On the final day of Informed Citizen Akron’s first of three events, jurors had put hours into understanding a media industry that was, to most, unfamiliar in its inner-workings and current challenges. The prior two days of expert presentations and discussion had provided the group with new thoughts, questions, and opinions. The final day of the Citizens’ Jury was designed to collect the seemingly scattered concepts and unite them into a final report of recommendations for newsrooms and the community.
In order to understand the ways in which the jurors would measure the strength of the strategies they intended to evaluate, they first had to create a common list of criteria with which to evaluate the potential strategies. The jury settled on six which combined the concerns of both citizens and media. Each strategy was assessed as feasible for media, valuable for citizens, and productive for community-media relationships.
Each small group was asked to outline the most important reasons to use the strategies identified by the expert presenters, and present their conclusion to the large group. Each strategy was analyzed for the ways in which it improves relationships between the media and Ohioans, as well as how it specifically contributes to providing better information to Ohioans. After each group listed the features of the strategy that they found persuasive, they reconvened as a full jury to vote on which strategies were most persuasive, settling on their top 6.
Following a final lunch together the group was re-joined by Akron Beacon Journal Managing Editor, Doug Oplinger, to speak once more on the condition of legacy newsrooms today and provide responses to questions and thoughts that had come up over the course of the two and a half days of deliberation. After the Q&A concluded, the jurors finalized their recommendations with the inclusion of two separate statements: one to journalists and newsrooms throughout Ohio, and another to Ohio citizens the jury represented in their deliberations.
As the members took the opportunity to share their take on the Citizens’ Jury process, common themes emerged: members of the media have a difficult job in a shifting industry; community members have opportunities to get engaged with the creation of news coverage; and regardless of people’s political leanings, community members can work productively to make progress on difficult issues. A group that had started entirely unfamiliar with one another had been able to collaborate, listen carefully, and speak respectfully to one another to reach a common goal – it is certainly not as difficult for diverse individuals to work together as the coverage of our polarized nation would make it seem.