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Topics:
Civic Communication
Columbia
Missourian
Community Knowledge Project
A joint
pilot project among three university-owned media outlets seeks
to test the operating feasibility, public impact and implications
for journalism education of cooperative news coverage by the daily
newspaper, network-affiliated TV and public radio. Surveys and
focus groups tested citizen priorities on issue coverage. Using
results, editors selected topics for parallel coverage in all
three media, embarking on a new level of cooperation among newsroom
and academic/professional researchers. Each outlet promotes the
coverage of other media. Following a month of reports on a topic,
citizen awareness is measured by polling and compared to results
of a pre-coverage survey, with surveys designed to measure the
effectiveness of the coverage. Results of these latter surveys
may run as news stories, identifying the way people learn about
and follow topics they and others said were important. Final results
of the initiative will be used to identify journalism teaching
goals and strategies for the early 21st century.
A
case study by Project
on Public Life and the Press
New York University, Department of Journalism,10 Washington Pl.
New York, NY 10003, (212) 998-3793
©
Project on Public Life and the Press,1994 The Project is funded
by a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
Columbia
Missourian (newspaper)
P.O. Box 838
School of Journalism
University of Missouri
Columbia, MO 65204
(314)882-3831 (Lambeth)
(314) 882-5734 (Kennedy)
(314)882-4823 (fax)
Ownership
University of Missouri
No. newsroom employees:
10 full-time professional editors; 100 more part-time reporters
and editors who are students.
Circulation
6,000 (daily and Sunday)
Circulation Area(population)
Columbia (75,000) and Boone County (123,000)
Initiative
Community Knowledge Project
Dates
September 1993-present
Coordinator:
Edmund B. Lambeth, professor of journalism
Lead
editor:
Dianna Borsi, project editor
Executive
in charge:
(If different from above)
George Kennedy, managing editor
When
and how did this initiative get started?
Inspired by the 1992 book Common Knowledge (which cross-indexed
the effectiveness of radio, newspaper and TV coverage) and by
his scholarship in the 1980s on the relationship between craft
values and moral values in journalism, Lambeth originated the
idea of using the three university-owned media outlets to jointly
affect citizen response to public issues. He enlisted the cooperation
of academic officials, other news outlets, and the founding director
of the university's Stephenson Research Center. Grants of $15,000
from the university's faculty research and development fund covered
survey research and in-depth interviews.
What
are the goals of the initiative?
Primarily to help the university's three teaching newsrooms to
learn more about how their audiences perceive, process, and react
to community-oriented public affairs news and analysis. Overall,
the initiative tests citizen awareness of and involvement on a
public issue before and after a concentrated coverage campaign.
It also seeks to assess the feasibility of cross-media cooperation
in news coverage and compare the impact of the three media. Teachers
and researchers will try to distill information that will guide
teaching in conceptual and skills courses in journalism.
What
will the initiative entail?
Lambeth developed coverage ideas in cooperation with editors at
all three media outlets. To confirm their judgment, they surveyed
the community in early September 1993 about public issues, asking
respondents to identify subjects they wanted to know more about.
A second poll in September and October 1993 asked respondents
how much they knew about the subjects identified in the September
poll.
Coverage
on the first subject, "Neighborhoods in the Making," began in
October 1993 and continued for a month before a post-test poll
gauged the impact of the coverage. The project is designed to
continue through 1994.
What
will it look like in the newspaper?
The project is identified with a logo and, in the newspaper, a
column explaining the purpose. A total of 21 stories, 11 editorial
promotions and 12 "community participation notes" appeared in
the Missourian between October 27 and December 8, 1993. The television
station, NBC affiliate KOMU, broadcast four weekly features, while
NPR radio affiliate KBIA broadcast eight major features. Newspaper
coverage focused on both and an inner-city and a suburban neighborhood,
and included demographic information, summaries of problems in
the neighborhood and profiles community activists. Other topics
included ways to preserve neighborhood identity, gains and losses
of various neighborhood associations, and how such groups achieved
success. Variations on this coverage, with six to eight pieces
in a given week among the three news outlets, will continue for
four weeks on each topic. The second round of the initiative,
focusing on local jobs and the economy, began in mid-February
1994.
How
many people work on it?
Several dozen supervisory editors, reporters, photojournalists
and producers were involved in the three newsrooms.
Response
to the Initiative
In
the newsroom:
Newsrooms are still looking for ways to cooperate more closely
and incorporate features—periodic 1A columns, community forums,
a call-in radio show—that stimulate active community response.
The project has attracted a cadre of interested and enthusiastic
graduate and undergraduate students, who are developing public
listening skills and examining what the practice of public journalism
involves.
Overall
project lessons—successes and failures:
Lambeth is teaching a graduate research seminar on Media Management
and Community Knowledge.
What's
next:
Data from the survey research is still being analyzed and is expected
to be ready for presentation sometime in the summer of 1994.
Case study
written by Lisa Austin, Assistant Director of the Project on Public
Life and the Press, October, 1993 and revised in March 1994. Lisa
is also a member of the CPN Journalism editorial team.
More Information
Project
on Public Life and the Press
New York University
Department of Journalism
10 Washington Pl.
New York, NY 10003
(212) 998-3793
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