| 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 Back to Communication Index | 
