CivicLex established a K-12 program to educate students about their local government and promote civic engagement within their Lexington community. The program included civic action workshops, a comprehensive civic curriculum, and expos where students could interact with local community organizations and public officials.
Gather’s March 2023 lightning chat invited participants to explore models for “accountability infrastructure” — systems, structures, or programs that facilitate a process of holding stakeholders with more power responsible for listening to and addressing the needs and concerns of those with less.
The opportunity now is to shepherd and accelerate a transition to an emergent civic media system. This new ecosystem looks different from what it will replace: while the commercial market rewarded information monopolies, what is emerging now are pluralistic networks in which information is fluid, services are shared, and media is made in cooperation with the people it seeks to serve.
We in engaged journalism have much to learn from other communities of practice. Fiona Morgan, July’s Gather Guest Curator, produced and hosted this conversation with fellow members of our civic infrastructure.
Increasingly impatient with a lack of impact from investigative projects, journalists have become more willing to partner with civil society organizations, many of whose reason for being is making change. With the drive for impact comes complicated ethical questions that the journalists wrestle with, but have found ways to negotiate.
