Making the News a 2-Way Street

Is it time to make the news media more responsive to everyday people? Stung by diminishing public esteem and declining readership (especially among the young), more and more daily newspapers are embracing a new news concept, variously described as community journalism, public journalism, and community-assisted reporting.

"According to the gospel of public journalism, professional passivity is pass/; activism is hot," writes Alicia C. Shepard in American Journalism Review (Sept. 1994). "Detachment is out; participation is in. Experts are no longer the quote machines of choice; readers' voices must be heard." Proponents of public journalism argue that "objectivity" and "balance" have caused people to believe that papers are merely mouthpieces for spokespeople and spin doctors, and that the real stories that affect people's lives rarely see print. The idea is to discover what the people really think, beyond the gripes that appear in letters to the editor.

Editors are trying a variety of new strategies to reconnect with readers. One of the most popular is the reader forum. A sort of town hall in print, it gives people a chance to gather together and discuss topics of local importance. To use a buzzword, the papers seek to engage their audience in a "conversation." Readers feel they're involved, rather than being simply news "consumers." Editors get a better idea of what's important in their communities.

Some are going further. Shepard reports that in 1992 the Charlotte Observer and other papers "abandoned horse-race election coverage, concentrating instead on the issues that mattered most to voters." Several dailies organized candidate forums at which reporters asked questions sent in by readers. Perhaps one of the most activist efforts (not surprisingly, it came from a smaller paper) took place in 1991, when the Bremerton, Washington, Sun helped spearhead an effort to buy local open space to keep it out of the hands of developers. The required bond issue was defeated, but the Sun had revived the old idea that crusading newspapers can be a key part of the political process.