(Mary Nesbitt)

I've got this gnawing sense that journalists are letting themselves be too much distracted by (very real) business pressures, to the detriment of readers and viewers and their unmet news needs.

Maybe my unease stems from the fact that I'm not seeing much in the trade/professional press about unique journalism that really connects with people's interests. By contrast, there's lots (much of it apparently written by Henny Penny) about the threats to current businesses and business models.

Well, climate change is real, but the sky isn't falling.

So, while tending, as editors must, to the urgent issues of the day, how do you also pay more attention to the important? How do you encourage the kind of journalism that consumers value, and that give your news organization competitive advantage?

I think we all need to get re-anchored in and re-committed to the consumer/citizen needs that journalists are uniquely positioned to satisfy, whether they're telling the stories in a video on a website, with text and visuals in a print publication or on a mobile device.

There's a bunch of those needs, and today I'll focus on just one, "looks out for my personal and civic interests" -- and in particular, the "civic" part. Our research across different platforms consistently finds this to be an important need for people, but they're not deriving much satisfaction with what news media currently do.

Other research indicates that about half the U.S. population is actively engaged in the public sphere in some way or other. An excellent book published recently, A New Engagement?, finds four types of involvement:

• Political (such as voting or working for a candidate)
• Civic (volunteering, charitable fund-raising, community problem-solving)
• Public voice (protesting, contacting officials, contacting news media)
• Cognitive (following or discussing public affairs)

In just the first two realms, the authors say that about 20% of the population are politically active, 16% are civically active and another 16% do both. (And younger people tend to be more civically engaged than politically. So they're not disengaged, as the popular stereotype would have it -- they are differently engaged. The authors suggest their political participation is lower because they do not see relevance -- a situation that's addressable. )

That's a lot of people, and if journalism stands for anything, it is surely, in part, to encourage any and all of those kinds of engagement.

I hear you thinking: "interesting, but what should editors do about it?" Here are five ideas:

1. Attend if you must, but impose a high reporting hurdle. In our work with news organizations, we find many editors equate just the act of being at, and reporting on, civic meetings with looking out for the public's interest -- it sends a message to officials that "we're watching you." True, but it doesn't translate into gains with your audience. They don't care about your legwork; they care only if the product is relevant.
   
   
2. Focus on the outcome, not the means. Editors also worry about missing news by missing meetings. I get that. In a former life, my newsroom adopted a new newsgathering approach designed to produce more enterprise and less institutional news. As a matter of principle, we discouraged routine meeting attendance, and missed stories we shouldn't have.
   
   But the bigger problem was that we didn't make enough offsetting gains on the enterprise front. Were I to do it again (and I would), I'd set clearer expectations about the kind of stories I wanted beats to produce, and leave the means to the reporter. If the school board meeting is an important avenue to discover how the community can help its kids become higher achievers in reading and math, then the reporter should go...or not. Keep your eye on the destination, not on the route.
   
   
3. Accept only stories that telegraph "you gotta read me!" Editors also ask us -- aren't the kind of activities that go on in local government one of the last bastions of our shrinking news franchise? Yes, and all the more reason to live by Perry Parks's call to arms: "refuse to be boring." Parks, a former public affairs reporter and now lecturer and newspaper adviser at Michigan State University, is author of Making Important News Interesting, published this fall. It's a passionate, advice- and example-filled text that seeks to inspire journalists and wannabes to bring relevance to any occasion where the business of the people is being transacted.
   
   Parks argues that such reporting should empower ordinary citizens, "first by showing how government affects their lives and second by showing how they can help set the public agenda." In other words, why you should care and how you can engage.
   
   This approach turns the journalist's focus through 180 degrees, from covering what happens to aggressively looking for what matters to people and how, if they wish, they can engage -- and remember, at least 50% are so inclined.
   
   
4. Reward what you want to encourage. Give prominent play to stories that look out for readers'/viewers' interests, to great headlines, to creative presentation and to enthusiastic promotion.
   
   
5. Don't hire or promote anyone who can't produce this kind of journalism or coach others in its pursuit.
   

By Mary Nesbitt (m-nesbitt@northwestern.edu)
Mary Nesbitt is managing director of the Readership Institute.