Exploring Public Service Journalism

Public Journalism

Rosen (1994) and Merritt (1998) are commonly credited with introducing the concept of public journalism to an industry that, at the time, seemed to be suffering from a malaise, both in terms of credibility with its audience and economic viability (Nip, 2008). Also called civic journalism, public journalism’s founders stressed the movement’s focus on public discourse and strengthening democracy (Rosen, 1999). When news organizations first started implementing the tenets of public journalism, most often, it was in the form of a special project, but, over time, many of the practices closely associated with the movement became commonplace in journalism (Glasser, 1999).

Many have studied the movement, and Nip (2008) suggested through a review of the literature that there are four undisputed tenets of public journalism: It should engage the community through open dialogue, let ordinary people have influence over news organizations’ agendas, make the news more understandable, and report on issues in a manner that galvanizes the community into something positive rather than frustrates it. Although those tenets make up the specific manner in which organizations can attain the goals of public journalism, Rosen (1994) and Merritt (1998) argued the main, overarching purpose of the movement is to engage the audience. The main distinction between traditional journalism and public journalism practices, wrote Rosen (1999), comes from a specific variation of role: No longer is it enough for a journalist to simply inform the audience, but they must “frame things from citizens’ perspective and help with the problem solving, not the blaming” (p. 148).

The beginning of the 21st century saw public journalism meet its demise (e.g., Gade & Perry, 2003; Nip, 2008; Rosenberry & St. John, 2010). However, at the same time scholars and journalists alike began writing public journalism’s obituary, new technologies that theoretically could make accomplishing the movement’s tenets simpler began to infiltrate newsrooms (Kennedy, 2013; Rosenberry & St. John, 2010). Without calling it public journalism, scholars and journalists observed that these technology advancements have allowed journalistic organizations to incorporate many of the routines and norms of public journalism into their newsrooms (e.g., Bass, 2006; Ferrucci, 2015d).

Today, numerous journalism scholars argue that the future of successful and impactful news organizations depends on a focus on engagement, the aforementioned main goal of public journalism (e.g., Kaye & Quinn, 2010; Patterson, 2013). When discussing the demise of public journalism, Nip (2008) defined engagement as incorporating readers as citizens into news operations, giving them a say in news processes and not simply treating them as consumers or customers. Friedland (2001) argued that the media does more than any other institution to “shape the overall understanding” of society; therefore, it is vital for journalists and citizens to interact and stay engaged (p. 381). Therefore, if a news organization wants to help sustain democracy and serve its function in a democratic society, it should engage with its audience.

Journalism Market Models

Due to technology, increasing rates of literacy, and the potential for profit, newspapers in America drastically changed in the late 19th century (Baldasty, 1992). Before this time, newspapers in the country tended to be little more than competing pulpits for various political parties. However, the combination of literacy, economics, and technology shifted the news media into the for-profit, advertising-driven enterprise still most prevalent in the United States. Over time, technology allowed for more distribution models, from print to radio to television to digital, but, until recently and with several notable exceptions such as Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), one market model accounted for virtually the entire news industry in this country (Baldasty, 1992). Although at first, wealthy, local families owned and operated these news organizations, eventually the profit-earning potential of the operations led companies and then conglomerates to begin purchasing news organizations from across different media, in many cases creating monopolies over local news organizations (Bagdikian, 2004). Today, still, the vast majority of traditional media organizations from print, television, and radio are owned by corporations and conglomerates (Kennedy, 2013). However, technology is slowly disrupting the traditional news industry (Kaye & Quinn, 2010).

Whereas once an individual, family, corporation, or conglomerate needed vast wealth to own a media organization due to the high cost of disseminating information, now the Internet makes that process massively less expensive (Kaye & Quinn, 2010). This proliferation of technology, allowing almost anybody the ability to publish material visible to virtually anyone with an Internet connection, ushered in an era of new market models for journalism (Batsell, 2015; Kaye & Quinn, 2010; Scott, 2005). Although finding and maintaining an audience for news could never be considered easy, the Internet, and social media in particular, makes building, maintaining, and growing audiences more feasible than ever before (Batsell, 2015; Bruns, 2005; Kaye & Quinn, 2010; Klinenberg, 2005). All of this change and technological advancement add up to numerous new market models for journalism, ones with different funding structures and varying organizational hierarchies (Kennedy, 2013). These changes also affect how journalists do their jobs and how audiences consume news (Boczkowski & Mitchelstein, 2012).

DNNNs

One market model changing the news industry’s landscape is the DNNN (Nee, 2013). DNNNs are online-only news gathering operations that are nonprofit organizations; they are primarily funded through a combination of donations from the public, grants, and corporate sponsorships, and by hosting various classes, live events, and workshops for the community (Kaye & Quinn, 2010). Former print journalists founded the vast majority of these news websites because they believed traditional media organizations, both print and television, were not serving citizens as well as they could (Kennedy, 2013; Remez, 2012).

Studies have shown that when news organizations prioritize profit, they produce more news that readers and viewers want, not need (Beam, 2003). As news organizations moved more toward a market-driven approach in the 1980s, as corporations began purchasing them (McManus, 1994), this led to more feature, entertainment, sports, and other non-hard news stories (Beam, 1998). This focus on profit also manifested itself in less interaction with the audience or citizens, which led journalists to rely even more on the concept of “an imagined audience” (Shoemaker & Vos, 2009). An imagined audience is defined as the people journalists think they are writing for and to, but really, as they have little interaction with community and most rely on expert sources, this imagined audience often barely resembles the actual one. And studies have shown that when compared with traditional media, DNNNs cover the exact same story subject in a way that better fosters democracy by providing more context, potential solutions, and more diverse sources (Ferrucci, 2015b, 2015c).

Scholars have studied DNNNs in numerous manners. Both Nee (2013) and Konieczna (2014) examined how the funding structure for these organizations allowed for differing routines to affect news gathering. Ferrucci (2015a) argued that although business executives run traditional media organizations, journalists tend to lead DNNNs, and this change in organizational structure significantly affects the way journalists at DNNNs choose and report news. In one study, Nee (2014) examined whether the government providing funds to assist DNNNs would affect the organizations’ ability to be watchdogs. Konieczna and Robinson (2014) studied how DNNNs focus on community-building stories and, therefore, could help rebuild the trust between media organizations and community members. And Ferrucci (2015d) found that one particular DNNN’s funding structure allowed it to report and produce news in a different way than traditional news organizations; the DNNN’s lack of reliance on advertising and lack of focus on profit let it practice a new form of public journalism, one that the study dubbed public service journalism. Public service journalism, Ferrucci (2015d) argued, meant that the specific DNNN involved citizens far more seamlessly and consistently in agenda setting and overall news construction processes, and focused content more strongly on issues affecting citizenship and democracy. The main difference between public journalism and public service journalism, wrote Ferrucci (2015d), lies in setting the agenda. A main goal of public journalism was to make citizens equal partners in setting the news agenda (Glasser & Craft, 1996), but in public service journalism, although citizens play an active role in shaping the news, journalists maintain control over the final say in setting the news agenda.

Theory of the Public Sphere

Although many scholars interpret the theory of the public sphere in different ways, the main understanding revolves around the notion that the public sphere is a theoretical “structure serving to sustain the continuous liberation of democratic processes” (Hansen, 2015, p. 768). The public sphere is a normative theory, one that argues that it is essential for the public to have a physical or conjectural space where it feels empowered to challenge or reinforce or communicate discourses concerning government or power or news (Christians, Glasser, McQuail, Nordenstreng, & White, 2009). In an idealized version of the public sphere, people of all classes, genders, or races would have the ability to communicate their views, and the sphere itself would facilitate a dialogue that would eliminate the erroneous arguments or views (Habermas, 1991).

Habermas (1991) identified the beginnings and endings of the public sphere, which he argued flourished after the Renaissance, during the Age of Enlightenment. He described how the shift away from state control of the media, a rise in literacy, and the beginnings of public forums and social groups discussing everything from politics to the arts at coffee houses in the 18th century created a theoretic public sphere in bourgeois society. He found that the public sphere is a place “between civil society and the state, in which critical public discussion of matters of general interest was institutionally guaranteed; the liberal public sphere took shape in the specific historical circumstances of a developing market economy” (Habermas, 1991, p. xi). For Habermas, this idea of a not fully developed market economy is critical (Gillmor, 2004). The discourse was for and by the people, distributed to people with virtually no intention of financial gains by the publishers. “The capital for running the enterprise was only secondarily invested for the sake of a profitable return, if such a consideration played a role at all” (Habermas, 1991, p. 184).

Yet, eventually, capitalism began to exert influence on the press (Baker, 1994; McChesney, 2004; Underwood, 1993). No longer was the media solely an effort driven by discourse, but now it morphed into an enterprise driven by profits. The press could only facilitate the debate necessary for a public sphere when it did not have ulterior motives, but the corporatization of the media industry meant the press could abandon its polemical stance and concentrate on profit opportunities for a commercial business (Habermas, 1991). Although the press today ostensibly follows an ideology-free model concerned with informing the public, many scholars argue this is impossible when it is controlled by corporations.

The corporate news media have a vested interest in the corporate system. The largest media firms are members in good standing of the corporate community and are closely linked to it through business relations, shared investors, interlocking directors, and common political values. (McChesney, 2004, p. 93)

So, therefore, only a press without overt and primary financial motives and a link to business and corporate interests could actually facilitate the public sphere (Habermas, 1991).

Literature Synthesis

The normative public sphere Habermas described cannot be accomplished when a news organization prioritizes profit. But when a news organization does not prioritize profit, can it provide a public sphere of sorts? Ferrucci’s (2015d) study on a specific DNNN found that it practiced an updated version of public journalism, even though the journalists themselves held an extremely negative view of the movement. Because this organization modified public journalism slightly and because of the negative reputation of the now-over movement, Ferrucci dubbed this form of news gathering “public service journalism.” But he only studied one DNNN, and therefore, it could not be determined if DNNNs across the country practice public service journalism. This study seeks to answer that question.

In-Depth Interviews

In-depth interviews provide researchers with an abundance of information to illustrate and uncover complicated processes, patterns, and behaviors (McCracken, 1988; Miles & Huberman, 1994). The method is particularly valuable when the researcher’s goals revolve around understanding and uncovering motivations (Wimmer & Dominick, 2006). For this particular study, the researcher conducted in-depth interviews with 19 full-time journalists at 14 different DNNNs in the United States to understand news gathering processes and how the organizations utilize citizens in these processes. A list of DNNNs from a large journalistic organization was used to recruit participants. From that list, the researcher chose the 30 largest DNNNs in the country, by number of employees, then gathered names and contact info of journalists from the organizations’ websites, and then sent a recruitment email. If a potential participant accepted the request, the researcher made sure the participant worked full-time for the organization before the phone interview took place.

The study focused on only the 30 largest DNNNs because they also, for the most part, happened to be the ones with the longest history and, therefore, the most stable culture and institutionalized norms and routines. These interviews took place between May and September of 2015. The participants’ experience in journalism ranged from 11 months to 31 years. The average interview length was 54 min. The interview protocol consisted of broad, open-ended questions meant to stimulate detailed answers to the questions (McCracken, 1988). All participants were asked the same set of questions, but follow-up questions were asked that were unique to each participant’s initial answers. This follows the protocol set by McCracken (1988). Specific questions focused on the participants’ workday (e.g., Tell me about your normal day. How many stories do you produce? What is the process of getting a story from the beginning to the end? Where do you work from?), how a story evolves (e.g., What are the steps of how story gets assigned and gets changed along the way?), audience feedback (e.g., How do you receive feedback from your audience? How do you think audience feedback affects your work as a journalist, if at all?), and other subjects such as engagement, journalistic roles, and more. The researcher promised all participants anonymity and confidentiality.

Findings

Because public service journalism revolves around accomplishing the same four key tenets of public journalism, with one small difference, and the research question asks how the DNNNs accomplish those four tenets, this “Findings” section is split into the four tenets or themes: a news organization should engage the community through open dialogue, let ordinary people have a say in news organizations’ agendas, make the news more understandable, and report on issues in a manner that galvanizes the community into something positive rather than frustrates it.

Agenda-Setting Power of Citizens

Participants who represented all 14 of the DNNNs sampled noted at least one practice utilized to embolden citizens to become part of the agenda-setting process. By far, the main practice cited most often was community meetings. These meetings, said one journalist, “must be with people from all walks of life in our area. And the [the news organization], we can’t approach these get-togethers with any goal in mind. We have to have an open mind.” In one instance, one journalist with more than 30 years of experience, including a handful of years at a print newspaper that practiced public journalism, mentioned, without any prompt, the movement in disdain and talked about how what his DNNN does is more “pure”:

Back in about 1996 [the newspaper I worked at] started doing this thing called public journalism. The idea was that we’d have meetings with our readers and talk about the kinds of stories we could be doing. Really, we were sold this bill of goods that it would get people to care more, and we would find better stories. Sounds good, right? It was complete and utter bullshit. All we did was have these lavish parties for powerful community figures. They already had plenty of power over what we did . . . We weren’t doing better journalism or anything. Here, at [DNNN], we hold these meetings not at swanky nightclubs or clubs, but at churches or neighborhood spots in the poorest of neighborhoods.

Another journalist reiterated this sentiment, making it clear that to truly be letting people have agency in this process, everyone has to be included. “If we want to be open,” said one journalist,

we recognize that it’s not poor people who fund us. They’re not giving donations. But they are still the ones who we represent, even if they don’t read us. They’re the voices we need to include in coverage and meet with.

Many of the journalists interviewed also discussed opening news meetings up to the public as a way to give some agency over agenda setting to the public. “We don’t do it for every news meeting because that could be too much, but we have two a week that anybody can come to. And people do,” said one journalist. One journalist implied that having open news meetings (and this person’s organization also broadcasts the meetings over YouTube) allows for the public to have some say in news before it is too late. Over and over, journalists talked about the importance of open news meetings, and each participant, in his or her own manner, discussed how this democratized how newsrooms chose what to cover. One journalist said,

Look, I’ve had moments where someone showed up at a meeting and they were exactly the type of source I’ve needed and I would have never found them. And I’ve also had times where someone radically altered how I covered something, and for the better, might I add.

Finally, six of the journalists interviewed talked about how their organizations held votes to determine how newsrooms allocated reporting resources. Fundamentally, the journalists described a situation in which their news organization would use social media to poll readers about what story, out of maybe four options, they wanted the organization to cover. “We only do this on stories we’re not sure about,” explained one journalist: “We might have four stories that we think are slightly important, but not definitely important, and we’ll make readers vote on what they think is most important enough to cover.” Journalists who talked about voting for stories echoed that main sentiment: These votes did not include vital stories, only stories on the bubble. This process, said a different journalist, “actually gives the reader almost full say in what becomes news.”

More Understandable

Journalists interviewed discussed three different means by which their organizations keep news more understandable: online links, comment sections, and data visualization. Fifteen of the journalists talked about links embedded in content as not only a form of adding credibility to a piece, but also to make them easier to understand. Said one journalist with more than two decades of experience:

We can do some different and important things with technology. For example, we can have links in our stories and these really prove the maybe contested facts within the story. If a reader doesn’t believe something, they can click on the link and see evidence. But the links also allow people who may not understand the story at first glance, read more context and information about the story. We link to that context. That makes people who wouldn’t otherwise understand a complicated topic get it, but it also doesn’t slow people down who already understand the topic.

Another journalist made a similar statement when talking about her organization utilizing links in its content:

I think they really let people who need more information about a specific story subject get it, and they can get it in a way that doesn’t make a story less readable or interesting for a person who doesn’t need the extra info.

According to journalists at DNNNs, clickable links allow for backstory, extra coverage, or supporting materials that otherwise would not be included in a story, and in turn, this supplementary reportage or official documents, for example, helps regular people better understand the subjects impacting them.

Participants also identified comments at the end of a story as a way to make topics more understandable for the public. Ten journalists interviewed specifically discussed organizational policies that force them to reply to any questions in comment sections. Journalists discussed comments as a means to keep a conversation going, but specifically noted that comments primarily acted as a chance for both the reader and the reporter to learn more about a subject. “Sometimes comments force me to understand other aspects of a story,” said one journalist, “but mostly they allow me to answer questions I thought I answered in the story, but actually didn’t according to readers.”

Finally, nine of the participants pointed toward an emphasis on data visualization as a way to make content and stories more understandable for the public. Five other journalists interviewed talked about using data visualization more often in their current jobs, but did not connect the practice to helping people understand information more seamlessly. One journalist who did make the connection said,

We do a heavy amount of data journalism, which I think is truly important today, especially. And in the past, this may have been hard for people to understand because, let’s face it, numbers are not for everyone. But now we can present that information in cool ways and help people get it.

Another journalist noted, “Charts help people understand things. If you put numbers in the text of a story, you’re going to turn people off. If you give readers those numbers visually, then they’re going to get it, probably.” Journalists also mentioned numerous different examples of data visualization, primarily focusing on interactive maps, timelines, charts and graphs, and, even, simple breakout boxes.

Galvanize, Not Frustrate

The final tenet of public journalism posits that journalists practicing public journalism should produce stories and materials that galvanize the public, not frustrate it. One journalist interviewed, without mentioning specific practices at first, pointed toward this practice as a key goal of his organization. “We don’t think it’s enough to tell people something bad happened,” he said. “What good does that do someone? We want to tell them why it happened and what they can do about it.” This sentiment received consistent mentions, mostly in the form of something more than a dozen participants called “solution-based reporting,” a relatively new style of journalism that focuses on not only illustrating problems facing the country, but also exploring ways to solve the aforementioned problems. One journalist explained,

When I write stories, I’m not writing spot news like I used to 15 years ago . . . I don’t just write what happened and along with some quotes from key sources. This just brings people down. I don’t mean the people who say, “I don’t read the news because it’s depressing.” I mean we’re just loading problem after problem onto people, and we’re supposed to be their representatives, their warriors against power and corruption. So what we do is really focus on solution-based journalism. There’s not always a solution, but we can always search for one and present options to readers.

Another journalist described solution-based reporting as “giving people answers and not just leaving them with more depressing questions and concerns.”

An additional manner in which journalists discussed accomplishing this tenet revolved around the aforementioned community meetings. At these meetings, said 10 of the journalists interviewed that mentioned the meetings, the organization not only invited members of the community, but also people who can assist with the problem being discussed. “For example,” said one journalist, “[our city] has a real big alcohol problem amongst the homeless. So we brought community members and homeless people to talk about the issue. We also invited AA counselors and therapists.” The journalist added that these people were not going to be used for the story or stories published about the subject, but just to provide help to the community members with a problem. Many other journalists described similar processes.

Finally, the last practice that fits with this tenet revolved around story selection. At least, one reporter working for each and every DNNN represented talked about avoiding typical negative stories. “What’s the point of covering, say a killing, a murder as just a murder? That doesn’t help anyone. Connect it. Use context. Avoid murder-of-the-day stories, and you avoid scaring your readers without cause.” Each journalist interviewed echoed this concept in a similar manner, making the case that simply reporting on a single crime or covering politics in a horse race fashion does not help readers. Their argument basically revolved around the idea that if stories are not put into context and if you do not understand how the context around an issue affects them, they cannot do anything positive about it. As one reporter summed it up, “OK, crime happened. Well, shit. If it’s just a crime, is that major news? We treat it as such sometimes. But what does it mean? Don’t write a daily crime story just because.”