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In late 1994 I joined my friend Balbir Mathur for one of our occasional lunches. A native of India and a successful American entrepreneur, Balbir has spent the last decade on a modest personal quest: relieving world hunger. His approach to the problem is enriched by a combination of Eastern vision and hard-nosed Western entreprenurialism. His charitable organization, Trees for Life Inc., has planted millions of fruit trees in underdeveloped countries and provided materials to teach people in those countries how to use the trees for food, building and clothing materials and income.
He was aware of my quest, four years at that point, to try to change the nature of journalism, and after we ordered lunch he asked, "How's it going?"
"Fine," I said.
"You've been at this for three or four years. Are you seeing any progress?"
"Oh, yeah," I said. "There's....."
"That's too bad," he interjected.
"What do you mean, Balbir?"
"If this is important change," he said softly, "if it's really fundamental and you've been at it only three or four years and think you're seeing progress, then you're not asking all the right questions and you're not looking in all the right places."
As I write this in 1997, I understand in ways I could not have understood on that day the wisdom of his advice, and I relate the story to underscore the truth of his point about fundamental, cultural change, for that is the nature of public journalism.
In 1990, a number of emerging trends and individual thoughts began to coalesce, like electrons attracted to a nucleus, into a philosophy that eventually came to be called public journalism.
The nucleus that was attracting the disparate elements from journalism, academia, civic associations and foundations was America's troubled public life, which is the way that democracy is expressed and experienced. By almost any measure - voter participation, citizen engagement in joint decision-making, affiliation with traditional centers of civic action - Americans and American communities were drifting apart at a steadily increasing pace. The drift in itself constituted a threat to democracy, which is dependent for its vitality upon involvement, but was made even more dangerous because the void was being filled quite eagerly by special interests and a politics gone bad. That inexorable and visible filling of the void only increased Americans' cynicism and feelings of hopelessness about their ability to control their environment and circumstances and solve long-standing problems.
The dynamic also threatened the viability of journalism. If Americans are disillusioned about public life and increasingly withdrawn from it, they have little need for journalism and journalists. "The media" was being seen as a part of the unfriendly takeover of public life, a view clearly reflected in public opinion polls and in newspaper circulations and broadcast ratings.
Fortunately, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, people and institutions concerned about the leakages in America's democratic bloodstream began to talk to each other about the problem. For what became known as public journalism, the pivotal moment came in 1991 at a discussion organized by The Kettering Foundation and Syracuse University. It was there that some journalists who had been thinking about the decline in public life - particularly political life - encountered academics, most notably Jay Rosen of New York University, who had been looking at the problem from their different perspective.
The groups clearly shared more than a concern. The participants from both disciplines had separately reached the conclusion that journalism as it was being practiced was implicated in the decline in public life, and that journalism therefore had incurred an obligation to change in ways that could help re-engage people in public life.
The problem for everyone involved was how to effect change, and the nature of that change, in a profession steeped in a tradition of independence not only from all other institutions but also within its own walls. The challenge included the problem of how to change without putting that essential independence at risk.
WHERE WE ARE NOW
My friend Balbir's cautionary words are now three years old as this is written, making it seven years that some journalists and academics have been thinking, writing and debating about the idea of public journalism. In that time, the roster of journalists experimenting with the philosophy has grown from a handful to thousands and the number of newspapers involved at some level from three or four in the U.S. to several hundred on three continents. We are trying to "look in all the right places" and ask "all the right questions" so that the public journalism philosophy is submitted to the most rigorous tests of practicality.
"Experimenting" is the operative word. From its inception, public journalism has been an idea seeking meaningful application rather than a set of operational principles or set of rules. It is an attitude that becomes a way of doing, not simply a way of doing. People unwilling to make the intellectual journey to understand it are destined to do public journalism badly, and in fact have done it badly.
The reality of its experimental nature, as much as any one factor, made public journalism immediately controversial within the profession. That's because:
* Journalism as a profession is inherently defensive and tradition-bound. "Congress shall make no law...," the First Amendment's negative admonition, gave journalism a protected status that no other institution can claim. All of journalism's hoary traditions refer back in some manner--no matter how tenuous--to that protection and the dire results for democracy should that protection be lost.
* The unavoidable absence of a brief, immediately understandable, one-paragraph definition of public journalism invites critics to craft their own straw-men definitions and immediately set them ablaze, which dozens have done.
* Journalists tend to be pragmatic and shy away from intellectual challenges. As one critic put it, "Don't those (public journalism) people know that journalists are 'how to' people? Just tell us how to do it." The unacceptable implication of that critique is akin to baseball player Yogi Berra's plaint: "How can you hit and think at the same time?" How can journalism be thoughtful and still be journalism?
* Our profession, in fact our society as a whole, demands instant, measurable results from any proposed change. Public journalism, by its very nature, is long-term cultural change. The accepted practices of today did not spring full blown, they evolved. Changing the culture of a mature profession will take time, as will improving the nature of public life.
* It is not yet clear how deeply traditional practices will be affected, thus many critics wrongly assume that public journalism seeks to replace every journalistic tradition. It does not; it is additive, contending that much of the traditional practice is not wrong so much as it is insufficient in today's environment.
* Public journalism suggests that some of the practices that have moved people to the "top of the profession", the elite newspapers and networks, might not have been altogether appropriate and best for public life or journalism. This offends and somehow seems to threaten those high achievers, who have been virtually unanimous in their condemnation, if not their efforts to understand.
But progress is indeed being made, in part because the initial condemnation of the idea is slowly giving way to more thoughtful consideration and experimentation by many journalists.
The nature of that experimentation has evolved. The first iterations were in massive reporting projects aimed at specific problems within communities, such as The Wichita Eagle's "People Project: Solving It Ourselves" in 1992, The Charlotte Observer's "Taking Back Our Neighborhoods" in 1994 and The Kansas City Star's continuing "Raising Kansas City" series. These were useful models of one way of doing public journalism and resulted in the idea becoming closely associated with projects, including the resource expense of such projects.
However, if public journalism is to fulfill its goal of helping re-engage people in public life, it must be more than an occasional major project; it must be reflected in the everyday work that journalists do. The reason lies in the reality that much of what Americans know of public life is learned through the view of it that everyday journalism provides. If the journalism they see positions them as spectators to a public life that is beyond their influence, at least two possibilities exist: public life is in fact beyond their reach, or the view being projected by journalism is flawed, inaccurate and incomplete. People interested in public journalism believe the latter to be the case and are trying to find ways compatible with most traditional journalistic values to present a more complete and accurate view.
It is in the habits and reflexes of everyday journalism that change is most needed and its particulars are most elusive at this point in the philosophy's development. Some important principles, however, are being developed and ways found to apply them in "routine" coverage.
They include:
* Re-evaluating the use of polar conflict as a primary narrative device. While conflict over ideas is a natural and useful beginning point for the democratic process, its realization resides not in the conflict itself but in resolution of conflict. Resolution almost always is found not at the bipolar extremes but in democratic consent in middle ground. The journalistic convention is to frame issues at the extremes, a practice thought to interest readers and certainly a practice that entertains journalists. Such superficial framing, however, frustrates people and drives them away from both the issue and the journalism that brings the issue to them because they do not see their more moderate views reflected in the discussion. The principle is not to ignore polar conflict, but to recognize that the more accurate view of conflict recognizes the existence of middle ground as well.
* Recognizing the difference between journalistic objectivity and journalistic detachment. The terms are used interchangeably in most journalistic discussions, but they reflect different concepts for public journalism. Journalistic objectivity (as distinct from objectivity in the sense of the centuries-old philosophical argument about human objectivity) has come to mean a fundamental even-handedness that relies upon demonstrable facts and independent, unbiased presentation of those facts. To understand the difference between objectivity and detachment, consider Jonas Salk, who discovered the vaccine for polio. As a scientist, he had to be objective about his data, else he could reach wrong conclusions. Also as a scientist, he had to be objective because, under the scientific method, his data had to be used by others to reach the same conclusions in order to validate his work. But he was not detached. He cared very much whether he found a vaccine and his experiments were done with purposefulness. An trained and ethical journalist, like a trained and ethical scientist, can distinguish between necessary objectivity and being totally detached from the implications of the work at hand.
* Realizing that journalism's credibility does not stem from its detachment. People rely upon journalists to sort through the overwhelming flood of everyday facts and events and arrange them in some order of relative importance, a judgment call. In what values are those judgments based? The theory of detachment denies the existence of any values except the ephemeral "news value," yet that cannot be true. Why should people attend to the judgments about the relative importance of things when those judgments are made by journalists who deny sharing any common values with other people? Some basic sharing of broad values is essential to a credible relationship.
* Re-thinking the nature of democracy. Particularly in political matters, the traditional journalistic framework is one of a contest that produces winners and losers. In fact, a convention of political reporting is to sort out winners and losers not simply in elections but in all matters of contention. This model denies the essence of democracy, which is to resolve matters in a way that everyone can live with. Sorting "winners and losers" assumes citizens are one-dimensional in their self-interest and encourages them to be so. Even more distressingly, it is a disservice to the core democratic values of consent and compromise. The overriding consideration is whether the process of consent has produced something that ultimately will be good for the society and that all can accept, even though it creates some level of disadvantage for one group and some level of advantage for another.
* Distinguishing between adversarialism and skepticism. A healthy skepticism about government, authority of any kind and the unsubstantiated claims of citizens and institutions is vital to effective journalism. However, skepticism for many journalists has mutated into an unrelenting, all-purpose adversarialism that blinds them to many possibilities and disconnects them from the world upon which they report.
* Owning up to the fact, recognized by everyone but journalists, that the crucial event in journalism is the decision of how to frame a given story. As Jay Rosen puts it: "We're trying to talk openly about the values that lie embedded in framing decisions, so that journalists can think carefully about a power they've always had, but haven't named and therefore haven't owned....framing in journalism should proceed from and support certain values, and those are public values, democratic values: the values of conversation, participation, deliberative dialogue, public problem-solving; the values of inclusion, cooperative and complimentary action; the values of caring for the community, taking charge of the future, overcoming the inertia of drift; finally, the value of hope, understood as a renewable resource ... (using these) without artificially injecting them where they have no narrative power, without ignoring or slighting in any way the facts that contradict these values."3
* Valuing and encouraging public deliberation. Journalism has a superficial and beguiling stake in foment and agitation; that is the stuff of "great stories." When, however, foment and agitation are the end product rather than a means to an end, issues are perpetuated rather than resolved, bogging down democracy and creating hopelessness and cynicism. Journalism has an even larger, if less obvious and entertaining, stake in issues being resolved rather than having them stew in agitation. The way issues are resolved in a democracy is through some version of deliberation, formal or informal, so those interested in public journalism are learning to understand, value and encourage it through the way we report upon issues.4
* Seeing journalism's "line" in a different way. Traditional journalists talk about "the line" and "crossing the line" into unhealthy involvement in public affairs as if there were one bright line along which lie all possible ethical and professional points and that everyone sees, or should see, that line in the same way. The public journalism model is of a continuum formed by parallel lines. At one side lies total detachment, at the other, total involvement. For public journalists, those extremes, neither of which expresses an ideal, define a middle ground where lies flexibility to deal with special problems in special ways. In truth, traditional journalism has always reserved for itself the right to respond to unusual circumstances in non-traditional ways, but defines those circumstances narrowly and, having ventured out, quickly retreats behind "the line." Public journalism lives in the middle ground defined by the attachment-detachment continuum, constantly seeking opportunities for proper - note the word - attachment to public life.
WHERE WE HAVE BEEN RECENTLY
If you talk about the foundation of public journalism for fifteen minutes or so to a group of non-journalists interested in public life, heads begin to nod affirmatively; the reaction is "Of course, that's what journalism ought to be about. Why isn't it?" They get it. The same is true with most foreign journalists, particularly in nations where democracy is only now emerging, such as Latin America and eastern Europe. Those professionals understand and appreciate the dynamic between journalism and democracy because they have experienced first hand both democracy's absence and its affirming emergence. The puzzlement about, objections to and outright dismissal of the idea arise only in U.S. journalists, who for the most part seem either uninterested in or fearful of even discussing fundamental change, much less implementing it.
As a result of that difference, commentary on the idea during its first few years has been largely positive in foreign journals and the literature of civic activists and largely negative in U.S. newspapers and journals.
In a broad sense, one can interpret the consistent differences in reaction as a symptom of the disconnect of most American journalists from the rest of the public; as yet another artifact of the ritual of determined detachment. In a more narrow and barely more charitable sense one can attribute the negative journalistic reaction to a failure to actually engage the idea itself.
A neutral observer of some exchanges between critics and proponents of the idea could conclude that separate discussions were underway, if not separate agendas at work. Critics point to an individual project or effort and declare that if that's public journalism they are against it because it violates this or that ethical or professional canon. Proponents respond that individual instances, even those involving what everyone can agree are lapses in judgment, do not define or condemn the entire philosophy. Critics contend that if public journalism is not detached then it must be attached, and attachment to causes and institutions threatens journalism's independence. Proponents respond that moving away from detachment does not imply an unhealthy and unacceptable attachment; that there is middle ground and professionals can understand and sense the appropriate middle ground.
In all such cases, critics are dealing with what they see as the results of the philosophy and are not engaging the philosophy itself. At times, that failure to engage has been willful. In mid-1995, Max Frankel, former editor of The New York Times, decided to write a column about public journalism. He called me and asked,
"What is your agenda for the city of Wichita?"
"I have no agenda," I responded.
"But in public journalism, the newspaper sets the agenda for the community doesn't it?"
"No, I don't know what you mean."
His next few questions indicated that his misperceptions were based on one early West Coast experiment that was labelled as public journalism and on an under-researched article in one journal.
"Look," I finally said, "if you want to know what I think public journalism is about, I've just published a book; it's short, 130 pages or so, and you can read it in a couple of hours. It's published just across the river in New Jersey and I'll have a copy on your desk in the morning."
"No, thank you," he replied crisply, and his column on the New York Times op ed page was both dismissive of and misinformed about the idea.
Such events, and there have been dozens, have led me to note, sorrowfully, that "public journalism has had journalism done to it." When I say that to groups of non-journalists, they chuckle and nod in apparent understanding; when I say that to a group of journalists, they simply blink.
WHERE WE ARE HEADED
Tracing the history and evolution of an idea is a daunting, perhaps impossible, task, and at any rate not an essential task for our purposes. Any broad idea for cultural change takes on a life of its own as more and more minds apply themselves to it. Some attempts to apply change head down dead ends or into territory that is uncomfortable for others. Certainly that has been the case for me, as some experiments have gone beyond where I would go; but such is the nature of experimentation. If one knew in advance the answers and all the possible outcomes, experimentation and the risks it brings would not be necessary.
Some experiments, to my mind, have deserved the criticism heaped upon them, but the interesting and encouraging thing about the public journalism idea is that it still exists and is growing despite the best shots of its critics. That fact, after seven years, persuades me that it has a future, that the essential nexus between journalism and democracy is becoming clearer to more journalists and is urging, if not requiring, them to explore useful change.
The activity in public journalism coincides with and reinforces growing efforts in other sectors to rebuild public life and re-engage people in it. The process of governmental devolution from central authority to state and local venues is an important factor as it puts more levers within reach of more people. The realization that government cannot and will not provide ultimate answers to every question leaves people no avenue except to search for answers within themselves and their immediate surroundings. Many civic and social institutions are developing new approaches to the ideas of deliberation and citizen engagement, and across the country neighborhood and affinity organizations are expanding their reach and voices.
As journalism has been a factor in creating disconnects, public journalism is becoming a factor in re-connecting people to each other and to the process of public life. That's a journalistic purpose beyond telling the news, and it is one that can benefit both public life and journalism.
The ultimate objective is for public journalism to lose its name and become simply journalism. The debate over public journalism is not yet complete, much less the perfecting of its practice. It's a long and difficult journey. There are many more "right questions" to be asked and "right places" to be looked into. Public life and journalism did not reach their current states in a short time and they will not recover in a short time. How soon the objective is reached will depend upon how thoroughly journalists think through the ideas and how honestly and determinedly they turn them into practice. The nature of American journalism, embedded in the Constitution, is that it is free to do what it pleases with the gift of freedom. The retention of that gift is wholly dependent upon a healthy democracy; even the First Amendment is not immune to the ravages of a democracy that becomes moribund.
Davis "Buzz" Merritt, former editor and senior vice president of the Wichita Eagle, now travels to newspapers throughout the country, speaking about and teaching public journalism in his role as a senior editor for Knight-Ridder Newspapers Inc. He is also the author of, Public Journalism & Public Life: Why Telling the News is Not Enough, published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates in 1995.
Notes
1. For a balanced, thorough review of the public journalism debate by a nonparticipant, see CQ Researcher, Vol. 6, No. 35, P. 817-840, Sept. 20, 1996.
2. A broad look at early public journalism efforts in provided by Arthur Charity in Doing Public Journalism, The Guilford Press, 1995.
3. "Public Journalism as a Democratic Art," Project on Public Life and the Press, 1995.
4. David Mathews explains deliberation in this way: "...To deliberate is not just to 'talk about' problems. To deliberate means to weigh carefully both the consequences of various options for action and the views of others. Deliberation is what we require of juries. It is what makes twelve of our peers a group to whom we literally give life-or-death powers. We don't just trust twelve people with those powers under any conditions. We require that they deliberate long and carefully. The same is true of democratic politics. Without the discipline of serious deliberation, it is impossible for a body of people to articulate what they believe to be in the best interest of all - in the 'public' interest. Deliberations are needed to find our broader and common concerns ... without deliberation, governments are left without public direction and legitimacy." (p. 111, Politics For People, University of Illinois Press, 1994.) Deliberation, as Mathews and others point out, does not guarantee that anything will happen, but it "creates the possibility that an action will be taken mindful of the consequences. Deliberation helps us look before we leap." (ibid, P. 182)
Copyright © 1997 by the Kettering Foundation
© Copyright 2001 by YourSITE.com
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