Citizen Investment

Citizen attention is exactly the fuel that makes news media successful. It's a citizen's privilege and a citizen's duty, but how does a citizen engage with news media? Buzz Merritt, editor of The Wichita Eagle and an early practitioner of civic journalism, had some advice for practitioners in traditional media.18 Merritt's words to journalists could easily be taken for standards to which citizens should hold news organizations:

• journalism, like government and the non-profit sector, is a part of the system of public life
• that fact imposes obligations on journalists to help with public life
• conflict does not always have to be the primary actor in storytelling
• it is not necessary to speak from extreme points of view to engage thoughtfulness
• not every relationship needs to be an adversarial one
• readers can be participants as well as passive observers
• it is disingenuous to claim neutrality where it does not exist.

It is our job, as citizens, to pay attention to these guidelines. It is our job to see that media address them well. To do that, we need to be in communication with media. We must praise, complain, suggest and demand. We must hold media accountable. It is us, after all, that media sell to their advertisers. We are the ultimate determiners of their success or failure.

We live, as Confucius warned, in interesting times. There is an overabundance of media and a shortage of usable news. There is a glut of information and precious little knowledge. Communication media are thriving. Communication media are dying. Even now, communication has not failed utterly. In fact, here, in the Puget Sound region, just over the horizon, the whites of their eyes nearly visible already, new technologies are ready and waiting to fill in or take over as opportunities present themselves.