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Topics:
Civic Communication
Miami
Herald
Community Conversations
Herald editors
and reporters meet with invited members of established area organizations
(homeowners' associations, health care providers, small business
owners, etc.) to discuss what's on the minds of people in that
segment of the community. With rare exceptions, community participants
have had no regular contact with the paper and its representatives.
Meetings are held at community sites and kept small. Conversations
are transcribed, indexed and placed into the Herald computer system.
Editors and reporters have free access to transcripts and are
urged to use them as source material or to help frame issues and
ideas. In early 1994, the paper started discussing ways to share
the best of what is heard and learned with readers directly.
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.
Miami
Herald (newspaper)
1 Herald Plaza
Miami, FL 33132-1693
(305) 376-3589 (Weitzel)
(800) 727-6472 x3589
(305) 376-8943 or 2287 (fax)
Ownership
Knight-Ridder
No. newsroom employees: 400+
Circulation
400,000 (daily)
50,000 (Sunday)
Circulation area (Pop.): Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Monroe
Counties in south Florida (roughly 4 million)
Initiative
Community Conversations
Dates
May 1993-present
Lead
editor
Pete Weitzel, senior managing editor
Executive
editor
Doug Clifton
When
and how did this initiative get started?
The project grew out of a series of in-house discussions about
ways to improve staff understanding of area citizens. This effort
was considered especially important in Miami, where the community
itself is increasingly diverse. "Our blacks, our whites, our Hispanics
are not the typical black, whites, Hispanics," Weitzel said. "...They're
not spending a lot of time in the community, they're not joiners.
They only know the community through reporting, and that's insular
in and of itself." At the outset, the Herald hired public policy
consultant and Kettering Foundation Associate Richard Harwood
to help plan the initiative and conduct training for Herald staff.
What
are the goals of the initiative?
The long-term goal is to have a wiser newsroom, Weitzel writes,
"one that intuitively connects the news to readers; that presents
information about the community and what is happening in a way
that is meaningful and useful to citizen-readers." The initiative
also seeks to increase newsroom awareness of issues affecting
a broad range of people in a widely diverse community.
What
does the initiative entail?
At each meeting, five specially trained editors and reporters
meet with 10 to 12 residents in two-hour conversations convened
by Herald staff. The conversations draw out issues that concern
residents of the area; participants are asked to limit comments
about problems with the newspaper to private conversations after
the meeting. Each meeting is tape-recorded, then transcribed,
indexed by subjects covered, and placed in a computer file where
it is available to reporters and editors. After every two or three
conversations, Weitzel sends a newsletter to staff summarizing
topics covered and explaining again how to use the transcripts.
Every 3-4 weeks, transcripts move into the paper's library data
base.
How
many people are working on it?
About 100 newsroom staffers have taken part in a conversation.
Direction and legwork are provided by Weitzel and a project coordinator
who also has other responsibilities, with assistance from part-time
transcribers as needed. No more than five Herald staffers attend
any one conversation.
Response
to the Initiative
In
the newsroom:
Those who have participated in conversations tend to be enthusiastic
about the contact with "real people." Others are indifferent.
"And some will never sign on," Weitzel writes.
Transcripts
have been used to focus coverage and to generate story ideas.
For example, one editor developed a major feature on urban fear
and its effects after reading the transcripts. Reporters may turn
to the transcripts to source stories; however, they must contact
conversation participants to obtain permission to quote. Editors
have begun to pick up story ideas from the conversations, and
in isolated cases, reporters are using transcripts to come up
with sources or to focus coverage.
Elements
incorporated into regular newsroom routines and/or culture:
Weitzel expects it to be a year or so before newsroom staff fully
understand what is being done and the resource available to them.
Ideally, staffers would make the transcripts a part of their regular
routine, turning to them to source stories, to generate ideas
and to generally get a better feel for the communities they cover.
In
the community:
The project has been deliberately low key. It is not advertised.
There have been only two small footnotes to stories where Conversations
was a key element and thus needed to be noted to provide context
to the reader. Each of those, however, generated a number of calls
from individuals/groups expressing an interest in participating.
People who have participated are extremely positive. Some simply
appreciate a chance to talk with the Herald. Some have met people,
shared conversation and contacts, and come away feeling positive.
Some have said they welcomed the opportunity to have serious and
stimulating discussion of issues. One woman in a note of thanks
asked if the paper could direct her to any community discussion
groups. A side benefit: Weitzel believes people are more open
in their comments during forums than they would be if they were
talking to reporters directly. Despite the caveat that they are
being taped and that a reporter may later call and ask for an
OK to quote from a conversation, "they're not thinking so much
about how would this look in the paper tomorrow."
Overall
lessons - successes and failures:
It's a lot of work, particularly the logistics and transcription.
"You have to be dedicated, you have to be prepared to say I'm
not going to have an immediate turnaround and not provable, demonstrable
results," Weitzel said. "You have to go at it with faith in the
process and the value of making sure your newspaper is listening
to people and that information is somehow being shared with people
who use it."
Case study
written by Lisa Austin, Assistant Director of the Project on Public
Life and the Press, October 1993 with March 1994 revision based
on written update from Pete Weitzel. 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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