Draws on media's past strengths to define a more responsive role for journalism's future. This work covers many current trends: minority voices, providing interactive community forums, reconciling informational and entertainment functions, understanding bias and creating public opinion.

Everyday life, no whether the issues or events arise next-door or a continent away, raises questions and concerns that the public counts on journalists to answer and, more important, confront. More than ever before, we all rely on the news media for warnings, explanations and insights. The profession - and society - cannot afford lazy, inept, uncommitted journalists. Today's reporters must learn how to cover public affairs intelligently and thoroughly. First you must learn about the institutions and people who influence the news; understanding how a legislative conference committee functions or how a trial is conducted remain important pre-requisites. But it is not enough merely to know how to report. Journalists must also understand how they see, define and influence the news. Don't be fooled by the daily dose of fluffy stories about fads, fashions or fetishes. People love to revel in celebrity gossip or fantasize about extreme makeovers. But Donald Trump's love life or the South Beach Diet don't satisfy when people worry about a home invasion in their neighborhood or a rezoning proposal to bring a Wal-Mart super center to town or a Department of Education report that their child's school scored bottom-most in reading achievement. Public Affairs Reporting Now is intended to teach you the best practices and give you the best advice for covering what's generically known as "public affairs reporting. It's a term that's neither inspiring nor precise, but it's long been a convenient way of describing the kind of news coverage that keeps people informed as citizens and keeps our institutions, public and private, focused on the public good.

Everyday life, no whether the issues or events arise next-door or a continent away, raises questions and concerns that the public counts on journalists to answer and, more important, confront.
More than ever before, we all rely on the news media for warnings, explanations and insights. The profession - and society - cannot afford lazy, inept, uncommitted journalists. Today's reporters must learn how to cover public affairs intelligently and thoroughly. First you must learn about the institutions and people who influence the news; understanding how a legislative conference committee functions or how a trial is conducted remain important pre-requisites. But it is not enough merely to know how to report. Journalists must also understand how they see, define and influence the news.
Don't be fooled by the daily dose of fluffy stories about fads, fashions or fetishes. People love to revel in celebrity gossip or fantasize about extreme makeovers. But Donald Trump's love life or the South Beach Diet don't satisfy when people worry about a home invasion in their neighborhood or a rezoning proposal to bring a Wal-Mart super center to town or a Department of Education report that their child's school scored bottom-most in reading achievement.
Public Affairs Reporting Now is intended to teach you the best practices and give you the best advice for covering what's generically known as "public affairs reporting." It's a term that's neither inspiring nor precise, but it's long been a convenient way of describing the kind of news coverage that keeps people informed as citizens and keeps our institutions, public and private, focused on the public good.
*Glossary of terms, sidebars &illustrations
*End-of-chapter exercises
*Teaches how to deliver high-quality local news professionally

Arguing in the first book-length exploration of a conversational and dialogic model for journalism that "accurately reporting the news" is a surprisingly limiting if not disabling mission, the authors draw optimistically on past strengths of the media, especially print journalism, to reform and redefine a more ecumenical, constructive, participative, and democratically responsive role for journalism's institutional future. The book's scope is wide, and it includes many current trends: minority voices, contextualizing the news, providing interactive community forums, reconciling informational and entertainment functions, creating "public opinion," and understanding the nature of bias.