Value No. 4: Accessibility

The editors began the JVI seminars looking at "public access" in what seemed to be a straightforward way: journalists seeking to gain access to public records and institutions and responding to readers' phone calls, correspondence and visits to the newspaper.

But at a time when the public is becoming increasingly fragmented and the nature of communities is changing, the group said newspapers and journalists need to think differently about public access. Access, they said, has three different dimensions. It hinges on connecting the public to important community issues. It is about building relationships between journalists and the communities they serve. And it means connecting citizens in a given community (geographical or interest-based) to one another.

The editors concluded that accessibility, rather than public access, captures the essence of what it means to establish these connections. Accessibility, in their minds, means providing people with a "window on the world," to be the eyes and ears for the whole community.

Accessibility means informing people so they can participate in public discussion. It means engaging people through news coverage and, perhaps, through more direct interaction. It is essential to nurturing and promoting a healthy democracy. Though accessibility and leadership are directly related to each other, the editors said that accessibility is such an important journalistic value that the two should not be combined.

Members of the group had little difficulty agreeing on the dimensions of accessibility. But they did get stuck – as they did with leadership – trying to figure out how much interaction journalists should have with their communities and how much newspapers should facilitate interaction among people in a community. The key tension newspapers will face, according to the editors, is deciding how to use their news pages to promote accessibility.

What does it mean to create accessibility? Consider how to...

• Act as the eyes and ears for the "whole" community in order to go where the general public can't.
• Provide a "window on the world" so readers can engage in what is happening around them.
• Consider various opportunities within the newspaper and out in the community for connecting people to important issues.
• Provide a voice to the voiceless – those who may find it difficult to be heard – to promote a deeper under-standing of our communities.
• Connect newspapers to the public – ensure that journalists are accessible to people in their communities.
• Create give-and-take situations between newspapers and the public – encourage people to provide feedback after publication; think beyond the notion of "published today, gone tomorrow."
• Help connect people to one another – engage citizens in public life to help them find what they have in common.
• Remove undue filters so that readers can hear or read authentic voices of people in their communities.

Ask yourself...

• In what ways do we want to provide a "window on the world" so people can engage in what is going on around them? Do we want to engage people through news coverage only or by going out in our communities to meet and talk with people?
• How will we gauge which voices need to be heard in our communities? How should we ensure that our preconceived views do not affect such judgments?
• How much give-and-take should our newsroom establish with the public? In what ways do we want to use the news pages to do this?
• When it comes to the news pages, how much space and control do we want to give readers to communicate with one another?
• To what degree do journalists need to be involved in the life of the community in order to be accessible to the public?