McKnight Guides Newspaper Editors
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John McKnight
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ABCD co-director John McKnight offered a strategy for targeting inner-city residents in a panel discussion on declining newspaper readership at the American Society of Newspaper Editors in April. He based his talk on the 1999 ABCD workbook, Newspapers and Neighborhoods: Strategies for Achieving Responsible Coverage of Local Communities. The workbook presents research on the disparity in reporting between low-income and affluent neighborhoods and defines the issues that low-income residents feel newspapers should be reporting. McKnight said metropolitan newspaper coverage of low-income neighborhoods is disproportionately negative because reporters often gather their information from centralized locations - the downtown police or fire station or board of education - instead of from the neighborhoods themselves. The editors responded positively to McKnight's suggestion that newspapers organize dialogues with community leaders to improve coverage and determine the kinds of information that would allow local residents to become more effective citizens. Some have contacted the ABCD Institute about starting these neighborhood dialogues.
'60 Minutes,' '48 Hours' Profile Protess Cases
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Mike Wallace interviews |
The fight against wrongful convictions in death penalty cases sparked by the work of David Protess (IPR-Medill) was profiled in two prime time CBS-TV newsmagazines this spring. An entire "48 Hours" program on May 15 documented the efforts of four of Protess's journalism students to investigate a double miscarriage of justice in a downstate Illlinois capital case. "The students developed new evidence that proves the crime was committed by two other men at a time of night the wrongfully incarcerated men, Randy Steidl and Herb Whitlock, had solid alibis," Protess said. A "60 Minutes" segment with Mike Wallace that aired April 30 focused on the moratorium on executions ordered by Illinois Governor George Ryan in January. Ryan acted after13 Death Row inmates in the state were found innocent. Five of the men were released after investigations by Protess and his students.