Cebu journalists engaged members of civil society in doing a PJ project.

Most reporters’ lives are simple.

You know the drill: show up at the government offices which constitute your beat, talk to the boss or some other bureaucrat, check the secretaries or clerks for story tips, have coffee, then leave to write two or three stories for the day. Easy.

After doing that for two years (and rehashing stories that went nowhere and changed nothing), I am close to hanging up my Girl Reporter gear and heading for a more interesting (read: more lucrative) field like corporate communication or advertising. (After all, how many Cebu City Charter Day stories can you do before you get bored?)

It took a demanding old editor to snap me back to my senses.

“Inday,” he said, “forget your daily quota for this week, and go after a story you’re interested in…”

Perfect timing. I had been wondering about an organization of health workers who made the rounds of media outfits in Cebu, explaining how devolution had affected public health institutions and services.

They were a pesky group inviting reporters to travel to the ends of Cebu to see hospitals with leaky ceilings, no sphygmomanometers, no food, and no bandages.

(“No action,” my photographer complained.) But that was precisely the story.

I missed my deadline, but for the first time, being a reporter made sense.

This isn’t a Crusading-Journalist-Shakes-The-System story. Far from it.

The report (a special assignment that took three months to research and write, and took up seven full pages, plus photos) did not get anyone fired. It wasn’t meant to.

It was a report that pointed out how sorry the conditions were in district hospitals in Cebu and how that was NOT what decentralization was supposed to accomplish.

It carried the suggestions of some health workers to let cooperatives or other private sector entities manage the hospitals, because it was clear the Capitol could not do so. At least, not competently.

(Incidentally, while toying with the idea of doing that story I got invited to a seminar on media and decentralization by, you guessed it, the Evelio B. Javier Foundation. And the rest is comedy.)

Three years after that report (yes, THREE years) the governor finally agreed to trust hospital administrators enough to let them decide what to do with their sub-allotted funds.

And the story’s not over yet. There is much to learn.

Late last year, a synchronized barangay consultative assembly was called. It was what one of our reporters in Cebu said a flop. (No one important showed up, she said, just a few barangay officials.)

Here she was, not even six months out of Journ School, and she was as jaded, as knee-jerk cynical about government as any grizzled editor.

Clearly, something is wrong about this picture.

“Somehow, the news business has drifted from the important role we journalists play as public servants. We’ve tended to align ourselves with the power brokers, government insiders and political prognosticators, instead of viewers and citizens,” Rick Thames wrote in his article Covering Politics, Civic Journalism Style.

“Some go so far as dismissing average citizens as a naïve bunch who need to be saved from themselves.”

I’m sure you don’t believe that.

At this seminar you will kick around the ideas of public journalism. (It goes by many names: civic journalism, solutions-oriented reporting, non-elite sourcing, or just plain GOOD JOURNALISM.)

• That there’s a way of reporting and framing stories so that they are not detached accounts of conflict but carry solutions and the voices of everyday people.
   
• That citizens’ input needs to be valued along with the so-called OFFICIAL story.
   
• That in writing about who, what, where, why and when, we can also try to explain to readers/viewers why they should care.
   
• That solutions are possible in most problems and those READERS may have a role to play.

Go over your recent news feeds and newspaper issues. Chances are these may be anchored on sources from official institutions and politics.

If you’ve paid attention, and given space, to quasi-official sources (organizations, advocacy groups), then good for you.

And if you’ve stayed in touch with all the other centers of civic life (churches, barbershops, child care centers, community socials, schools, sidewalks), then you’re probably coming up with stories that are more accurate than they would have been if you had just stayed indoors at City Hall, waiting from the press con and the free coffee.

Staying in touch your community can make your journalism more compelling (and may be even help you revive waning links with your readers, viewers, or listeners).

Considering yourself part of the community, instead of a detached observer, will help you:

You will hear about events, trends, and people’s concerns long before these reach the official world of politics and institutions. So, don’t just hang out at the watering holes of politicians and fellow media workers --- check out other community spaces as well.

You will find an expanded group of sources and civic groups/spaces to understand events better.

The usual way to cover a tax increase story is to attend the local council discussion, interview the proponents of the tax increase, and attend the public hearing.

Imagine how richer your story would be if, aside from these steps, you:

• Step back and let accountants/auditors help you go over the previous budget to see if the funds were well-spent and if the increase is necessary. (In Cebu, accountants whom we consulted agreed with the Commission on Audit’s findings that City Hall was spending more to run itself than on services like health and sanitation, incentives for the police and infrastructure.)
   
• Seek suggestions from readers on how City Hall can cut costs. (You never know what they can come up with.)

Communities can help journalists gain insights to frame tougher and more probing interviews.

“Having a deeper understanding and sense of content of people’s problems (like youth violence) can prompt a journalist to ask a school or police official probing questions about how certain proposals reflect people’s worries; and if not, how the proposal relates to these concerns,” recommends a workbook of The Pew Center for Civic Journalism.

It pays to understand what and how your community thinks.

In Cebu, reporters with sources in academe and interest groups came up with a flurry of stories when a public official insisted it was a blessing Cebu had lost its forest cover “because rebels wouldn’t have a place to hide.”

Instead of just criticizing the public official for the statement, sources in academe and interest groups were able to point out just how serious Cebu’s water crisis is and how this goes back to mismanagement of resources (the issuance of titles for what was supposed to be a protected watershed, for example).

Any parent who is worried about education in his or her community can go to the local school board and find out what’s being done --- but how many of your readers and listeners know there’s such a thing as a local school board? (And if there’s none yet, that’s a story, too.)

By listening to more people of all sorts of beliefs, journalists can begin to uncover and understand their own preconceived views and, while not abandoning them, perhaps be more aware of them in their reporting.

We’ve probably hear reporters who refused to talk to people they didn’t like - we are not just losing stories but are doing readers and listeners a disservice by keeping media time or space an “elite” enclave.

Applied to decentralization (or the Local Government Code, for starters), non-elite sourcing means:

Punta Princesa, a small barangay in Cebu City, was adjudged the country’s best barangay last year by the Department of Interior and Local Government.

Reporters in Cebu are still in the process of finding out why. But many of us were pleased to learn the barangay not only has one of the lowest crime rates in the regions, but operates its own public market, has busy health clinic, runs a computer-equipped library, offers day care services, and yes, like many barangays, sponsors its share of sports meets.

All that from a barangay.

When that barangay assembly I mentioned earlier was held, someone in the newsroom pointed out: “Aren’t barangay assemblies supposed to be done every six months? Wasn’t the Local Government Code passed in 1992? Why is this only the first?”

All that from just one provision in the Local Government Code, which mandates barangay assemblies. Think of all the other provisions that could lead you to good stories.

“In essence, journalists need to think of themselves as being part of society, sharing responsibility for the long-term health of culture and democracy, rather than being strictly detached observers whose duty is only to point out that things are going wrong,” advises James Fallows of The Atlantic Monthly.

While I wish I could take credit for all the ideas here, I obviously can’t. References include The Pew Center for Civic Journalism, Jonathan Cohn, “Should Journalists Do Community Service?” James Fallows, The Atlantic Monthly; Rick Thames, The Charlotte Observer.