Scoping Exercise for A National Dialogue Bureau:
Journalists Views on Dialogue and Deliberation and the Media
DRAFT Preliminary Report for the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation
About the Participants
To better understand the feasibility of a national dialogue bureau from the standpoint of the extent to
which journalists would make use of its services, AmericaSpeaks interviewed 9 media professionals,
including print and electronic journalists. Identifying journalists for this investigation was significantly
more difficult than identifying practitioners, for two reasons: investigators had to create a list of
participants from several sources (unlike the practitioners, which were drawn exclusively from NCDD
membership lists) and the fact that journalists in general did not respond as positively to the invitation
as practitioners. We think this is a telling finding, with some implications down the road for the design
and feasibility of the Dialogue Bureau.
Of the media professionals who volunteered to participate in the study, the majority was either former
or practicing journalists (7 of 9), one participant was a journalism academic, and the other a media
and democracy advocate. Participants had worked as journalists in the mid-West and mid-Atlantic
regions of the US, including the states of Idaho, Kansas, Michigan, Minneapolis, New Jersey, New
York, Ohio, Virginia and Washington.
In describing the work that they do, participants identified a range of experiences, including general
assignment reporter, bureau reporter, foreign correspondent, scholastic journalism, managing editor,
wire editor, feature magazine editor, associate producer, op-ed editor, metro columnist, and news
editor. Other respondents indicated professional experience as non-profit director and professor of
journalism.
Attitudes Toward Engaging Citizens in News Making
Participants expressed a very high level of support for the idea of engaging citizens in news gathering
processes. Much of the distinction, or difference in views, is a matter of degree and definition of the
role. Less than half of the journalists, for example, agreed that the media is too divisive (4 out of 9).
An equal number of respondents were ambivalent, acknowledging the difficulty of answering the
question precisely. For example, one respondent suggested that, “My editors always wanted me to
get two sides of the story and I always said that there were more sides to the story that that… Some
citizens that don’t agree with any of the two sides are feeling that there is nothing they can do.”
Nearly all of the journalists acknowledged a greater role for citizens in the reporting process. Some of
the important contributions citizens can make in their view include:

“Cutting edge” knowledge on issues that receive infrequent coverage, such as housing, art,
technology and social services.

Ability to ask questions more directly and honestly than reporters

Helping to shape and “flesh out” the news by sharing personal stories on timely topics

Sourcing citizens as subjects for community reflection, for example around diversity issues,
can be more impactful than the views of politicians and bureaucrats

Having a base of citizen-knowledge can be vital to sourcing, for example within social or
activist movements

Working with citizens directly can lend legitimacy and credibility to reporting when the stories
move beyond positions that experts and politicians are often rooted in.
Strategies to Engage Citizens
In practice, journalists reported several strategies to develop an understanding of citizens views on
issues. One traditional strategy is to rely upon “listening posts:” public venues where citizens are
engaging with one another around issues at various levels. These may include formal and semi-formal
community meetings or less formal spaces like cultural events. Another strategy respondents
referenced are new modes of citizen expression, of which blogging is the most recent and perhaps
prominent form. Newspapers, through the cultivation of readership databases, have used tools like
email to engage readers also, using responses to general questions to identify stories and track leads.
Journalists also mentioned focus groups and “group interviews” within communities to gain a better
understanding of citizens’ perspectives. Finally, several respondents indicated traditional networking
strategies: building rolodexes of contacts and working them story-by-story.
Views on Dialogue and Deliberation
Most of the respondents (7 out of 9) had some level of experience covering dialogue and deliberation
activities, in particular study circles and National Issue Forums. Key messages coming out of
journalists experiences here include:

Dialogue and deliberation is hard to cover in a way that captures the sense of dialogue

All newspapers are concerned about their place in the civil discourse

Process by itself does not make a good story

Coverage of these forums invites readers to question their own assumptions more deeply

Can expose the complexity of an issue and help avoid the “two sides” trap

Newspaper partnerships can provide useful background material for these kinds of discussions
On the question of whether there might be some issues that require higher levels of citizen
engagement than others, journalists were fairly unanimous is their sense that there were: in particular
issues that were polarizing or divisive for some reason. Most agreed that it can be hard to know which
issues should be used to engage citizens; some suggested that perhaps the issues where individual
experiences and stories could deepen our understanding of the issue (health care reform, for example)
were the ones around which citizens could be engaged.
One journalist summarized this discussion well, stating that, “If the purpose of the article is
informative, I don’t see a need [for citizen engagement]. But if you are trying to do an overview
article that is on a very tricky subject, and one that people tend to see in black and white or having
emotional ripple effects, you need to make sure you include citizens.”
Views of a National Dialogue Bureau
The core of this study was to capture a sense of the value a National Dialogue Bureau could bring to
the journalistic community, and to identify a range of services and tools that would add value to the
reporting process. Importantly, we must bear in mind the difficulty of reaching a broad spectrum of
journalists to interview for this study, in particular those working in mainstream, national outlets. The
majority of interviewees in our sample was drawn from local journalists, most of whom already
favored some form of “civic journlism.”1
When asked about the strengths and weakness of the proposal, six out of nine respondents felt that
the idea was a good one with a common, overarching strength: connecting journalists more deeply
1
Civic journalism is a movement among some journalists to cover issues from the standpoint of cultivating
healthy democratic dialogue in their communities to whom they report. At the center of this movement is a believe
that journalists have an obligation to contribute to the civic health of democracy by framing stories in ways that
capture the way citizens relate to issues, raise the level of public discourse, and stimulate and support public debate.
with the human side of stories during a time when media itself is in crisis. The same number also
indicated that, if such a service were available to them today, they would use its services.
That said, journalists also felt that there would be several important challenges to engaging journalists
through the Bureau, among them:

Insular culture of media is a barrier to participation of new actors

Questions of neutrality, credibility and “hidden agendas” of the practitioners

Reconciling different needs for “breaking news” coverage (the 24-hour news cycle) and longterm dialogue

Overcoming a bias about the “uninformed” public

Accuracy and reliability of contact data
Tools and Services of A National Dialogue Bureau
Some of the tools and services that participants thought a Dialogue Bureau might provide to the
journalistic community include:

“Black boxes” (confessional-like tools) where community-members could speak their mind,
either remotely or at dialogue processes themselves

Reliable web-mining services from the sites and blogs of NCDD members and others in the
dialogue and deliberation community

Civic mapping exercises that provide a reliable view of the field

Practical way to link journalists with citizen resources by issue, particularly at the local level

Coordination among groups that already provide information on issue-expert contacts
Conclusions
It is important to bear in mind two features of the study of journalists views of a National Dialogue
Bureau. First was the difficulty in identifying journalists to participate, which yields a biases from
those supportive of the idea, suggests caution and diligence when designing the Dialogue Bureau to
reach journalists. Second concern is the low number of completed interviews among journalists: as a
group, the journalists were able to spend substantially less time responding to the interview than
practitioners, which means there are substantially more gaps in the data. This narrow set of data
suggests that there is more work to be done to get the idea in front of journalists for their response.
Therefore, bearing in mind the importance of the journalistic community to the success of the Bureau
(as a primary target audience for user services) it will be vital to ensure their needs are met, barriers
to entry are reduced to the greatest extent possible, and further work is carried out to promote the
Bureau and understand its benefit to the journalistic commuity.