Public journalism started as a journalistic reform movement in the U.S. in the late 1980s. It emerged in a situation where journalistic practices faced much criticism from within the profession itself and where different institu-tional actors – foundations, universities, trusts and the news organizations themselves – were willing to aid the profession to re-educate itself (Rosen 1999b). These factors formed the soil in which the movement then took root.
The movement evolved through three different phases: the first phase of pub-lic journalism was early experimentation (1988–1993), the second was the coherent movement era (1993–1997) after which a phase of routinization of some of its practices took place (1998–2003) (Friedland 2003, 129–130).
In the following, I will discuss first the evolution of public journalism as a movement, and then examine its theoretical origins in order to formulate a grounded definition.
The history of public journalism movement
The initial take off of public journalism was a result of the critique of the 1988 U.S. presidential election coverage featuring George H. Bush and Michael Du-kakis. Observers noted that election reporting concentrated largely on cam-paigning, political tactics and poll results rather than on politically relevant issues: this ”horse race” style of reporting left themes that would have been relevant to the majority of the electorate largely uncovered (Haas 2007, 10).
After the election, some journalists started to ask if they had remembered the public often enough in their election coverage, and concluding that the answer was ”no”, they set out to find the public again by changing journal-ism (Rosen 2000, 680). Hallin (1992) argues that the identities of the political parties in the U.S. had become muddled, which in turn opened up the way for the domination of campaigning by professional consultants and the ”sub-stanceless” politics of 1988. The lack of substance provoked considerable discussion among journalists about how to cover elections (Hallin 1992, 19).
In many aspects, the self-realized failure in election reporting was important for the public journalism movement in terms of encouraging journalists to get involved in the change process.
Jay Rosen, a NYU professor, was one of the leading academics in the move-ment. He has written widely on the subject (e.g. Rosen 1991; 1993; 1997;
1999; 1999b; 2000). In 1990, he started a project called ”Project of Public Life and the Press”, which aimed at evaluating new kinds of journalistic prac-tices and by 1993, the project had taken on the names ”public” or ”civic journalism” and gained publicity as various foundations and media houses launched their own initiatives (Lambeth 1998, 2; Rosen 2000, 680).
From the beginning, many of the media houses that started to develop the idea of public journalism were doing it for economic reasons. For them public journalism appeared as a way to engage readers as citizens as well
as consumers; in other words, if readers were connected to public life, they would also be more willing to buy or subscribe to a paper (Sirianni & Fried-land 2001, 191). The underlying business motivation and the fact that many newspapers received funding from external foundations, such as Pew Center for Civic Journalism, made public journalism experiments and their motives vulnerable to criticism (Heikkilä 2001, 167–168; Merrit 1995).
Rosen (2000, 680–683), however, has mentioned that the movement had never intended to see itself as being something external to or above the fact that newspapers work in a commercial environment, even if public journal-ism for him has been a democratic project. Public journaljournal-ism is a mainstream movement because it operates within the structures of media companies and with the support of publishers and editors. Therefore, it does not sus-tain a radical challenge to the commercial regime in which the press oper-ates. Rosen argues that there has to be ways to foster a genuine public and a healthy democracy, even in the highly restricted environment in which most journalists find themselves. Moreover, Carey (1999, 51) has written that pub-lic journalism has potential as a movement because it has a particular under-standing of the existing conditions with which journalism must deal. So, the movement acted in an environment that was business-oriented, but its demo-cratic commitment was decisive for professional journalists to get involved in the reforms.
Public journalism coverage was invented and developed through a series of practical experiments. It has been estimated that from the late 80s until 2002 at least 600 public journalism experiments and projects in 320 newspa-pers took place in the U.S. (Friedland & Nichols 2002; Friedland 2003, 119).
These experiments can be grouped into four main areas: (1) election coverage experimentation, (2) theme specific reporting projects, (3) efforts to devel-op daily routines and an organizational setting for public journalism and (4) drawing on the potential of the internet in terms of public journalism ideals (cf. Heikkilä & Kunelius 1997; Haas 2007).6
The first and most well known public journalism projects revolved around renewing election coverage. These projects took place for example in Colum-bus’ Ledger-Enquirer (1988), in the Wichita Eagle (1990) and in the Charlotte Observer (1992). The basic idea behind the projects was to find out what the
”voters’ agenda” was and organize reportage as such instead of following the campaign offices’ agendas. The issues that were relevant to voters were
dis-6 The description of the projects here is merely an outline. The early initiatives have been documented in detail elsewhere (see e.g. Rosen 1999, Merritt 1995, Charity 1995). For the purposes of this research, it is sufficient to note that public journalism in the U.S. devel-oped particularly in the frame of printed newspapers; therefore, much of the literature deals with the press and its practices. This does not, of course, mean that the approach would be irrelevant for other platforms, such as radio, television or the web (Sirianni &
Friedland 2001, 188). In fact, some of the early experiments brought together broadcast and print media, and the later experiments included the use of the web.
covered using various methods: telephone surveys and polling, focus groups and town hall meetings. The newspapers’ idea was to pose readers’ questions to candidates in order to place the voters’ everyday life concerns in interac-tion with candidates’ views on those issues. (See e.g. Haas 2007, Chapter 1.)
After the first wave of election projects, some newspapers started to de-velop methods of public journalism in terms of specific community issues.
Among such pioneers were for instance the Wisconsin State Journal (1990), the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot (1993), and Charlotte Observer (1994). Some of the most acknowledged projects concentrated on issues like ethnic relations, schooling, city budget and transportation. Journalistic practices differed in each project, but one of the main focuses was to strengthen the role of the newspaper as a site for public discussion and also as a provider of concrete possibilities for public discussion and public problem-solving (Haas 2007 10−17; Sirianni & Friedland 2001, 193–217).
From the mid-90s onwards public journalism was extended through at-tempts to generate journalistic work methods and develop daily and weekly routines in newsrooms. Newsrooms were for instance reorganized around theme-specific or area-specific reporting teams instead of traditional ”beats”, or specialized public pages were created (Friedland 2003, 46; 87–94). Papers also developed more permanent ways to keep in touch with citizens, for in-stance by hosting citizen advisory panels and training journalists on how to
”tap civic life” and spot the important networks of the community (Harwood Group 1996, Friedland 2003, 28–29). At the Colorado Springs Gazette, the newsroom developed a method of ”civic framing”, in which a news story on a decided issue was covered from multiple angles in separate stories instead of producing a traditional balanced account in a single story (Haas 2007, 17).
With the advent of the internet, new interactive approaches to civic cov-erage emerged. For instance, J-lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism7 was created as a spin-off from the Pew Center of Civic Journalism, which was one of the main organizations to encourage and fund early public journalism projects. J-lab is still running, and its mission is to develop ”innovative news experiments that use new technologies to help people actively engage in criti-cal public issues”. However, the internet and its interactive tools also blurred the initial idea of public journalism, and there has been a shift away from the community towards cyberspace (Sirianni & Firedland 2001, 232).
As a movement, public journalism has passed its peak in the USA. The coherence of the movement has dissolved and the central figures as well as large institutional support have withdrawn (Friedland 2003). Even if new practices were innovative, the movement era in its experimental and project-bound form left news organizations fundamentally unchanged, and thus, as
7 http://www.j-lab.org/index.shtml
the peak of the project is now passed, so are the wider organizational effects (Haas 2007; Firedland 2003).
Even if some institutional support still remains – J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism; the Public Journalism Network8; or the Knight-Batten Awards9 that are given to technological innovations in journalism that in-volve citizens in public issues – it is fragmented in nature and limited in scope. Thus, it cannot sustain public journalism as a coherent movement any-more. Furthermore, there seems to be a lack of sites for professional reflection and learning, since the courses and seminars related to the early stages of the movement are not held anymore. At the moment, the profession seems more diffused than it was in the late 1980s when the public journalism movement gained momentum. The profession has been shaken by economic troubles, increased competition, credibility crises and the popularity of social media.
Therefore, current journalistic innovations in the web 2.0 environment seem quite unlikely to create comparable coherent professional reform movement around them. However, the theoretical debate has remained alive for over 20 years, and next I will describe the theoretical sources of public journalism and the academic setting in which it evolved.
Theoretical roots of public journalism
In addition to practical experimentation, the public journalism movement was framed and influenced by accumulated theoretical thinking. Three areas of research and debate in the U.S. during the 1980–90s were the main influ-ences for the scholarly side of public journalism: (1) the research about the state of American political culture; (2) the discussion around the notion of deliberative democracy and the public sphere; and (3) the revisiting of the Lippmann –Dewey debate (e.g. Carey 1989). All of these lines of thought con-tributed to the theoretical framework behind public journalism, which was in part formulated after the highest peak of practical experimentation (Voakes 2004; Haas 2007; Glasser & Craft 1997, 25).
(1) Around the same time as some of the leading American journalists were expressing their worry about the state of political coverage and as news-papers struggled with decreasing circulation figures, political scientists were describing a decline in civic engagement and studying the relationship be-tween citizens and public life. For example, Robert Putnam (1995) analyzed civic withdrawal from public life and linked it to the loss of social capital. He referred to social capital as features of social organization such as networks, norms, and social trust that facilitate co-ordination and co-operation for mu-tual benefit. According to Putnam, an individualistically determined cultural and political atmosphere in the U.S. discouraged the development of social
8 http://pjnet.org/
9 http://www.j-lab.org/ba07winners.shtml
capital (see also Rosen 1999b, 266–269). Richard Harwood and the Harwood Group, in turn, carried out focus group discussions with Americans in ten U.S. cities. Their study published in 1991, Citizens and Politics, suggested that the prevailing assumption of citizens not being interested in politics was not a grounded one, instead they expressed being excluded from many areas of public life and viewed politics as a closed network (Haas 2007, 9−10; Si-rianni & Friedland 2001, 194). These studies on public life and social capital contributed to the framing of public journalism.
Rosen (1999b, 24; 266–270) suggests that the research on American politi-cal culture also inspired other civic movements and institutions, for instance the National Civic League, Alliance for Civic Renewal or the Kettering Foun-dation. There was no single name or single agency for this civic innovation, but the goals were similar: to engage Americans in public life, to have ”poli-tics for people” and to find a way for more participatory and deliberative politics. For example, these associations developed the idea of collaborative problem-solving on a practical level. Indeed, the public journalism move-ment can be seen as part of this wider trend of innovation and renewal, since it also aimed at increasing social and civic capital (Sirianni & Friedland 2001;
Meyer 1998, 255−256).
(2) Interlinked with the above described research on American political culture was the discussion about deliberative democracy. For example, Ben-jamin Barber (1984) examined the possibility of a deliberative democratic model in which decision making is based on the consensus that arises from public deliberation, joint decision making and working through problems (Barber 1984, 224). Daniel Yankelovitch is another much cited source in pub-lic journalism literature as one of the early inspirers. He developed the idea of
”public judgement”, a deliberative process where citizens would be allowed to form their opinion and arrive at public judgement jointly (Yankelovitch 1991, cited in Charity 1995, 4−9; Haas 2007, 8−9).
One of the reasons why the idea of deliberative democracy was a much de-bated issue at that time was the fact that Jürgen Habermas’s early work on the public sphere was translated into English in 1989 (Habermas 1989). This pub-lication marked a new wave of discussion on the themes of the public sphere regarding its structures, possibilities and limitations – both historically and applied to modern society. According to Habermas’s idea, the public sphere is a space in between the private sphere and the state where citizens are able to discuss in public and form a public opinion. The public sphere comes into being in conversations of private individuals assembled to form a public body. To some, Habermas’s notion of the public sphere was a myth to begin with, but for others, it was a powerful idea and concept with which to study social life. Anyhow, for most scholars who joined the debate, the ”public”
was not the same as a ”mass audience”, and this conception triggered debate about the public sphere and the role of media in it (Rosen 1999b, 62–63;
Liv-ingstone 2005, 19, 23). Later on, Habermas inspired – and agitated – numer-ous theorists. Therefore, Habermas’s work can be seen as another theoretical building block for public journalism even if the purely Habermasian notion of the public sphere was not the initial spark that ignited the public journal-ism idea. Habermas’s early public sphere theory has thus influenced public journalism indirectly through the deliberative democratic framework. But as I will argue shortly, Habermas’s later work regarding the public sphere is also fruitful for public journalism (see Chapter 4 for a more detailed discussion about Habermas and his legacy).
(3) In early writings, public journalism is more explicitly built on the Dew-eyan idea of the public than on the Habermasian concept (Rosen 1999b, 19–
20). Dewey’s (1954 [1927]) view was that the public creates itself whenever there is an issue or problem to be solved and discussed. Authors like Rosen used the debate between John Dewey and Walter Lippmann, which originally took place in the 1920s, to clarify the role of the press in public journalism as the provider of ”civic climate”, i.e. as a significant player in the process of strengthening the functioning of the whole public sphere (Rosen 1999b, 67;
Rosen 1999). In this debate, a prominent journalist of the 1920s, Lippmann, debated the idea of public opinion and the relationship between journalism and democracy with a pragmatist philosopher, Dewey. The essence of this debate was the differences that the authors had about the possibilities of citi-zens as public agents in democracy. According to Lippmann (1965 [1922], 162, 228–229), forming a grounded public opinion would require time, mon-ey, patience and calmness: requirements that one cannot expect every citizen to have. Thus, the most important citizen role in a democratic setting was to act as a voter; not to participate in the formulation of policies in public dis-cussion. Journalism would provide digested expert information to the pub-lic. (See also Rosen 1999, 37−38; Rosen 1999b, 64–65; Pietilä 1997, 141−142.) Dewey’s view on the abilities of citizens to process information was much more positive than that of Lippmann’s. Dewey (1954, 203−204, 207−208) ar-gued that public opinion was not simply formed through the information of-fered by journalists, but also in civic discussions. According to him, expert-driven democracy could not work because experts were alienated from the everyday lives of people. Dewey saw citizens themselves as the best experts on many issues. The role of journalism in democracy for Dewey, then, was to improve the possibilities for public debate and discussion. This argumenta-tion has been used as a basis for public journalism theory (Rosen 1999b). (See more on the Lippmann–Dewey debate in Chapter 4.)
I have offered here three lines of theoretical debate that have shaped the formation of public journalism. These lines are interlinked and they have af-fected public journalism in a joint manner. Even with this short description, we can see that public journalism is part of the century old debate on the
functioning of the public sphere and democracy, and the roles that citizens and journalists have in that process.
The definition of public journalism
Due to its broad theoretical background and its experimental nature, there are plenty of conceptual definitions of public journalism that are often rather vague and somewhat differing. One of the better ones is that of Glasser and Lee (2002) who begin their chapter on public journalism by defining it as a loosely organized reform movement aimed at getting the press to rethink its commitment to the ideals of democratic participation. Rosen, in turn, has de-fined public journalism as a combination of an argument, an experiment, a movement, a debate and an adventure (Rosen 1999b, 262–263).
When I have talked about public journalism to students or journalists, I have tried to formulate a workable and understandable definition. However, it has been difficult to articulate a satisfactory definition. This vagueness is precisely the reason why the movement and its scholars have been intensely criticized (for this discussion see e.g. Meyer 1998, 251–258; Glasser 2000, 683).
Deriving from various theoretical sources and my own experiences from the field, I have come up with the following definition. This research is in-formed by an understanding that public journalism is a form of professional journalism that:
1) intentionally aims to foster participation, public deliberation, diversity and connectedness;
2) considers readers as citizens and takes them as its focal point throughout the journalistic process;
3) conceives citizens as actors in the public sphere, before and after the story has been published;
4) and justifies these arguments and defends the practices related to them from the perspective of democracy.
(1) Public journalism intentionally aims at fostering public deliberation, par-ticipation and connectedness. This implies that public journalism is an ap-proach that has conscious goals and motives behind it. Therefore, I would not name any kind of journalistic practice that involves reader interactivity or is written from the viewpoint of ”regular people”, public journalism. This is significant because at times when I have been talking about public journal-ism with journalists (not only my interviewees), they have responded to the idea by claiming that ”isn’t that something most papers are already doing and what good journalism ought to be anyway”. My answer is yes, I think it is what some papers are already doing and what good journalism would be
(1) Public journalism intentionally aims at fostering public deliberation, par-ticipation and connectedness. This implies that public journalism is an ap-proach that has conscious goals and motives behind it. Therefore, I would not name any kind of journalistic practice that involves reader interactivity or is written from the viewpoint of ”regular people”, public journalism. This is significant because at times when I have been talking about public journal-ism with journalists (not only my interviewees), they have responded to the idea by claiming that ”isn’t that something most papers are already doing and what good journalism ought to be anyway”. My answer is yes, I think it is what some papers are already doing and what good journalism would be