public journalism and communities

36 Nat ional Civ ic Review

Public Journalism and CommunitiesThis article is excerpted from Public Journalism: Pastand Present (Dayton, Ohio: Kettering FoundationPress, 2003).

Public journalism is at a crossroads. Even though atleast 320 newspapers have tried some kind of pub-lic journalism project or experiment in the past tenyears, among those journalists who have been mostinvolved there is a sense of declining momentum.For some observers, public journalism is seen as atransformation that has already taken place, animportant experiment, but in the past. Others see itas a partial revolution, a transformation that,although it has touched a minority of journalismorganizations, will not go further forward. For yetothers, it is seen as a central part of a repertoire ofjournalistic techniques that will continue to beused under some circumstances, subordinate tojournalism’s “normal” ways of doing business.

Even among the most ardent public journalism sup-porters, those who wholeheartedly embrace its deepestachievements and changes, there are few who are opti-mistic about its future. Why this is so is, not surpris-ingly, complicated. Untangling all of the factors isdifficult, but many are clear in their own right. Eventhough the battle of ideas was being fought by thepublic journalists, and the funding and development ofthe field was pushed forward by the civic journalists, acritical middle ground was weak. Public and civicjournalists asked important questions about the cul-ture and organization of journalism, but with a fewexceptions the battle was fought either in the realm ofideas and values or at the level of projects and tech-nique. There were challenges to the values of journal-ism on the one hand, and assistance in changing thepractices of journalism on the other. But neither values

challenge nor practical experiment was enough to sus-tain the momentum that both generated.

This is, of course, paradoxical. The pioneering workthat was done by Jay Rosen of New York University,Davis “Buzz” Merritt of the Wichita Eagle, and oth-ers created a “thinking space” that allowed newpractices to emerge. A practical series of experimentswas made possible by this questioning, and a certainmomentum was obtained. The problem lies not inwhat any one group did or did not do. Rather, it isstructural. The magnitude of the task at hand collid-ed with the opacity of the institutions of both jour-nalism and public life that needed to be changed.

Because public journalism is a movement, it is sub-ject to the vicissitudes and trajectory of a move-ment, both momentum and inertia. In the case ofpublic journalism, understanding this trajectory ismore complicated yet. Although public journalismreally was a movement from below, made up ofmany individuals and institutions scattered acrossthe country, linked by networks of people andideas, it also was a movement that depended bothon foundations and news corporations. In the end,the future of public journalism will be stronglyinfluenced by how communities understand andreceive public journalism, whether they mightdemand it, and under what conditions.

B Y L E W I S A . F R I E D L A N D

In the end, the future of public journalism will bestrongly influenced by how communities under-stand and receive public journalism, whether theymight demand it, and under what conditions.

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Community

In the three communities in which I did fieldwork,there are clear and demonstrable effects from publicjournalism, even where the level of newspaper activ-ity may have a longer half-life than public journal-ism activities themselves.

This is seen most clearly in Wichita, Kansas.Although large-scale, community-focused publicjournalism efforts began to fade at the Wichita Eagleas early as 1994, during our fieldwork in 1997 therewere still civic leaders from various parts of thecommunity who could cite specific positive effectsfor their neighborhood or the community as a wholethat derived from efforts as far back as the PeopleProject in 1992. In part this was because, althoughthe overall push to do public journalism haddeclined at the highest levels of the Eagle, individu-als were still authorized to dig more deeply into thecommunity. Leading reporters who were not ardentadvocates had still gone through enough changes intheir understanding of what journalism was thatthey continued to do public journalism, even after theywere not sure this was what was being asked ofthem in the newsroom. At the Virginian-Pilot inNorfolk, we saw a number of cases of interactionbetween public journalism and civic practice. Forexample, in Virginia Beach citizens learned aboutthe Neighborhood Leadership Training Institutethrough the newspaper’s Public Life pages, specifi-cally reporter Mike Knepler’s columns. The insti-tute, in turn, taught people why they should want toread the paper as citizens, and how to use it as citi-zens, expanding both readership and the civic utilityof the paper. The Public Life pages were turned intoa civic communication system by a network of civicpractitioners in the Hampton Roads region.

In Charlotte, we saw many rich interactions in thewake of the “Taking Back Our Neighborhoods”reporting project by the Charlotte Observer. Com-munities demanded housing code enforcement.Community police worked with housing inspectors

and legal volunteers. More housing was built.Churches began to cooperate across class and racialboundaries. Neighborhood leaders began to talk witheach other, sometimes for the first time. But there weremany smaller instances, evidenced by the work thepaper did over several years on the issue of young“cruisers” driving through neighborhoods. A conflictbetween African American young people and work-ing- and middle-class citizens of both races that couldhave turned easily into wider civic and racial strife waschanneled into public problem solving. The paper’scoverage of the controversy over the local perfor-mance of the Broadway play Angels in America helpedfind middle ground between conservative evangelicalChristians and members of the arts and gay commu-nities. Its race dialogue project thematized the complexissues of what kind of police force Charlotte shouldhave, and how much force was too much, in the faceof widespread disagreement among citizens.

There is clear and unequivocal evidence that publicjournalism in Wichita, Norfolk, and Charlotte hascatalyzed and extended civic action beyond thescope of specific projects, and at times has createdwider-reaching activity from quite small reports,such as those on the Public Life pages of Norfolk orthe crime stories in Wichita. In the case of Charlotte,it is fair to say we have seen evidence of a transfor-mation of both networks of civic problem solvingand public deliberation. The question before us iswhether and how this activity can be sustained.

Public Journalism Today and Tomorrow

To judge whether (and how) the changes begun dur-ing the first decade of public journalism can be sus-tained and extended requires that we address twosets of questions. First, can public journalism be sus-tained as a “movement”? To ask the same questionmore broadly, can the conditions that make publicjournalism practices possible continue to spread toboth new newsrooms and new generations ofreporters and editors? Second, do communities evenknow what public journalism is, and do they want it


enough to sustain and even create an autonomousdemand for it?

Answering whether public journalism can survive asa movement requires that we go back to the largerconditions that allowed public journalism in thefour newsrooms we studied (the fourth being theColorado Springs Gazette) to come into existence.First, we need to ask whether public journalismrequires a “movement.” A fair argument can be madethat the trajectory of public journalism can be divid-ed into three periods. The first, roughly from 1988 to1993, was the period of experimentation and inno-vation. In the second period, from 1993 to 1997, amovement emerged, with leaders, institutions such asthe Project on Public Life and the Press and the PewCenter for Civic Journalism, and a movement identi-ty. A core of journalists, many from the newsroomswe studied, publicly embraced public or civic jour-nalism as a movement for change both in the profes-sion and in the relations between journalism and thepublic. The third period, 1998 to the present, wemight call the period of routinization. Many of thepractices of the periods of experimentation andmovement have been absorbed into newsrooms andthe journalism profession. The Pew Center continuedto hold fully subscribed workshops, publish materi-al, conduct the James K. Batten awards competition,and actively reach out to new newsrooms until itclosed its doors in late 2002. However, though manyobservers and scholars believe diffusion of the newpractices is widespread, much of the movement-iden-tity language has disappeared from the way partici-pants describe themselves and their work.

This is, of course, not necessarily bad. Every move-ment has a cycle, and public journalism could not

reasonably sustain itself at the high-mobilizationlevel of the early and middle periods. Even many ofits strongest and most articulate leaders haveexpressed a longing to get back to the newsroom,leave the debate, and “do public journalism”—either explicitly or by some other name. They havegrown tired of fighting an old war. Indeed, althoughsome public journalism veterans expressed dismayat the almost elegiac tone of the last chapters of JayRosen’s history of public journalism, What AreJournalists for? others felt that it was time to goback to “civilian life.”

Whether the movement will sustain itself after themajor institutional supports are withdrawn is, atbest, an open question. It seems probable that manyof its more routine practices will be with us for sometime to come. Indeed, the idea of citizens’ agendasand voices as a necessary part of covering politicalcampaigns has even penetrated the New YorkTimes. For example, that paper’s coverage of thepresidential election in 2000 systematically incorpo-rated citizen voices from Ohio and elsewhere. Thepost–September 11 portraits of citizens, which wona special Pulitzer Prize, drew from the public jour-nalism tradition.

There are also some signs of continued institutionalvitality and support. The Kettering Foundation hasrefocused much of its recent effort on the role ofjournalism schools in sustaining public journalismresearch and practice. The Batten awards are beingcontinued through the J-Lab, the interactive jour-nalism project founded by Pew Center ExecutiveDirector Jan Schaffer, although they are beingfocused on interactive journalism. In a meeting inearly 2003, approximately two dozen public jour-nalism academics, editors, and movement veteransgathered at Kennesaw State University outsideAtlanta to develop a charter for the PublicJournalism Network, “a global professional associ-ation of journalists and educators interested inexploring and strengthening the relationshipsamong journalism, public life, and democracy.” The

Can the conditions that make public journalismpractices possible continue to spread to both newnewsrooms and new generations of reporters andeditors?

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Civic Journalism Interest Group remains a strongpresence inside the Association for Education inJournalism and Mass Communication. These activi-ties all contribute to a climate of sustainability, but,I would argue, they are not sufficient for a vital, con-tinuing, and innovative public journalism practice.They do not counter the inertia of the journalismindustries themselves.

One contentious issue between public journalismscholars and some of their counterparts on the polit-ical left was the role of the corporation in publicjournalism. Essentially, left-leaning critics said thatcorporate control of communication was the prob-lem in itself; journalism was incapable of reform aslong as it was privately owned and controlled, andpublic journalism was at best a Band-Aid over amedia system that systematically thwarted demo-cratic communication. Public journalists and schol-ars pointed to a more complex picture, in which notall corporations were equal, and some took a lead-ership role in actively promoting public journalismand changing the relationship between communityand democracy; they appeared to be seriously com-mitted to these experiments (Knight-Ridder, ownerof the Wichita and Charlotte newspapers, being thebest known). Although supporters of public journal-ism admitted the corporate conditions for sustainingthe new practice were at best uneven (and some-times counterproductive), they held that somechange could take place, and it was incumbent onthose who cared about the relationship betweendemocracy and public life to take this possibilityseriously and nurture it. To do otherwise would beto abdicate any moral responsibility for the presentin the name of waiting for a global change.

This debate was never really joined. For the mostpart, supporters of public journalism did not addressthe real limits of a reform movement that depends agreat deal on corporate cooperation.

By failing to articulate a sense of the institutionallimits of reform, supporters unintentionally did not

prepare for a change in the corporate climate thatbegan almost at the same time as public journalismand gained momentum throughout the 1990s.That, of course, is the wave of mergers and con-centration driven by the rush to stake out the ter-rain in the new electronic communications world.It is beyond our scope to discuss this here in detail.But we should make note that even those corpora-tions such as Knight-Ridder that were the mostardent supporters of public journalism, althoughstill formally committed to the principles of “com-munity-connectedness,” are refocusing their strate-gy on the delivery of electronic content. Those notalready sharing any of public journalism’s coreprinciples are much less likely to begin exploringthem now.

We have seen, however, that in all of the cases wehave examined, corporate support was essential:Knight-Ridder in Wichita and Charlotte,Landmark in Norfolk, and Freedom in ColoradoSprings. In the most obvious case of the withdraw-al of corporate support (Colorado Springs), fouryears of investment in substantial change wereundermined within months. In Norfolk, a solidcore of key editors and reporters remained, so eventhough the top of the newsroom was less commit-ted there was a strong middle that was able to con-tinue public innovation as long as the corporategoals were met. Knight-Ridder continues to be acorporation offering great autonomy in the news-room to its editors and publishers. When a strongleader such as Executive Editor Jennie Buckner inCharlotte remained in charge, there was every rea-son to believe public and civic innovation wouldcontinue. As we have already seen, ExecutiveEditor Rick Thames in Wichita is continuing thetradition started by his predecessor, Buzz Merritt,by other means.

This underscores the delicate relation between cor-porate strategy and leadership. In journalism as awhole, and in the public journalism newsroom inparticular, a group of hundreds of leaders commit-


ted to public journalism principles has grown up inthe past decade. Some will leave the profession, butmany will remain as editors and reporters; many ofthem will find a way, wherever they are, to imple-ment public journalism, piecemeal if necessary.Shifting corporate strategy cannot wipe out thenew values, habits, and routines that have beenbuilt up. But it does radically lessen the likelihoodof a new wave of innovation. At best, the newpractices of civic journalism and public journalismwill hold steady. There will be some diffusion ofnew values and practices at the level of individualleaders, and perhaps some continuing corporateinnovation. Foundation support for innovation,however, is already declining, and as of 2003 therewas no major support for continuing innovation.

This assessment may appear too negative, but it is, Ibelieve, realistic. A field of innovation has been carvedout over the past ten years. For it to remain innovative,however, requires a vital new force from outside thecorporate structure of journalism. Here, we have tolook to both journalists and citizens themselves.

Building a New Commons

There have been a number of efforts to continuediscussion among journalists, but at this writingthey remain sporadic. Public-oriented editors stillmeet at the American Society of NewspaperEditors, though not formally. There is no place forexperienced and new reporters to mingle and talkabout principles or practices, as was true in theearly workshops held by the Project on Public Lifeand the Press or the Pew Center. The PublicJournalism Network holds some promise. Further,there is no continuing public dialogue, outside ofthe universities, about what the next iteration ofpublic journalism might look like. Some journalismschools have incorporated the teaching of publicjournalism into their curriculum, exposing novicesto new ideas and technique, but there are preciousfew places for these same students to go and learn acivic version of their craft on graduation.

Is it possible that citizens themselves might begin toact together to continue the work begun by the pub-lic journalism movement? Can we imagine that citi-zens might see their interest in a lively, civic sphereof communication? The evidence for the emergenceof such a citizen-led demand for public and civiccommunication is, at best, fragmentary.

One thread of an answer is visible in a story. Theschool board of Wichita went to the Eagle asking itto “do civic journalism” for them to help pass aschool bond issue, and the paper refused, saying itwas up to the board and citizens themselves. Theytook up the challenge, held a series of public deliber-ations to arrive at a plan, and then deliberated fur-ther in the community to publicize and refine it. Thepaper covered the public’s work as it would anyother large story, though from a civic perspective; thebond issue passed, the first in twenty years. We don’tknow much yet about the aftermath of the process,but among the questions to be asked: Did citizenslearn that they can take responsibility for framingand communicating issues themselves? Because thepaper did not play a partnership or advocacy role butrather that of civic reporter, did citizens learn newskills? Did they use the World Wide Web to formtheir own civic communication space, or did theyessentially still depend on the paper to communicatethe process to a wider public? How did covering, say,a bond issue, in this way catalyze new changes at thepaper itself? Editor Rick Thames clearly saw this asan important milestone, but did others in the news-room? Perhaps of most importance, are there similarcases in other communities where citizens have seena problem and taken responsibility for building theirown public communication network? The simpleanswer right now is that we don’t know.

In our book Civic Innovation in America,1 CarmenSirianni and I sought to lay out the case for an emerg-ing civic renewal movement, capable of bringingtogether multiple currents of civic innovation in localcommunities, the nonprofit sector, government, and

41Fal l 2004

the market. We argue there is substantial evidence ofcivic innovation over at least a thirty-year period, andthat this innovation involves new learning generatedthrough addressing complex social, civic, and publicproblems. In looking at the sphere of communication,we concentrated on public journalism and the condi-tions that made it possible. It may be time to invertthe question and ask what kind of innovation citizensneed to properly communicate among themselves.

There is some case evidence that citizens are using theWeb to build civic networks.2 New InformationCommons experiments being conducted inMinneapolis, Minnesota; Madison, Wisconsin; andPrince Georges’ County, Maryland, have formedCommunity Information Corps in which high schoolstudents learn to do a form of public journalism andpublish news about both young people and their widerneighborhoods and communities on a local civicWebsite. The hypothesis of the experiment is that acommon civic communication sphere, not owned byany one company, will become a public resource thatboth citizens and media can depend on. Citizens willhave a process and a place to develop their ownreporting and problem solving (and take responsibili-ty for sustaining it). News media will have the oppor-tunity to partner with citizens and tap into voices theymay not have been hearing. At the same time, if theydo not use this knowledge, this civic resource, then cit-izens themselves and the media competitors might.

In Madison, a civic mapping project conductedjointly by the University of Wisconsin Center forCommunication and Democracy, veteran publicjournalism news organization WISC-TV, EdgewoodCollege, and the United Way is building a map ofcivic networks that can be drawn on by citizens andnews media alike as a way of charting communityknowledge and bringing it more directly into thereporting process. In Champaign-Urbana, Illinois,the I-Know project allows community organizationsto map and share information collaboratively. It istoo early to say whether these shoots appearing in

Madison, Wichita, Maryland, and St. Paul can cre-ate a foundation for a new civic movement in com-munication, much as Wichita was the starting pointfor public journalism almost twelve years ago.

A healthy civic life today depends more than ever oncommunity communication networks that are pub-lic, are open to all, and serve as pathways of civiclearning. This community knowledge is a common-pool resource. It is not owned by any one newsorganization, nonprofit, or institution. All dependdirectly on this pool to do their public and civicwork. Harry Boyte has called for a new “informa-tion-age populism” that weds the knowledge-creating power of universities with the civic learningcapacities of communities and citizens to build anew information commons.3 But if such a move-ment does emerge, the challenge this time will be tomobilize the communication sector for public pur-poses, without becoming overly dependent on eithera single corporate sector (that is, the newspaperindustry) or change in any single profession. Thenew technology of the Internet makes it possible tobuild a publicly held and publicly controlled spaceof local civic communication. But only if the will,resources, and imagination that sustained the cycleof learning of public journalism can be captured andreinvested anew.

N O T E S

1. Sirianni, C., and Friedland, L. A. Civic Innovation inAmerica: Community Empowerment, Public Policy, and theMovement for Civic Renewal. Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 2001.

The new technology of the Internet makes it possi-ble to build a publicly held and publicly controlledspace of local civic communication. But only if thewill, resources, and imagination that sustainedthe cycle of learning of public journalism can becaptured and reinvested anew.


2. Hague, B. N., and Loader, B. Digital Democracy:Discourse and Decision Making in the Information Age.London: Routledge, 1999; Keeble, L., and Loader, B.Community Informatics: Shaping Computer-Mediated SocialRelations. London: Routledge, 2001.

3. Boyte, H. Information-Age Populism: Higher Education asa Civic Learning Organization. Washington, D.C.: Council onPublic Policy Education, 2002. For a broader discussion of theinformation commons see Bollier, D. Silent Theft: The PrivatePlunder of Our Common Wealth. New York: Routledge, 2002.

Lewis A. Friedland is associate professor of journalism andmass communication and director of the Center onCommunication and Democracy at the University ofWisconsin, Madison. He also is the codirector of the CivicPractices Network (www.cpn.org). This essay is excerptedfrom his book Public Journalism: Past and Present (Dayton,Ohio: Kettering Foundation Press, 2003).

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