Solipsism. Self-absorption. Inward turningness. The enemy of community.

Refreshing here to have these three energetic and thoughtful observers stretching themselves — and their readers — to look outward, across boundaries of habit and routine. They ask broad and critical questions about the state of our culture and some of its fundamental institutions. The answers they find present tough challenges to community leaders in three centrally important realms: not-for-profit organizations, news media, and the designers of tools for online communications. Taking up these challenges cannot promise an end to the problems that face communities in our time. Ignoring them will assuredly make things worse.

Good News/Good Deeds hasn't given us anything new to worry about. Many voices have been raised to express concern about the decline of community and the many inducements to shortsighted views of our responsibilities toward it. The special value of the report you hold in your hands flows rather from two other sources. The authors took the time to find large numbers of people whose passions and livelihoods are closely entwined in these issues. Then they listened. And questioned. And listened some more. The many voices they heard in the course of these conversations echo in these pages. Directly, as revealing quotes and insightful observations. Indirectly, in the depth, balance and perspective offered throughout the text.

It is hard for any reader to come to the discussion of these issues afresh. Everyone has had experiences, formed impressions, holds opinions about these topics. The second source of special value in this report is the way the authors have presented their evidence. They will not let us rest there, confident that what "everybody knows" is the complete story about the important and subtle interactions between community institutions and our ways of communicating about them. They have given each reader a chance to weigh her or his impressions in a new scale, calibrated by reference to a range of information beyond the reach of any everyday experience.

The character and effectiveness of community institutions. The ways we learn about them and about the community more generally. The tools we have for forging and testing our bonds with each other. These are bricks and mortar for the creation of social capital. If the materials are shoddy, or in short supply, we will find it harder to build resources our neighbors, our children and our children's children can call on in time of need. Resilient communities depend on a constant flow of energy, imagination and commitment. Without them, we will find our neighborhoods increasingly vulnerable to the unexpected, we will find ourselves increasingly dissatisfied with daily routines and opportunities. It doesn't happen overnight. It cannot be cured in a day. Good News/Good Deeds reminds us of the need to attend to these fundamental building blocks of our community.

In a sense that builds upon but extends well beyond the journalists' use of the term, this report reminds us of the central importance of stories to preserving a healthy community for ourselves and for the future. Narratives that give us confidence that institutions are functioning as we have a right to hope and expect. Outlines that allow us to see how we can act so as to increase the stock of social capital as we complete our daily rounds. Portraits that caution, inspire and challenge even as they entertain and inform. If we aren't telling such stories to each other, and expecting to hear them from institutions and organizations around us, we are letting an essential resource for community life slip away.

Americans are adept at working on multiple tasks simultaneously. We know that a press release can call attention to an upcoming event and place that event in the context of a tradition of community service. We see daily evidence that journalists can cover community life honestly and fully without neglecting things that work and trends that offer hope. We can enjoy our everyday encounters with family, neighbors, and co-workers even as we make sure the needs of the day are met. This capacity for multiplicity in our everyday lives is the strongest resource we can look to as we fend off the very real dangers the pages of this report present. Single-factor thinking is always wrong. Single-bottom-line management runs organizations into the ground. Single-mindedness is, in the end, not just lonely but debilitating.

By turning outward themselves, to listen to hard-working people who care about the quality of community and want to improve it, the three authors of Good News/Good Deeds provide not only a chart of some truly serious challenges but a practical example of how they can be confronted. Their project demonstrates, in a particularly satisfying way, what can be gained by taking seriously the strengths we get from listening to each other, challenging and exploring each others' ideas, and working together on the opportunities found in the never-ending and centrally important adventure of life in a community.

Putnam Barber, director
The Evergreen State Society
Seattle, April, 1999