What is civic journalism?
According to the Pew
Center for Civic Journalism, it is a belief that "journalism
has an obligation to public life - an obligation that goes beyond just
telling the news or unloading lots of facts. The way we do our journalism
affects the way public life goes. Journalism can help empower a community
or it can help disable it."
The late Jim Batten, chairman and chief executive of Knight-Ridder Inc., believed journalism could be "a vital building block in revitalizing citizenship -- while maintaining its ability to tell hard truths." His address at the University of California, Riverside, April 3, 1989, covered much of the philosophy that is now known as civic journalism.
Edward M. Fouhy, former executive director of Pew Center, said, "[Civic journalism] is an effort to reconnect with the real concerns that viewers and readers have about the things in their lives they care most about--not in a way that panders to them, but in a way that treats them as citizens with the responsibilities of self-government, rather than as consumers to whom goods and services are sold.
"It takes the traditional five w's of journalism--who, what, when, where, why--and expands them--to ask why is this story important to me and to the community in which I live?"
Can this work in high school media? Of course it can. This does not mean being a public relations outlet for the administration, but it does mean showing readers - most of them students in the school - how they have a voice and can make a difference. This can be done through letters to the editor and reader commentaries, but it can go beyond this. The topics a publication covers can help show readers where problems exist in their school and community. Ignoring these problems and only writing about club meetings and winning football games will only create more apathy and cynicism. Publications can cover all sides and encourage readers through editorials and even "town hall meetings" to get involved and then use practical methods to solve these problems.
Bibliography of public journalism at The Poynter Institute for Media Studies
Other links to civic and/or public journalism
Civic
Practices Network is a collaborative and nonpartisan project
dedicated to bringing practical tools for public problem solving into
community and institutional settings across the country.
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site]
National Civic League is a 107-year-old non-profit, non-partisan
organization dedicated to strengthening citizen democracy by transforming
democratic institutions.
The
Walt Whitman Center for the Culture and Politics of Democracy,
concentrates on the analysis of democratic politics in the United States.
It approaches democracy in the spirit of Walt Whitman's ideal of vigorous
citizenry engaged in the culture and politics of a free society -- democracy
understood as a mode of living within political institutions.
[view
site]
National Conference of Editorial Writers offers a definition
of civic/public journalism and links to several additional sites on the
topic.
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site]
Minnesota Public Radio's CIVIC JOURNALISM INITIATIVE'S
MISSION is to gather citizens to talk about public policy issues and amplify
what they say via radio, the Internet, and print.
[view
site]
The University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication's
library offers many links to sites exploring civic journalism.