Community Journalism

Also in the Puget Sound area, some community newspapers are targeted to specific audiences and some practice traditional journalism with a real community sensibility.

Seattle boasts two community newspapers aimed at African Americans, several aimed at the Asian community, and more than ten "neighborhood" newspapers. Perhaps the best single example of these targeted community publications is Assunta Ng's Chinese Post. Crafted by Ms. Ng to serve Seattle's International District and Chinese community in a sense of contributing to the community's well-being, the Chinese Post relies on a staff of young, energetic reporters who work at building social capital by using the community sector as a primary source for news.

"We go to meetings, we moderate panels, we listen to what people are doing and what's important. Then we do old fashioned reporting, 'who, what, when, where, why, and how'," Ng noted. "We weigh the importance of the story by its value in telling the community something it may not know." When asked to compare that decision-making to traditional media, Ms. Ng said, "We consider all those 'Ws' equally important. It seems to me that traditional media only look at 'who?'"

A second community success story comes from Seattle's "alternative" media. Real Change is a monthly paper published by homeless citizens in Seattle. Breaking stories weekly about the civic life of the homeless, Real Change has helped push the city's major daily papers to cover these issues more thoughtfully.