Civic journalism sets out to provide people with detailed news and information about specific issuesto allow them to make the decisions they are called on to make in a democratic society. Newspapers, radio and television stations and the internet combine to provide forums for citizens to question their politicians, polling the electorate to elicit the major issues and then questioning legislators.
Civic journalism is an effort to reconnect with the real concerns that viewers and readers have about the issues they care most about, not in a way that panders to them, but in a way that treats them as citizens with the responsibilities of self-government, rather than as consumers to whom goods and services are sold. Civic journalism takes the traditional five w's of journalism--who, what, when, where, why--and expands them to ask: why is this story important to me and to the community in which I live? (Source: http://www.cpn.org/sections/topics/journalism/) (See Case Study Civic Journalism in which suburban papers worked with local government to raise awareness of water quality issues and the importance of saving water.)
This page originally copied with permission from the Citizens Science Toolbox
