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Topics:
Civic Communication
The
Indianapolis Star
The Indianapolis
Star has run two civic journalism projects, one in 1993 on race
relations and one on the 1994 election. The week-long series,
"Blacks and Whites: Can We Get Along?" involved polling citizens
on their racial attitudes and using the results to determine stories;
working cooperatively on coverage with a local TV-network affiliate;
and sponsoring community forums. The election project included
an issues poll, in-depth issues coverage and a voter registration
drive. The Star also stepped up coverage of state legislative
races and revamped its voter guide.
Contents
Blacks
and Whites: Can We Get Along?
Elections 1994
Case
studies 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.
Indianapolis
Star (newspaper)
P.O. Box 147
307 N. Pennsylvania St.
Indianapolis, IN 46206-0145
(317) 633-1240 (phone)
(317) 633-9423 (fax)
Ownership
Central Newspapers
No. newsroom employees: 148
Circulation
240,000 (daily)
400,000 (Sunday)
circulation area (population)
Statewide, primarily central Indiana; (3 million; Indianapolis
and Marion Co., 1 million)
Initiative
Blacks & Whites: Can We Get Along?
Dates
February 21-28, 1993; followed by community forums, poll updates
and follow up reporting in 1994.
Lead
Editor
Mark Nichols
Executive
Editor
Frank Caperton
Blacks and Whites: Can We Get Along?
On the heels
of the Mike Tyson rape trial in Indianapolis in 1992, the Star
commissioned a major poll on racial attitudes (its first non-election
poll) and designed a week-long reporting project around the results.
Story assignments were not made until results were in. Comprised
of more than three dozen stories over a week, and coupled with
a week-long series on the same topics by the local ABC affiliate,
the series generated close to 1,000 calls to the newspaper. Stories
reflected citizen experience, rather than relying on expert opinion,
a major departure for the newspaper. Along with its stories, the
series also directed readers to additional community resources
and to books on the topics. A subsequent community forum sponsored
and moderated by the paper drew more than 500 people; five more
were planned through the spring of 1994. Publication of results
from a 1994 poll update coincide with the first anniversary of
the package's publication.
When
and how did this initiative get started?
Major commitment by newsroom management. The decision was based
on the city's racial history and racially polarized conversations
in the community during and after the Tyson trial.
What
are the goals of the initiative?
To get members of the community talking about race relations issues.
The goal was not to advocate any specific action, but to encourage
citizens of the community to seek solutions - of their own devising
- to problems of race, whether the solutions were to increase
and/or improve the quality of formal conversations between blacks
and whites, create organizations to address disparities in housing
and jobs, etc.
What
does the initiative entail?
Planning began in mid-1992 for the series, with assignment alternatives
built into the plan so that stories would be built around survey
results. The survey itself, valid to within 5 percentage points
for white respondents and 3 for black, was conducted in early
January 1993 by a research facility at the local university. Publication
of the series began just two weeks after results were in, thanks
to an intensive effort involving up to half the reporting and
photography staff. Each day focused on a topic (history of Indianapolis
race relations, schools, workplace, housing, social patterns,
business including the media, governance and the future of race
relations in the city). Pertinent poll results accompanied the
stories.
WRTV's stories
covered the same topics, though on different days and from different
angles.
The first
of the community forums sponsored by the paper was held immediately
after initial publication, drawing 500 participants. Five monthly
forums began in January 1994, each focused around a topic of the
series. The first two drew well, with about 300 people attending.
(Others had yet to be held at the date of this writing.) After
an hour of initial conversations, participants break into small
groups to discuss potential action in response to the issue being
discussed, then reconvene to talk about recommendations before
the full forum. Forum facilitators are volunteers recommended
by Star staff; the March seminar on workplace issues will be led
by the executive director of the state commission on civil rights.
Star staffers help lead small group discussions.
How
many people are working on it?
Twenty-eight staffers contributed directly to initial package.
What
does it look like in the newspaper?
The package always began on 1A and played in both the A section
and throughout the paper. It was impossible to miss the series,
which included 4-6 stories a day along with numerous photos, played
big, and graphics.
Response
to the Initiative
In
the newsroom:
Through gratified by the ongoing community response to the project,
staff members were eager to see movement from talk to action by
early 1994. "We were wondering, do people need to keep talking?
The conversation, it's getting fairly repetitious in some cases,"
Nichols said. "But still, you're getting 200 or 300 people to
a forum at one time, and they're different people and they want
to talk; that's still encouraging in a sense. We're in the process,
not trying to make something happen, but hoping something will
come out of the issues we've raised. "However, Nichols volunteered,
the community may need more talk before moving on to fashion specific
remedies.
Positive
on polling: "We had been so much in the mode of getting an expert's
opinion on something, and talking to three or four people, and
putting together a story, that this was refreshing," said Nichols,
who has worked at the Star 14 years.
Negative
about TV: From the outset, folks in the newsroom were wary of
working with a TV news staff, reflecting a common institutional
attitude among print journalists. The paper's reporters were especially
uncomfortable with the TV reporters' use of hidden cameras on
stories. "A lot of people felt it was a cheap way of covering
an important issue," Nichols said. When the Star's TV critic reflected
that sentiment in his column, a TV broadcast in turn criticized
the column. Newsroom wags dubbed the contentious atmosphere "Media
Relations: Can We All Get Along?"
Elements
incorporated into regular newsroom routines and/or culture:
Managing Editor Frank Caperton established a diversity committee
to look at the way minorities and women are portrayed in the paper.
The committee audits news coverage and publishes a newsletter;
in March 1994, a group from the community will meet with the committee
to look at the paper together and to discuss perceptions about
coverage that affected minorities and women.
In
the community:
"In the end, the best responses we got were from people who said,
'Hey, I talked with this white guy the other day about this; we'd
never talked about it before.' Or, 'I took this black guy to lunch,'"
Nichols said. "In the end, people started talking, and they may
not have been happy with what they found out, but at least they
started."
Community
reaction when the series was launched seemed to reflect a pent-up
demand for such conversations. In a response Nichols credits to
WRTV's publicity about the series, people began calling the Star
to talk about race relations a full week before stories ran. After
publication, Star staff couldn't keep up with the phones. In the
first four days alone, more than 600 people called a reader response
line to record their views; Nichols said hundreds more called
the newsroom.
Among
political leaders:
Negligible.
Did
any outside group pick up the newspaper's initiative and carry
it further?
Although the series has generated a great deal of interest in
various community organizations, they have yet to come together
to develop a common vision or goals. But actions are taking place
on an ad hoc basis. After the forum on education, for example,
a group of participants agreed to talk to school board members
about implementing a multicultural school curriculum. "But there's
nothing like a blue-ribbon commission to take this to the mayor
or the governor," Nichols said.
What's
next:
Three more community forums are scheduled, through May 1994. A
range of other possibilities for follow-up are under consideration
by the newspaper.
Indianapolis
Star, Elections 1994
After a
round of newsroom meetings devoted to a discussion about the decay
of civic life and public culture, the Star launched an elections
project modeled on the Charlotte Observer's. Work included an
issues poll cosponsored by a local TV-network affiliate, in-depth
issues coverage and a voter registration drive. The Star also
stepped up coverage of state legislative races and revamped its
voter guide, moving publication the Thursday before elections,
rather than the Monday before.
When
and how did this initiative get started?
Plans to cover the elections using a public journalism model first
were discussed in spring 1994, after the paper used a citizen-drive
approach to cover race relations in the city.
What
are the goals of the initiative?
"To let readers know we're their partners, not the partners of
the governor and all those other folks," Caperton said.
What
does the initiative entail?
The initiative began with a series of newsroom meetings about
the rationale for public journalism, with discussion about the
decay of public life and civic culture. (See below under newsroom
culture.) The reporting itself was modeled on Charlotte's 1992
elections effort, beginning with a summer 1994 issues poll co-sponsored
by the local CBS affiliate. After Labor Day, the paper published
10 days of scene-setting reports, explaining the project's rationale
and detailing five top concerns identified in the issues poll.
Continuing reports paired questions from citizens and journalists
in a grid with responses from candidates, with a new emphasis
on state legislative elections. Citizen commentary and questions
were drawn from audiotext lines and from questions raised by poll
respondents. A voter guide, published the Thursday before elections,
summarized material from the grids. At the same time, the paper
and its TV partner launched a voter registration drive, emphasizing
registration in coverage and setting up registration stations
in malls and similar locations.
What
does it look like in the newspaper?
Most main stories started on 1A with jumps inside. Issues grids
with citizen comments and voter-candidate Q&A's ran mostly in
the local section. The grids—labeled with a "Hoosier Voices"
sig—were charts with a picture of the voter and a two-paragraph
discussion of the topic at hand.
The newspaper
and its TV partner used similar sigs on their projects to maximize
cross-promotion.
Response
to the Initiative
In
the newsroom:
Staff members working on elections coverage like the approach,
Caperton said. "I suppose there may be someone sitting on fence
who thinks this is a bunch of hooey and it will go away, but there
are a lot more questions from our people about how we take this
past the realm of politics."
Elements
incorporated into regular newsroom routines and/or culture:
Caperton seeded the newsroom with a series of meetings at the
outset of the project, discussing the elections effort itself
and the rationales for the approach—low voter involvement, political
disenfranchisement and the general erosion of civic life skills.
Led by Caperton, the city editor and the assistant city editor
in charge of political coverage, sessions were held three times,
throughout the day, to give staff members with different schedules
the chance to attend.
In
the community:
Acquaintances have approached Caperton at church and in other
social settings to compliment the project. Voter registration
is up; the local elections supervisor credits the media campaign.
Among
political leaders:
Political operatives grumbled that the paper wasn't covering "real
politics," Caperton said. Citing an example, Caperton said the
Star's sister paper gave major play to a controversy about whether
the incumbent U.S. Senator owned or rented the dog featured in
his folksy campaign spots; the Star played the story small and
inside.
What's
next:
Caperton plans to integrate an approach centered around citizen
concerns into everyday political coverage.
Case studies
written by Lisa Austin, Assistant Director of the Project on Public
Life and the Press, March1994. 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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