Civic Journalism

Diego Sorbara
Who do we reflect in our writing?
At the corner of Capitol and Babcock streets in Hartford, Conn., is La Paloma Sabanera, a hub for the massive Hispanic community of the captial and the surrounding towns and cities in the Connecticut River Valley. At its Web site, www.lapalomasabanera.com, La Paloma describes itself as a third place for the Hispanic community.
La Paloma is a block from the intersection of Capitol and Broad streets, the main office of The Hartford Courant. In over a whole summer of sitting there for an hour or two before work, I never saw anyone there from the paper itself, except the paper’s only Hispanic columnist. And in reading The Courant, you could tell that was the case. Aside from the blowout pieces about crime and murder, the Hispanic community is barely covered.
This is a failure of journalism. The rise of civic journalism, especially using the theory of third places, is an attempt to bring real people back into the news, to bring the stakeholders back into the process. But we must also realize that to properly engage in civic journalism, we must plumb the whole racial range of our communities, not just the citizens that seem the most approachable.
In class, we discussed how some believe that civic journalism shouldn’t even exist because its tenets should be part of our everyday reporting. In theory, that’s a wonderful argument because it’s true. But in reality, we are woefully lacking in real people as sources. Separating civic journalism brings more attention to the need that we need to have a better variety of sources; in fact, the lack of vigilance on the part of journalists to bring in more diversity of sourcing is part of the fuel for the nascent citizen journalism movement. People feel disenfranchised by the media, thus they create their own outlets to be heard. If you look at a majority of articles written on important issues such as development and taxation, most of the sources are the old white men in power. Seldom does a reader see himself or herself reflected in the story.
Although the intentions of the video we watched in class are good, the video fails to mention a rather important point: race. While that Maryland diner would be an excellent place to gauge opinions of average people, did anyone realize that all the people there were predominantly older, white men (who like reading the Washington Post)? Reporters should take into account that there is more to civic journalism than just seeking out the average people; just because an issue isn’t specifically about the Hispanic or black communities doesn’t mean we shouldn’t seek out opinions from Hispanic or black people. Take our own Missourian, for example; you would never guess the wide diversity that Columbia has from reading most of the articles in a standard A-section.
Oftentimes, reporters will go up to sources of their own race, age and gender, bringing back opinions and thoughts that really mirror their own; to truly make civic journalism this ideal of bringing more voices into the conversation, reporters have to be unafraid to tread into new neighborhoods, talk to different people and make new connections across gender, racial and age barriers; even if this means bringing along someone to interpret in order to cross the language barrier, so be it; just because a source doesn’t speak English doesn’t mean they don’t have a valid point to make.
Civic journalism is good old-fashioned journalism; it’s shoe-leather journalism, if you will. But in order to really make it work and connect with the readers, there needs to be a broader representation of people. Going to a third place is a good start, but it’s only when the journalist crosses those difficult gulfs of gender, race and age that it really becomes sincere civic journalism instead of just lip service.