Civic Journalism - Key Proponents of Civic Journalism

Key Proponents of Civic Journalism

• David Mathews, president of the Kettering Foundation and a supporter of civic journalism states that, "when people are in the business of making choices, they are going to look for information to inform their choices." Mathews affirms that civic journalism is aimed at aligning journalistic practices with the ways that citizens form publics, in turn creating a more efficient and reciprocal way of communicating with readers.

• Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at New York University, is one of the earliest proponents of civic journalism. From 1998–99, Rosen wrote and spoke frequently about civic journalism. He published his book, What Are Journalists For? in 1999 about the early rise of the civic journalism movement. Rosen writes a popular blog called PressThink.

• W. Davis "Buzz" Merritt Jr., a former editor of The Wichita Eagle, is another pioneer of civic journalism. Merritt is a key advocate for news media reforms, and published his book Public Journalism and Public Life in 1995. Merritt began exploring civic journalism after acknowledging loss of public trust in traditional journalistic values. Merritt feels that journalists need a clear understanding and appreciation for the interdependence of journalism and democracy.

• James W. Carey, a media critic and a journalism instructor at Columbia University, was an advocate for the public journalism movement. He saw it as a "reawakening of an antecedent tradition of journalism and politics, one that emphasizes local democracy, the community of locale, and citizenship as against the distant forces that would overwhelm it...public journalism performs a great service in reminding us what is work protecting."