Assessing 'Public Journalism'

"From the Citizen Up" by Mark Jurkowitz, in Forbes MediaCritic (Winter 1996), P.O. Box 762, Bedminster, N.J. 07921.

"Public journalism" is the latest fad in the newspaper business. No one is quite sure what the phrase means, but a good many editors are trying to put it into practice anyway, apparently hoping to win over disenchanted readers with an upbeat display of journalistic good citizenship.

Proponents such as Jay Rosen, director of New York University’s Project on Public Life and the Press, believe that public journalism can "improve democracy," while critics such as Max Frankel, the former executive editor of the New York Times, worry that the press could end up compromising its traditional mission and itself. Jurkowitz, ombudsman for the Boston Globe, examines four of the roughly 200 "public journalism" projects launched in recent years.

The San Jose Mercury News published a lengthy investigative series last year on corruption in the California State Assembly. Then it "formed a brigade of about 30 activists who visited Sacramento, grilled state legislators, attended lobbying training seminars, and tracked bills and campaign contributions." Jurkowitz lauds the reporting, but questions the second step, which took the paper over "the line from objectivity to advocacy." • The 39,000-circulation Grand Forks (N.D.) Herald "embarked on a ‘Community Conversation’ with its readers via coffee klatches, focus groups, and polls," and even lent an editor to the local Chamber of Commerce to work on its similar project. "By opening lines of communication, the Herald benefited both citizens and the community," Jurkowitz writes, but the paper should have kept the business group at arm’s length.

The Spokane Spokesman-Review "offered free pizza to the 1,500 residents who gathered in backyards to discuss what they liked and didn’t like about where they lived," then hired a consultant to turn their ideas into a lengthy report on the future of eastern Washington. To finance the $75,000 project, the newspaper contributed $30,000 and, in the words of a top editor, "went out, hat in hand to the banks, the movers and the shakers," to raise the rest. This, observes Jurkowitz, "put the newspaper in the awkward position of having local, downtown powers finance a newspaper project that directly affects their interests."

After two police officers in Charlotte, North Carolina, were shot while pursuing a suspect, the Charlotte Observer launched Taking Back Our Neighborhoods, an ongoing project that in a series of articles took an in-depth look at the city’s most crime-ridden areas. Reporters produced "some of the most unflinching, detailed urban reporting in recent memory," Jurkowitz says. The Observer also formed a partnership with United Way of the Central Carolinas, which funneled hundreds of volunteers into the blighted areas. City hall and some private businesses also took some actions. "The paper’s effort fell within the bounds of legitimate, if rare, newspaper advocacy and philanthropy," Jurkowitz says, noting the New York Times’ annual Yuletide appeal in behalf of the city’s neediest. The Observer’s project "galvanized an entire city and fueled the effort to improve blighted urban areas"—the kind of response, he concludes, that "provides the most persuasive argument for encouraging public journalism."