The journalism element American Public Media focused on:  Creating a Forum for Public Compromise and Criticism.

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Michael Skoler, director of American Public Media's Public Insight Journalism Program oversaw the APM's participation in the New Media Enduring Values (NMEV) project.

Michael Skoler

Creating a Forum for Public Compromise and Criticism: American Public Media [2] (the national brand of Minnesota Public Radio [3]) APM is building on the effectiveness of their Public Insight Journalism, which calls on the wisdom of their listeners to enrich their reporting. The project's emphasis is on a tool called "the Idea Generator [4]."

What American Public Media did:

American Public Media’s Idea Generator [5] provides a mediated online conversation to develop solutions to social issues, bringing the idea of the public forum to life. But improving upon its simple interface from previous projects required creative thinking. The News, New Media, and IT departments worked closely together from the beginning to develop a plan that clearly outlined each group’s responsibilities, and the organization agreed to hire an outside firm to develop the new Flash software interface.

Though some worried about outside involvement, the partnership worked well. American Public Media chose a local mid-sized firm, allowing for face-to-face contact and faster turnaround on changes. The organization’s project plan clearly delineated responsibilities between the outside company and APM’s in-house IT department. And APM included the project time line in the contract.

From the beginning, APM envisioned a project that pushed the boundaries of a traditional online discussion board to create a fact-based conversation about issues. Unlike other sites, information researched by the organization’s analysts helps seed the discussion with supported facts, and moderators check primary solutions offered by Web visitors for grammar and tone before posting. No anonymous voices are allowed here; those submitting ideas must register with the system. And the site encourages people to post supporting information for their ideas. Since its soft launch in mid-September, users have posted more than 100 ideas, one of which is leading to a news story.

CCJ's Bill Kovach on Creating a Forum for Public Compromise and Criticism:

Walter Lippmann reminded us the public acts on the pictures in their heads. And we’ve learned that those pictures can be put there by multiple institutions–the government, the church, political parties, social groups, commercial communications, entertainment, the military industrial complex.

We learned the hard way that it is always possible to manufacture reality if enough thought and effort is employed and if there is no organized opposing independent voice skeptically and aggressively raising questions.

As President Bush’s advisor told Ron Suskind, “We create our own reality…[W]e’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

But as bad as things seem today it is important to remember that people and institutions of power can only do to us what we allow them to do to us. And just as the first journalists stimulated forums for public debate and compromise by adapting that tool, today’s journalism provides a space where publics of any size can skeptically and aggressively raise questions of those institutions.  Forums in which, if there are to be realities created in which we’ll live, the public can help create them.

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