FM, Chicago's public radio station, broadcast its story on the Wrightwood community as part of its "Chicago Matters" series. On May 17, WNUA-FM featured Wrightwood on its monthly Sunday morning public affairs show "City Voices."

The partners wrapped up the project with a July 1 town hall meeting in Wrightwood. About 175 people attended and gave the project high marks for increasing understanding in Wrightwood.

Laura S. Washington (former editor and publisher)
3750 Lake Shore Dr., Apt. 8-C
Chicago, IL 60613
TEL: (773) 327-4025
EMAIL: lauraswashington@aol.com

Eyes on the Bronx, Bronx, NY 1997

Partners:

The Bronx Journal
BronxNet
Community Cable
Lehman College
The City University of New York

BronxNet community access cable TV joined forces with the unique Multilingual Journalism program at Lehman College (CUNY) to expand its coverage of this underserved New York borough that, by itself, would have been one of the 10 largest U.S. cities.

Pew funding helped the partners launch "Eyes on the Bronx," a multimedia effort to cover the Bronx's diverse communities using civic journalism. A weekly Spanish-language news magazine began airing in April 1997. The cable service also produced periodic specials, such as a 90-minute program on AIDS in the Bronx. The program, "The Changing Face of AIDS," was produced, in part, by students in the Multilingual Journalism program and was followed by a call-in program, presented on one cable channel in English and simultaneously translated into Spanish on another channel. Bilingual educators and counselors staffed special phone lines and made referrals to appropriate organizations.

The project also launched The Bronx Journal in the fall of 1997. The free tabloid was the first newspaper to cover all of the Bronx, not just a small community within the borough. Each issue featured a multilingual pull-out section presenting hard news in 10 languages including Spanish, Russian, Korean, Chinese and Japanese. The Journal continues to provide multi-lingual coverage and is used in Bronx schools.

Jim Carney
Executive Director
Bronxnet- Lehman College
Carman Hall Room C-4
Bronx, NY 10468-1589
TEL: (718) 960-1180
FAX: (718) 960-8354
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
TEL: (718) 960-8215
FAX: (718) 960-8218
EMAIL: lerzundi@alpha.lehman.cuny.edu

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.