Civic duties: Newspaper journalists' views on public journalism

Journalism and Mass Communication Quaterly

Volumn 76, Issue 4, 1999, Pages 756-774

  Voakes, Paul S ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 0033474318     PISSN: 10776990     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/107769909907600411     Document Type: Review

References (52)

1. As an example, in a comprehensive review of a civic journalism project in Charlotte, NC, Effron cites numerous critics, all of whom were reporters or editors for prestigious American or British newspapers (Seth Effron, "The North Carolina Experiment," Columbia Journalism Review 35 (January-February 1997): 12-13. See also Mike Hoyt, "Are You Now or Will You Ever Be a Civic Journalist?" Columbia Journalism Review 34 (September-October 1995): 27-33; or William Glaberson, "A New Press Role: Solving Problems," New York Times, 3 October 1994, sec. C, p. 5. As another example, a program at the 1997 national convention of the Society of Professional Journalists (Denver, 6 October 1997) was titled "Why Journalists Hate Public Journalism (and Why Academics Love It)."
2. As an example, in a comprehensive review of a civic journalism project in Charlotte, NC, Effron cites numerous critics, all of whom were reporters or editors for prestigious American or British newspapers (Seth Effron, "The North Carolina Experiment," Columbia Journalism Review 35 (January-February 1997): 12-13. See also Mike Hoyt, "Are You Now or Will You Ever Be a Civic Journalist?" Columbia Journalism Review 34 (September-October 1995): 27-33; or William Glaberson, "A New Press Role: Solving Problems," New York Times, 3 October 1994, sec. C, p. 5. As another example, a program at the 1997 national convention of the Society of Professional Journalists (Denver, 6 October 1997) was titled "Why Journalists Hate Public Journalism (and Why Academics Love It)."
3. As an example, in a comprehensive review of a civic journalism project in Charlotte, NC, Effron cites numerous critics, all of whom were reporters or editors for prestigious American or British newspapers (Seth Effron, "The North Carolina Experiment," Columbia Journalism Review 35 (January-February 1997): 12-13. See also Mike Hoyt, "Are You Now or Will You Ever Be a Civic Journalist?" Columbia Journalism Review 34 (September-October 1995): 27-33; or William Glaberson, "A New Press Role: Solving Problems," New York Times, 3 October 1994, sec. C, p. 5. As another example, a program at the 1997 national convention of the Society of Professional Journalists (Denver, 6 October 1997) was titled "Why Journalists Hate Public Journalism (and Why Academics Love It)."
4. Davis Merritt and Jay Rosen, Imagining Public Journalism: An Editor and Scholar Reflect on the Birth of an Idea (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University School of Journalism, 1995).
5. Rob Anderson, Robert Dardenne, and George Killenberg, "The American Newspaper as the Public Conversational Commons," in Mixed News: The Public/Civic/Communitarian Journalism Debate., ed. Jay Black (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1997), 96-115.
6. Peter Parisi, in "Toward a Philosophy of Framing: News Narratives for Public Journalism," Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 74 (winter 1997): 673-86, offers a useful distinction between civic journalism and public journalism. He sees civic journalism as the pragmatic engagement of journalists and citizens in advocating solutions to community problems, whereas public journalism seeks to understand community problems at broader and deeper levels, as local manifestations of systemic national or global patterns. In this author's experience, however, journalists and scholars have tended to use civic journalism and public journalism interchangeably. Therefore the term "civic journalism" will be used here, but the occasional reference to "public journalism" is meant to refer to the same basic concept.
7. Davis Merritt and Paul McMasters, "Merritt and McMasters Debate Public Journalism," Journal of Mass Media Ethics 11 (summer 1996): 173-83.
8. Jay Rosen, "Making Things More Public: On the Political Responsibility of the Media Intellectual," Critical Studies in Mass Communication 11 (4): 363-88.
9. Ed Fouhy and Jan Schaffer, "Civic Journalism - Growing and Evolving," in Keeping in Touch: How the Media Can Connect with the Public, Nieman Reports 49 (spring 1995): 16-19.
10. Davis Merritt, Public Journalism & Public Life: Why Telling the News is Not Enough (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1995).
11. Jay Rosen, "Public Journalism Is a Challenge to You," National Civic Review 85 (winter-spring 1996): 3-7.
12. Jay Rosen, "Public Journalism: A Case for Public Scholarship," Change 27 (May-June 1995): 29-32.
13. Davis Merritt, "Missing the Point," American Journalism Review 18 (July-August 1996): 29-33.
14. Alicia C. Shepard, "The Pew Connection," American Journalism Review 18 (April 1996): 24-29.
15. Effron, "The North Carolina Experiment."
16. Hoyt, "Are You Now or Will You Ever Be a Civic Journalist?"
17. William Glaberson, "Press Note," New York Times, 4 July 1994, sec. A, p. 23.
18. Merritt and McMasters, "Merritt and McMasters Debate Public Journalism."
19. Merritt and McMasters, "Merritt and McMasters Debate Public Journalism."
20. Lewis A. Friedland, "Bringing the News Back Home: Public Journalism and Rebuilding Local Communities," National Civic Review 85 (fall 1996): 45-49.
21. Nancy Kruh, "Public Journalism and Civic Revival: A Reporter's View," National Civic Review 85 (winter-spring 1996): 32-35.
22. Carl Sessions Stepp, "Public Journalism: Balancing the Scales," American Journalism Review 18 (May 1996): 38-40.
23. Fouhy and Schaffer, "Civic Journalism - Growing and Evolving," 18.
24. Hoyt, "Are You Now or Will You Ever Be a Civic Journalist?"
25. Merritt, "Missing the Point."
26. Merritt, "Missing the Point."
27. Arthur Charity, Doing Public Journalism (New York: The Guilford Press, 1995).
28. Charity, Doing Public Journalism, 56.
29. Merritt, "Missing the Point," 30.
30. See Charity, Doing Public Journalism, and Anderson, Dardenne, and Killenberg, "The American Newspaper as the Public Conversational Commons."
31. See Charity, Doing Public Journalism, and Anderson, Dardenne, and Killenberg, "The American Newspaper as the Public Conversational Commons."
32. James Fishkin, The Voice of the People: Public Opinion & Democracy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 162.
33. For a detailed explanation of the process, see Steven H. Chaffee, Explication (Newbury Park: Sage Publications, 1991).
34. The Pearson correlation of the two "modest" items was .31 and for the two "bolder" items .43. Both are significant at p < .01, and they form the two strongest correlations of any combination of the four civic journalism items.
35. Esther Thorson, Andrew Mendelson, Ekaterina Ognianova, and Lewis Friedland, "Affective and Behavioral Impact of Civic Journalism" (paper presented at the annual meeting of AEJMC, Chicago, August 1997).
36. Jan Schaffer, "The Best or Worst?" The Quill 85 (May 1997): 25-29.
37. Paul Riede, "Public Journalism and Constraints on News Content: A Case Study of The People Project" (paper presented at the annual meeting of AEJMC, Anaheim, August 1996).
38. Civic Lessons: Report on Four Civic Journalism Projects Funded by the Pew Center for Civic Journalism. The Pew Charitable Trusts, 1997.
39. Dan Corrigan, "Confusion over Concepts Stymies Movement," St. Louis Journalism Review 27 (April 1997): 1-4.
40. David H. Weaver and G. Cleveland Wilhoit, The American Journalist in the 1990s: U.S. News People at the End of an Era (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1996).
41. Weaver and Wilhoit, The American Journalist in the 1990s, 140.
42. Merritt, Public Journalism & Public Life, 17.
43. To measure each of these three attitudes, the survey instrument asked respondents to "rate the importance of a number of things that newspapers the size of the one you work for do, or try to do, today." Included in the list of items was "Get information to the public quickly" (representing the "disseminator" role); "Provide analysis and interpretation of complex problems" (representing the "interpreter" role), and "Investigate claims and statements made by the government and political candidates" (representing the "watchdog" role). For each item respondents chose one of four responses ranging from "Extremely Important" to "Not Very Important."
44. Three papers were randomly chosen from the over-500,000 circulation category, 7 papers from the 250,000-500,000 group, 10 papers from the 100,000-250,000 group, 9 from the 50,000-100,000 group, 7 from the 25,000-50,000 group, 11 from the 10,000-25,000 group, 7 from the 5,000-10,000 group, and 7 from the 5,000-and-under group. This reflected the actual distribution of American newspapers by size (as determined by ongoing ASNE research).
45. Editors declined either because of lack of interest, unwillingness to commit staff time, or policies precluding participation in surveys.
46. The editor was instructed to use an alphabetized roster and select every "nth" name.
47. For example, the over-500,000 papers were each asked to select 40 participants; the under-5,000 papers were each asked to select 3 staff members, again to reflect the actual distribution of American newspaper editorial employees, as determined by ongoing ASNE research.
48. As mentioned above, this survey covered a variety of topics of interest to the ASNE Human Resources Committee and to the author, in addition to the items specified in the hypotheses.
49. There is a longstanding debate over whether Likert-scale measures are appropriate for correlation and regression analysis. The variables used in the correlations and regression in this study are derived from either continuous measures, dummy variables representing ordinal measures, or Likert-type scales. Some research texts consider Likert scales to qualify as interval measures and thus for correlation or regression analysis (see for example Roger D. Wimmer and Joseph R. Dominick, Mass Media Research: An Introduction [Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1997], 49). A more conservative approach is to conduct the analysis of the same variables twice, using ordinal-appropriate analysis and then interval-appropriate analysis, to see whether differences occurred in the results. That was done here, and the significant relationships were the same in each mode. Thus, correlations and regression have been used here, in the interest of parsimony and clarity in reporting the relationships among these variables.
50. It could also be argued that another item in the Weaver and Wilhoit matrix, "setting the political agenda," could represent the values of civic journalism. This would assume, however, that the agenda would have originated through popular expression rather than the preferences of the community elite.
51. Theodore L. Glasser and Stephanie Craft, "Public Journalism and the Search for Democratic Ideals" (paper presented at the annual meeting of AEJMC, Chicago, July 1997).
52. Jay Rosen, "Making Journalism More Public," Communication 12 (summer 1991): 267-84.