Sheldon Gunnar Ratni defines it from different sources:
(1) The efforts of journalists in print and broadcast media
(2) Create a more active public participation movement by consciously giving citizens more voice.
(3) The movement of introducing news into public life.
(1) Cai Wen: Practice and Debate of "Public News" in American Journalism, News Front, No.4, 2004.
(2)Stanley balam, Dennis Davis, Cao Shule's Mass Communication Theory: Foundation, Contention and Future, P 1 17 (3rd edition) Tsinghua University Publishing House.
American public journalism movement
The public news movement began in local small and medium-sized newspapers, and was not dominated by American famous authoritative mainstream media such as The New York Times, Washington post and LA Times. Therefore, there is no major news event as the fuse of the whole public news movement. At present, most scholars tend to regard two events as landmark events at the beginning of the public news movement. First, 1990, Davis Mei Lite, editor-in-chief of Wichita Eagle, Kansas, thinks that the newspaper's previous election reports are full of candidates' mutual attacks and boring poll figures, without touching on substantive issues, and the participation rate of local voters is very low. To this end, he conducted a large number of surveys in conjunction with local TV station KAKE-TV, and organized a series of reports on issues of concern to voters. At the same time, the newspaper also set up remedial classes to educate voters about elections and encourage them to vote. These activities had a great response at that time. Another sensation was Jack Swift, editor-in-chief of Columbus Chronicle. The Inquirer in Columbus, Georgia, made a relevant investigation on local racism and formed a bill to reform the status quo. He also used newspapers to organize a series of public meetings aimed at promoting the passage of the bill, but his practice caused controversy and he committed suicide in the controversy. ①
There are two main reasons why the public news movement first appeared in small and medium-sized media: first, small and medium-sized media are under great pressure because of lack of funds, paying special attention to whether media reports can attract audiences and summing up experience. Strive for innovation; Secondly, small and medium-sized media pay attention to community affairs reports and are close to the audience's life, so they can better understand the predicament of public life in American society and the disadvantages of existing media reporting methods.
With the spark of public news burning in some small and medium-sized cities, the media in many large and medium-sized cities in the United States, such as Charlotte, Seattle, San Francisco, Portland, Philadelphia and other places, also tried public news in political elections and other local public affairs reports, and made some innovations and developments, which set off a wave of public affairs reporting reform in the American press at that time. According to a statistic from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, by the end of 2002, at least 322 of all 1500 daily newspapers in the United States, that is, more than one fifth of them, had made similar changes in the way they reported public news from 1994 to 2006,5438+0994. Almost all newspapers believe that this has had a positive impact on the local community. (2) It is worth noting that most local newspapers and periodicals have been funded by some foundations to reform their news reporting methods. For example, Pew, Knight and Catden, and others include some non-profit organizations and community public organizations. Among them, Knight Ridder's company became the most powerful sponsor under the leadership of the late President James Batten. (3) Scholars call this change in the way of public news reporting in the 1990s the public news movement.
The public news campaign is in full swing in the local newspaper. The Center for Public Journalism sponsored by the Pew Foundation has conducted a follow-up study on the progress of the public journalism movement. The research project named "Measuring the Progress of Citizen Journalism" collected and analyzed 1994+65 1 public news reports that appeared in the media all over the United States since 2002. The results show that the public news campaign has spread to 220 cities in 47 States in the United States, and 75% of the reporting plans are initiated by local newspapers with a circulation of no more than 250,000; 45% newspapers have a circulation of no more than 654.38+10,000 copies. And 45% of public news reports are published in newspapers published by the city subway. ④
The public news movement can be roughly divided into three stages. The first stage was in the early 1990s. The main purpose of the change of public news reporting mode was to enhance people's attention to political elections and increase the voter participation rate. Create opportunities for voters and candidates to engage in dialogue on public issues of concern to voters. Take the Charlotte Observer as an example. If a candidate refuses to answer voters' questions in local elections, the local newspaper will leave a blank in the candidate's campaign manifesto, which makes the candidate quickly understand that he must take a stand on issues that voters care about. The second stage was in the mid-1990s, when the public news movement devoted itself to discussing public life, public safety and public education in the metropolitan area through a large number of public affairs reports and plans. The foothold of reporting is not only what happened to the news, but more importantly, how the news happened in these communities. For example, when discussing why the education effect of community schools is not good, many local media found through discussion that this is related to the turnover rate of community population and the number of minority students. The new trend of public news reporting since the end of 1990s is to communicate with the audience on a wider range of public topics and topics through new scientific and technological means. If the first two stages are mainly guided by the media, then the opinions of the audience in the third stage have become the protagonists of public news reports. For example, in 2002, WXXI-TV launched the "I'll draw districts" activity through network interaction, so that ordinary viewers can choose different legislative division schemes themselves and better understand the rationality and shortcomings of the existing administrative legislative division.
On the technical level. In the first stage, the focus of the campaign is to position the media as the propeller of democratic politics, and make extensive and in-depth analysis of the candidates and topics discussed in the election by using some mature media operation methods such as agenda setting, opinion polls and reader focus. In the second stage, by 1995, newspaper media began to realize the importance of introducing new reporting methods into their daily work, and newspapers paid more attention to the communication effect and interaction with readers. At the same time, a new Interactive tool interactive was obtained. In the third stage, news reports of public events, such as BBS, forums, blogs, dynamic databases, online public opinion surveys and tests, are widely used, and the audience can participate in news reports of public events very conveniently and quickly feed back to the media.
Looking at the whole development process of the public news movement, the main idea of the public news movement is to advocate the news media to find topics from ordinary people, give ordinary people the opportunity to express their views on public affairs, stimulate ordinary people to participate in public discussions on important events, guide them to explore ways to solve social contradictions, and help them supervise the development process of public affairs.
Under the guidance of the above ideas, the public news movement is significantly different from the traditional news reporting methods. Tom Wahovo, an associate professor at the School of Journalism at the University of Missouri, once worked in Virginian Guide, a famous newspaper of the public journalism movement. He never called the journalism thought embodied in the public journalism movement "public journalism" and compared it with the traditional journalism concept from nine angles (see the table below). ⑤ The traditional position of news and public opinion looks for the polarized opinions of the people and the moderate opinions of the people, the context of news, politics or public policy, and the context of people's daily life experience, emphasizing the conflict between key points and public opinion. The difference and reason of controversial opinions are that experts are the most valuable source of information, and the opinions of ordinary citizens and experts have the same knowledge value. The purpose of writing is to tell you what happened, emphasize the fundamental value orientation and interests of citizens in the incident, use perceptual description as the color of the report, show people's feelings about the problem, use perceptual description to show how people make decisions, portray the tone of obstacles to solving problems, and use the tone of decision makers to "people"
Views are used to embellish the tone of the affected people, using people's views rather than authoritative role types. People whose interests are harmed by public policies often describe how people solve problems and the role readers can play. The basis of judgment depends entirely on the reporter's personal judgment with the help of ordinary citizens. At present, experiments on public news activities are still popular in local small and medium-sized newspapers in the United States, but mainstream media such as The New York Times and Washington post still hold a wait-and-see attitude. Because the public interests advocated by the public news campaign often conflict with the commercial interests pursued by the monopolized media enterprise groups on the experience level, the public news campaign cannot be supported by the big media enterprises. Conservatives have always criticized the theory that the public news movement is slightly left, and the foundations such as Pew, Knight and Kettering, which promote the public news movement and its research and development, have even been criticized as trying to influence and control the media agenda for commercial interests. In the absence of the support of the government and major media groups, the development of public news movement in recent years seems unsustainable. Facing the economic pressure, how to keep the consistency of public news reports is a test for the editors of small and medium-sized media. It is too early to draw a conclusion about how much influence the public journalism movement will eventually bring to the American press. Nevertheless, the public spirit embodied in the public news reporting movement must have strong vitality and influence in today's American press.
The reform of practical circles has attracted the attention of theoretical circles. Scholars have done a lot of academic research on the operation mode, concept and influence of the public journalism movement, and even produced a special "public journalism". The journalism schools of many universities participated in this research. According to the data collected by the author, JayRosen of new york University and Clifford G.Christians of the University of Illinois were early leaders in promoting public journalism research. Others who have done more research on public journalism include Edmund Lamberthz and Sorsen Esther of the University of Missouri, Philip Meyer of the University of North Carolina and Theodore glasser of Stanford University. On the Internet, search engines can search hundreds of papers, and there are some websites devoted to public news activities, such as the Pew Citizen News Center. The related works published are GoodNews 1993 by Christian, Ferrer and Fakler.
Jay Rosen 1994 Editors and Publishers and Journalist's Mission published in 2000? What does a reporter do? ), public news and public life published by Davis Mei Lite 1995, etc. ⑥
Li Qingli: Citizen journalism in the United States. Published in International News,No. 1 2004. Page 35.
(2) Fleet B. Dennis, written by John Merrill and translated by Wang Wei. : "Media Debate: 19 Debate on Major Issues". Beijing Broadcasting Institute Press, 2004, p. 1 13.
③Jan SchaffPr:“community impae _ JournalismShiftsCitedinNewCivicJournalismStudy”
④Jan sc clit R is low: "Community influence. j0ⅱMilhmShiftScitedInnewCivicJournalismStudy”，
⑤ [Michel Gibbs, Tom Wahovo, Yao Qingjiang, Liu, translated: A Course in News Interview and Writing, Xinhua Publishing House, 2004, p. 46.
⑥ Fleet E-Denis, written by John C. Merrill, translated by E-Wei, etc. Media Debate: 19 Debate on Advantages and Disadvantages of Major Issues, translated in 2004, Beijing Broadcasting Institute Press, p. 1 17.