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What is public service journalism? While much of the local government and issues reporting that newspapers produce serves the public at different levels each day, News Cube aims to take it a step further and turn community concerns into action.
What are the News Cube goals with public service journalism? Consistent public service reporting is at the center of the 2010 News Cube goals, and the News & Interactive Division has prepared templates to use to offer formatted public service stories to readers. Providing readers avenues to digest, in a quick format, news that showcases how government is spending their dollars and how they can have their questions concerning quality of life issues answered are goals of the public service portion of the News Cube program.
What are the formats? Five alternative story formats will be available.
1. What’s Your Problem? Reporting on a problem in your community that can and should be fixed by local government. Readers are asked to send in their problems to the paper.
2. What’s Going on Here? When readers see things occurring around town, such as a new development on a downtown street, they can find out what’s occurring by sending the question to the newspaper’s “What is it?” feature.
3. Budget Breakdown: Helps readers understand how governments are spending local tax dollars, with a focus on specific budget lines.
4. Your Question Answered: A Q&A column from a staff member explaining reader concerns on community issues or how the newspaper handles issues.
5. Two Views: An opinion page feature where two people debate an issue.
How often should these features run? Newspapers should run one of the five features once a week and run the others as content calls for it. The features are best used on the front page or an inside news or opinion page.
Is there more with public service journalism we can do? These templates offer a way to consistently offer public service journalism content, and this approach in some cases could even lead to larger public service print and Web investigative projects or could help build on your own public service journalism initiatives.
What is public service journalism? While much of the local government and issues reporting that newspapers produce serves the public at different levels each day, News Cube aims to take it a step further and turn community concerns into action.
What are the News Cube goals with public service journalism? Consistent public service reporting is at the center of the 2010 News Cube goals, and the News & Interactive Division has prepared templates to use to offer formatted public service stories to readers. Providing readers avenues to digest, in a quick format, news that showcases how government is spending their dollars and how they can have their questions concerning quality of life issues answered are goals of the public service portion of the News Cube program.
What are the formats? Five alternative story formats will be available.
1. What’s Your Problem? Reporting on a problem in your community that can and should be fixed by local government. Readers are asked to send in their problems to the paper.
2. What’s Going on Here? When readers see things occurring around town, such as a new development on a downtown street, they can find out what’s occurring by sending the question to the newspaper’s “What is it?” feature.
3. Budget Breakdown: Helps readers understand how governments are spending local tax dollars, with a focus on specific budget lines.
4. Your Question Answered: A Q&A column from a staff member explaining reader concerns on community issues or how the newspaper handles issues.
5. Two Views: An opinion page feature where two people debate an issue.
How often should these features run? Newspapers should run one of the five features once a week and run the others as content calls for it. The features are best used on the front page or an inside news or opinion page.
Is there more with public service journalism we can do? These templates offer a way to consistently offer public service journalism content, and this approach in some cases could even lead to larger public service print and Web investigative projects or could help build on your own public service journalism initiatives.
