Calling all citizen journalists

By William C. Shelton

(The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries of The Somerville News belong solely to the authors of those commentaries and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville News, its staff or publishers.)

Over the last decade, studies and surveys continually report a decline in American civic engagement. By civic engagement, they mean “working to make a difference in the civic life of our communities and developing the combination of knowledge, skills, values and motivation to make that difference.”

Last month, I wrote a column suggesting that the watchdogs that historically guarded the interests of Somerville's citizens-aldermen, the press, and citizens groups-had all been domesticated. It's equally true that this could not have happened if their citizen masters had not been snoozing. Well, “snoozing” may be the wrong word, since they're often working too hard to pay attention.

Because of this, the high-quality news and information essential to the practice of democracy is more important than ever. Cable and the Internet “news” sources have multiplied to the saturation point. Yet studies suggest that more people are more ignorant about the economic, social, and political forces shaping their lives than ever. They prove unable to distinguish between fact, rumor and opinion.

Those forces have meaning to the extent that they affect our lives, and although we live those lives in Somerville rather than on television or in the blogosphere, their “news” rarely penetrates or sheds light the local level. Their existence depends on titillating mass markets, rather than on informing local civic engagement.

One means of filling this deficit is you, dear reader. You already know more about Somerville than the kids who spend a year or two reporting here and then move on. You have years of personal experience understanding one or more important civic issues. And more than any time that I can remember, providing a decent future for all Somerville's citizens requires our fully understanding our present.

Anyone who can ask questions and write a sentence can do journalism. But doing good journalism also requires dogged investigation, humility before the truth, honesty, and ethics. So while I am urging you to become citizen journalists, I'm also being presumptuous, because I'm about to tell you what I think is required to be a good one.

Know the difference between the facts and the truth. Know that we can only understand the present moment as one in an historical process whose rate and scope of change is accelerating. Facts aren't, by themselves truth. Government officials and ideologues can spin a situation by selectively presenting facts so as to persuade others that its conveyed meaning is the opposite of its reality.

The truth is the whole that is greater than the sum of the facts, and we only learn it piecemeal, and never completely. The truth is provisional. You can't get at the truth if you drop in and out of the story. None of us but God has the capacity to know the whole Truth, but we approach it. To do so, we must suspend our impulses to impose our meaning or to omit facts that contradict that meaning. We must connect the current facts to the ones that came before and now shape them. And, it's a good idea to make our assumptions explicit, so that others can evaluate how they have influenced our reporting.

To approach the truth, use all available information. There are vast stores of relevant information in plain sight. They reside in the Board of Aldermen's minutes, the Secretary of State's and Registrar of Deed's databases, the microfilmed news stories and Somerville Room at the library, individual property files at Inspectional Services, and many, many more places.

Local reporters rarely get to these sources because they write six stories in a week, and know little Somerville background. They often miss the real story that is behind the current facts.

Talk to people who aren't like you; try to see the story through their eyes. You will learn things you never knew, that challenge your own taken-for-granted assumptions about what you are reporting on. In ancient Greece, talking with strangers was a duty of citizenship. It was related to xenia, the obligation to be hospitable to people from afar. Talking to strangers builds the knowledge, skill, and courage to talk to power as well.

I've used the word “talking,” but as that old country lawyer Senator Sam Ervin was fond of saying, “you can't learn nothing when you're talking.” Listen.

It's always good to quote sources. But never present what a source says as fact unless you have confirmed it in such a way that a reasonable person would agree that it's been verified.

Named sources are better than unnamed sources. Authoritative sources-those whose role and demonstrated experience give them more reliable and relevant knowledge-are better than unauthoritative sources. Independent sources are better than self-interested sources. Multiple sources are better than one source.

Understand the difference between bias and mistakes. Critics from the right regularly scorn journalists as left-wing elitists; those from the left accuse them of being corporate stooges. In fact, anytime that a well researched and honestly reported story contradicts the status quo, those who don't distinguish between the status quo and reality will perceive it as biased. And anytime that it challenges their cherished politician or belief, they will see it as biased and resent you for reporting it.

That doesn't mean that you won't make mistakes. Mistakes, too, will inevitably be seen as willful bias. The best antidote is to acknowledge and explain your mistakes as soon as you become aware of them.

Distinguish between the person and their behavior. Report the latter, but don't judge the former. The press has constitutional protections that no other industry enjoys. Don't abuse them.

Never add anything to the story that isn't really there. Try to assume nothing. Never deceive the audience. Find out what's important to you. Share it with us. And start now.

Comments

[drogers]

Hi Bill,
I dunno about you, but advocating people to go up to strangers and start asking them questions, isn't the smartest or safest idea, especially around some of the seedier parts of Somerville.

[Somervillen00b]

Great post, Bill. Tonight I'll go ask Galvin and O'Brien why they are attacking people on the bike path.

[HL Menken]

I don't know whether the first two posts here are meant to be funny. If so, they trivialize a grim reality and a profound insight. Americans are isolated from each other more than at any time in the nation's history. Many get their understanding of the world from their preferred brand of nonsense that masquerades as news. The result is the politics of hate. The center does not hold.

I don't think that there is any better way to begin healing the divides that separate us than to begin talking and listening to people who are different from us. We don't have to agree with each other to learn that the world is more complex than we thought and that other people's experiences are just as real as our own.

We might begin to find things that we share and can build on. And we might read less of the hateful and hurtful idiocy that shows up in posts to this blog and elsewhere.

[The Journal sucks it]

I'd like to see more citizen journalists out there in Somerville. They can balance the atrocious coverage of the city we get each week from the Somerville Journal and their roving pack of 21-year-old interns from Dayton, Ohio. The Journal was a solid local paper years ago when the Dole family owned and operated it. But today it is being run into the ground by acne-scarred punks who have no understanding of Somerville, its past or its people.