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Let's
start with full disclosure. I love newspapers. For almost 40 years,
The Miami Herald was my life and in a very real sense, my mistress.
I put it to bed at night. It was there in the morning when I woke
up.
I suspect many of you share some of my feelings for newspapers.
You see it as your own not just the community's newspaper, your
newspaper. But it doesn't always act that way. You don't always
see yourself and your community on those pages.
So I want to offer this thought. Your newspaper is just like any
lover, the object of any affair. It's flawed. For all the pleasure
it gives, it can at times be maddening. And frustrating. You can
even find yourself embarrassed. But if you are going to continue
the relationship, you are going to have to find a way to live with
some of those things you don't like.
I say some, because all of us try to make changes in those we love.
We may even achieve small successes. And those of you who've tried
to change your spouse in some way well, I understand why you think
newspapers might be easier.
Equally, there are many things the editors would like to see changed
about their own newspapers.
What's exciting is that you and other citizens of the Twin Cities
are looking for ways to play a positive role in bringing about that
change. And the media in this town are among the leaders in the
industry in looking for innovative ways to better cover their communities.
From many conversations over the years, I know that the editors
of both the Star Tribune and the Pioneer Press see their newsrooms
as learning organizations. They recognize a need not just to change,
but to keep changing.
What's critical is whether news organizations and citizens can develop
the kind of relationship that will allow the community vision and
the journalistic vision to rise from the same values and understandings.
Toward that end, I think it would be helpful if I shared with you
why I believe producing the news in print or electronically is an
inherently flawed process.
A few weeks ago, at a meeting of the Change Committee of the American
Society of Newspaper Editors, we had a discussion between several
editors and several members of a local, tri-ethnic neighborhood.
At one point during a heated exchange, one editor responded to a
challenge to become involved in the neighborhood by saying, "I
am not of the community."
What an incredibly damning statement.
Yet it came from a good and honest and caring man and a typical
journalist. As journalists we by and large hold ourselves aloof
from the communities in which we live and work. We do this in the
name of objectivity and to avoid not just actual but intellectual
conflicts of interest. We believe that the most important quality
we possess the element upon which our success ultimately hinges
is our credibility. In seeking to maintain that credibility, we
are willing to take few risks.
This creates a separation, a disconnect, from the very community
we cover.
The Miami Herald won the Pulitzer Prize in Public Service for its
coverage of Hurricane Andrew in 1992. It also won even higher praise
a tremendous outpouring of thanks and affection from our readers.
One reason our coverage was so good is that disaster brought us
together. For perhaps the first time since we became journalists,
our individual cares, concerns and interests were the same as Miamians'.
And so our journalistic responses instinctively matched the needs
of our readers. We connected like never before or since. There are
other elements of the disconnect:
Few, if any, newsrooms reflect their communities. When I left The
Miami Herald, the staff was about 37% minority, I believe the highest
of any general circulation newspaper in the country. That sounds
impressive and it took a lot of focused effort to get it that high.
Yet the population of Greater Miami is 52% Hispanic and about 19%
black, including 100,000 Haitians.
But looking at newsroom diversity numbers can be misleading and,
to editors, falsely reassuring. Urban newsroom staffs are, without
exception, better educated and higher paid than most of the people
in the community. Minority staff members rarely live in minority
neighborhoods; whites, for the most part, do not live in blue-collar
neighborhoods. We journalists share few experiences with ordinary
citizens.
A third factor in the disconnect: Turnover. In the most recent Columbia
Journalism Review, Michael Gartner, once the top news executive
at Des Moines, then at NBC, now the publisher in Ames, Iowa, said,
"No one stays anywhere long enough to understand his or her
town, let alone develop an affection for it. And you simply cannot
cover a town if you don't know it, understand it, and probably love
it."
Four: Our communities are big, complex, growing and volatile. Keeping
up with the change even for the native is increasingly difficult.
As professional as today's journalists are and we are much better
journalists today than a half-century or even a decade ago the demands
for expertise and new learning keep getting greater.
Time is a big factor, too. Deadline pressure can result in sloppiness
and incompleteness and shallowness, but the problem is greater than
that. In the rush to give you news of what's happening today, we
often fail to go back and research the history. You get the facts
of the moment but without the coherence that is so vital to understanding.
And, of course, we often give you stories that aren't concluded.
Partly because you demand it. Would you have settled for learning
nothing about the O.J. Simpson or Timothy McVeigh trials until the
verdicts? I doubt it. But this kind of episodic coverage sometimes
results in incomplete understanding. Other times, we quit reporting
stories and move on just when your interest is piqued and you are
beginning to understand an issue.
The complexity of our world and our communities means there's too
much going on, too much to be discovered, understood, sorted through
and reduced to film or word to make the daily newscast or each morning's
paper reflective of the total community. Most days, we are doing
well if our mirror fairly captures a dozen or so elements of the
community. And so, taken a day at a time, the newspaper or newscast
can seem particularly disconnected from the community.
Let me turn to a different kind of disconnect. This nation, and
the states and our cities function under what is best described
as representative democracy. Our journalism is fashioned to cover
representative democracy.
In recent years, we have seen a growing dissatisfaction with politics,
an increasing citizen distrust of government and citizen disconnection
from public life. Political and social scientists talk of a needed
evolution to participatory democracy, one that re-engages the people.
And there are some hopeful signs.
Jay Rosen, a New York University professor, says that journalism
should be about relationships, about treating people not as readers
or as spectators, but as citizens. And about beginning the news-gathering
process where the citizen starts. Citizens, in that definition,
are more than residents and more than voters. They are people who
are involved in public life, who accept a responsibility to help
make governance work. They are citizens of a participatory democracy.
And the journalism Rosen talks about -- public journalism -- is
a journalism for participatory democracy.
Public journalists suggest that the media should, at the very least,
be catalysts for that transition to participatory democracy. What
I'd like to suggest is that you as citizens do not have to wait,
indeed should not wait, for newspapers to take the lead.
To use that great baseball metaphor: build it and they will come.
Build citizenship, and the news media will have no choice but to
respond. If you become ever more active as citizens, if you begin
to change the way things happen here in the Twin Cities, then the
role of the journalist must, of necessity, change. That role can
no longer be simply to inform you of what is happening; rather it
must be to provide you with information that will make your activism,
your participation, your involvement more efficient and meaningful.
Better yet, build it with them. I talked earlier about a conversation
with some community activists at an ASNE conference. I wrote down
three words and underlined them:
Listening Trust Relationships
Listening. I believe that's where it all starts. Both you and the
media need to do a lot more. Before I left Miami, I led an 18-month
project designed to offset some of the disconnections, to get us
out into the community we were only nominally a part of. On an average
of once a week, I took a handful of my colleagues a different group
each time into various neighborhoods of South Florida and for two,
sometimes three, hours we listened to ordinary people. Just listened,
as they talked about their personal concerns and neighborhood problems,
and sometimes larger issues things they felt had an effect on the
quality of their lives.
We weren't looking for stories although we got lots of ideas. Rather
we were seeking understanding and the beginnings of empathy things
that would help us make better story assignments and news-play decisions.
And we were hoping to develop relationships with various citizens
groups people we'd had little contact with because they were the
most occasional of news sources or subjects. I came away from that
experience convinced that good listening is one answer to the disconnect
we've talked about. But I also came to appreciate that you can't
expect meaningful change overnight. Newsroom culture is deeply entrenched.
It developed in response to the economic and operational realities
of the business of journalism. It is nurtured by long-standing principles
and norms. It is hardened by reporting and writing reflexes that
allow journalists to survive the considerable stress they work under
day in and out. Civic culture is similarly entrenched. Neither will
change easily or quickly on its own. Trust. Build it and they will
come. Tear it down and you will remain apart.
That works for both sides, but you've got to start by trusting journalists.
They are not out to do harm to the community. I don't care how many
experiences you think you've had to the contrary. Most often, they
believe they are doing just the opposite. They see themselves as
helping. And they are true to their own interests, just as you are.
And just like you, they can be shortsighted and mistaken. Sometimes,
they don't trust the public to do the right thing because they believe
you lack the insider know-ledge or the will to make a difference.
But you can't begin the process of changing their perceptions and
building trust unless you are willing to suspend your own disbelief.
Relationships: This is the critical part. Both you and the journalists
need to build a more constructive and effective relationship.
Individually and collectively, you must start approaching the media
in the role of citizen. Not reader, not viewer, and most definitely
not as a special-interest stakeholder pushing a particular cause
or point of view. You must put your individual interests aside in
favor of your citizen interests.
As citizens, you must hold, journalists accountable not to individual
groups you might represent or points of view you might hold but
to the community as a whole. But as you do so, you need to recognize
and work through with the media the issue of their involvement and
credibility.
How much community involvement by a newspaper is acceptable? As
an editor, do you join with the Chamber of Commerce and the local
utility in an economic development effort, as the Bremerton (WA)
Sun did?
Do you call public officials together and say, "Here's a problem
that needs to be solved and here's what we are going to do and what
are you going to do," as the Wisconsin State Journal has done?
Do you convene people in a neighborhood and help them form a grassroots
group, and then bring public officials to the table, as the Charlotte
Observer did?
Do you ask for citizen volunteers and then bring them together in
ongoing problem-solving groups, as the Akron Beacon Journal did?
Do you initiate a series of public discussions on local problems
and then report on the findings, as did the Binghamton (NY) Sun
and Press Bulletin?
Many of the elders of newspaper journalism argue that all of the
above are wrong because each puts the paper's credibility at risk.
As that journalistic debate has raged, I've struggled for my own
answer. Here it is:
News organizations must create a journalism that is right for their
community, not one that fits some national model. And that comes
back to relationships. And so the answer with each news organization
in each community depends on the quality of the relationships formed
between the newsroom and the people in the community; on whether
they are listening to each other and whether there is an underlying
trust. The stronger that relationship and that trust, the greater
a newsroom's involvement can be without risking a loss of credibility.
The success of the Twin Cities Project on the Media depends on the
willingness of journalists and citizens to build those relationships
over time. And it will take time. But the civic and journalistic
dividends are well worth the effort.
Peter
Weitzel is the former editor of the Miami Herald
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