ABSTRACT

One of this project’s contributors, Lew Friedland, a few years ago expressed pessimism for public journalism’s future (Friedland, 2004). In a follow-up for this book he says his pessimism has only worsened (Part I Open Source interview). Another contributor, Joyce Nip, in a recent article described civic journalism as being in its “last days” (Nip, 2008). In fact, one of the editors of this volume has observed that professional journalism’s own sociology of work and its self-definitions undermined any true deliberation about adopting public journalism (St. John, 2007). Those sound like pretty dire assessments. Has public journalism met its demise? Is a book discussing “public journalism 2.0” the equivalent of an argument for upgrading eight-track tape machines? Clearly, the authors hope not. The premise for this book is two-fold, presuming (1) that civic or public journalism is not dead yet, but is in need of some revitalization; and (2) that citizen journalism, while not necessarily an automatic replacement for public journalism, nevertheless could pick up the mantle under certain conditions. This assumes a kind of symbiosis in which the two practices address each other’s shortcomings. The myriad perspectives offered in this volume speak to both the separation and connection points that go into defining the symbiotic relationship: defining news values, gatekeeping prerogatives, collaborative work practices, emerging models for news presentation and private versus public concerns. As a starting point, citizen journalism has become popular and fairly ubiquitous; J-Lab’s Knight Citizen News Network project identified about 800 citizen news media sites as of mid-2009 (Knight Citizen News Network, 2009). And non-news citizen media creations are even more widespread, with an uncountable number of stand-alone blogs, uploaded YouTube videos, independent and sponsored (e.g. within an online newspaper’s site) message forums, and other venues in which people can put their ideas online in words and images. How much of that content seeks to “connect” producers and/or recipients in any

manner related to civic engagement or search for community building and common ground is unclear. However, the current body of research regarding citizen-created news content reveals few identifiable efforts that attempt to connect audiences to news that can be considered, in public journalism parlance, as helping public life go well. In the best-intentioned citizen journalism, site organizers and dedicated volunteers (who often are the same people) set out to cover topics that major media organizations in their communities either no longer address or perhaps never did. But even these well-constructed efforts can fall short of creating the sort of “conversational commons” that public journalism suggests is necessary to build a public that can engage with civic issues or community problem-solving. As the research and case studies in this book show, citizen journalists wrestle with defining what their coverage should entail and how it should be presented. Site organizers struggle with keeping more than a handful of contributors active at any given time. There is no denying that having many independent voices contributing to the coverage of a community has certain benefits when compared to the limited perspectives available in a mass-media gatekeeping model. However, just putting all of those voices out there offers no guarantee of a common view coalescing or of a public forming, mobilized for action. This is particularly true when many contributions from the public are of a decidedly private nature or from a narrow, personalized viewpoint. So while it has some intrinsic value, citizen journalism is no automatic replacement for the aspirations of improved community engagement that were the impetus for the public journalism movement As for public journalism, after a period of growth in the late 1980s and 1990s, peaking from around 1994 to 2002 (corresponding roughly to the lifespan of the Pew Center for Civic Journalism), it has largely melted into the media landscape. During its heyday, public journalism tended to take the shape of special reporting projects, usually by mid-sized metro daily newspapers. These took significant time, energy and resources to organize. Many of these projects cost money that went beyond their organizations’ routine budgets, for expenses such as providing reporter release-time or overtime, hiring facilitators for roundtables and public meetings, and conducting community polls. And many of these extraordinary expenses were covered with additional funding, such as Pew Center grants or money from corporate headquarters interested in supporting the innovations. But as Lew Friedland points out in his Open Source interview, the economic plight of many journalism organizations, particularly daily newspapers, undermines their ability to conduct such projects today. Such initiatives are not likely to return. So, neither public journalism as earlier conceived nor citizen journalism in its present form is up to the task of meeting public journalism’s goal of “making

public life go well.” Arguably, however, journalism’s need – and society’s need – for practices that can attain this have not abated. If, as Buzz Merritt notes in his chapter in this volume, citizen journalism is “a practice in search of a theory,” then using the theories and aspirations of public journalism to guide an improved set of citizen journalism practices seem like a natural fit. Such an approach could help answer the questions surrounding how stand-alone citizen journalism operators might refine their definitions of “news” and gatekeeping. Applying the lessons of public journalism can help to define how professional and citizen contributors can relate to, and work with, each other in constructing today’s news. In her “final days” article, Joyce Nip succinctly summarizes practices that are the hallmarks of public journalism as: listening to the public to help shape the news agenda, giving ordinary people a voice, covering stories in ways that facilitate public understanding and stimulate citizen deliberation of the problems behind the stories, presenting news in ways that make it more accessible (making it easier for people to engage in the issues), engaging the community in problem-solving, and maximizing the impact of coverage in the community (2008, p. 180). Even when public journalism was in its prime in the mid-1990s, engaging in these practices was challenging for two primary reasons: (1) it required that traditional journalists operate outside their comfort zones in defining story topics and relating to their readers, and many were loath to do so; and (2) the logistics of implementing these practices – such as finding places for roundtable forums, getting citizens to attend and figuring out how to include them in the news coverage – were time-consuming and expensive. Fast-forward 15 years, and the environment has changed dramatically. The audience already is a part of the news mix, driving some of the agenda and often adding its voice to a news report that is more a chorus than an aria. As a result, working collaboratively with audience members in shaping news coverage is not as far outside the comfort zone for reporters now as it was in public journalism’s early days. Finished reporting projects can be more accessible and have greater impact because they need not appear in the printed newspaper, but can be left online indefinitely. This creates an ability to update them at any time and offers the prospect of links from individuals or community organizations with a stake in the topic. The projects thus become a standing community resource rather than a one-and-done effort that appears on a random Sunday morning. Deliberative techniques geared toward engagement and problem-solving – such as roundtable discussions or community forums with civic leaders – can be facilitated online, reducing if not eliminating the time-consuming and expensive logistical problems that once went into such efforts. What this adds up to is that the modern form and practice of journalism appears ripe for re-application of some of the principles and practices of public

journalism. While it is possible for a citizen journalism operation run by operators with no formal training to engage in these practices, it is perhaps more likely for a professional operation to adopt them, working with citizens who are often already engaged in participatory content production through that news organization’s online site. This does not mean that simply building this participatory structure will make for more relevant coverage that supports greater engagement. This volume has pointed to the various promises and challenges of achieving that. Instead, the road to realizing a more citizen-engaged press first calls for both professional and citizen journalists to examine how they can integrate the credibility of traditional journalistic practices into new interactive mediums. Of course, journalists have the benefits of experience and training that have allowed them to develop conceptual frameworks for defining news. Admittedly, as public journalism originally observed, many of these journalistic paradigms served to distance journalism from the public. But such dysfunctions do not mean journalists cannot take a leading role in forming a truly citizen-engaged press. Rather, since professional news workers have the benefits that come from both practice and education, they also should have the responsibility of provoking a resurgence in meaningful, community-focused news by collaborating with citizen-contributors. As Carl Sessions Stepp notes in a review of a book about the impact of the blogosphere on the 2008 presidential race:

To see bloggers as supplanting traditional coverage seems misguided. Instead, pro-am journalism probably will become increasingly synergistic. Although many bloggers [described in the book] express contempt for the mainstream press, it is striking how often they depended on cracking traditional media to gain credibility. The richest irony here may be that traditional media and citizen journalists aren’t so much competitors as codependents.