Civic Journalism - Definition

Definition

According to the now dormant Pew Center for Civic Journalism, the practice "is both a philosophy and a set of values supported by some evolving techniques to reflect both of those in journalism. At its heart is a belief that journalism has an obligation to public life – an obligation that goes beyond just telling the news or unloading lots of facts. The way we do our journalism affects the way public life goes." Leading organizations in the field include the now dormant Pew Center, the Kettering Foundation, the Civic and Citizen Journalism Interest Group in the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) and the Public Journalism Network.

Although they developed the concept of public journalism together, both Rosen and Merritt have differing viewpoints on what exactly public journalism is.

Rosen defines public journalism as

a way of thinking about the business of the craft that calls on journalists to (1) address people as citizens, potential participants in public affairs, rather than victims or spectators; (2) help the political community act upon, rather than just learn about, its problems; (3) improve the climate of public discussion, rather than simply watch it deteriorate; and (4) help make public life go well, so that it earns its claim on our attention and (5) speak honestly about its civic values, its preferred view of politics, its role as a public actor.

Rosen explains five ways to understand public journalism:

• As an argument, a way of thinking about what journalist should be doing, given their own predicament and general state of public life.
• As an experiment, a way of breaking out of established routines and making a different kind of contribution to public life.
• As a movement involving practicing journalists, former journalists who want to improve their craft, academics and researchers with ideas to lend and studies that might help, foundations and think tanks that gave financial assistance and sanctuary to the movement, and other like minded folk who wanted to contribute to the rising spirit of reform.
• As a debate with often heated conversation within the press and with others outside it about the proper role of the press.
• As an adventure, an open-ended and experimental quest for another kind of press.

Merritt, on the other hand, explains that it is the responsibility of the journalist to act as a fair-minded participant in the public arena. His famous analogy of the journalist having the same role as a sports referee best depicts this idea:

The function of a third party – a referee or umpire or judge – in sports competition is to facilitate the deciding of the outcome. Ideally, the official impinges on the game; if things go according to the rules, he or she is neither seen nor heard. Yet the presence of a fair-minded participant is necessary in order for an equitable decision to be reached. What he or she brings to the arena is knowledge of the agreed-upon rules, the willingness to contribute that knowledge, and authority – that is, the right to be attended to. The referee's role is to make sure that the process works as the contestants agreed it should. In order to maintain that authority, that right to be heard, the referee must exhibit no interest in the final score other than it is arrived at under the rules. But, both for referees and contestants, that is the ultimate interest. It is important to remember that the referee doesn't make the rules. Those are agreed on by the contestants – in this case, the democratic public. The referee, rather, is the fair-minded caretaker. What journalist should bring to the arena of public life is knowledge of the rules – how the public has decided a democracy should work and the ability and the willingness to provide relevant information and a lace for that inofrmation to be discussed and turned into democratic consent. Like the referee, to maintain our authority – the right to be heard – we must exhibit no partisan interest in the specific outcome other than it is arrived at under the democratic process.

In a National Public Radio interview Merritt summed up civic journalism as "a set of values about the craft that recognizes and acts upon the interdependence between journalism and democracy. It values the concerns of citizens over the needs of the media and political actors, and conceives of citizens as stakeholders in the democratic process rather than as merely victims, spectators or inevitable adversaries. As inherent participants in the process, we should do our work in ways that aid in the resolution of public problems by fostering broad citizen engagement."