 There was a time the staff of the Cupertino Courier would have looked at the controversy over the naming of the city's new community building as good news—good in the sense that conflict is the very essence of news. In those days, the idea of the newspaper inviting the community to come and talk about their fears, their concerns, even their anger, in a nonthreatening, supportive environment would have been unthinkable.
Our motto in those days could have been "Bring on the Conflict." That was before we—and many other newspapers throughout the country—began to rethink the role of newspapers. We questioned the validity of always reporting the news only as objective observers. And, more importantly, we took another look at the concept of conflict.
We asked ourselves: Should the role of community newspapers simply be to report conflict? Should newspapers—especially community newspapers—just point out problems? Did we have to wait for someone to suggest a solution before we could begin reporting on how problems might be resolved? Or was it time for us to take some responsibility for being part of the solution?
Over the past year, the Courier and its sister publications at Silicon Valley Community Newspapers have gradually moved in the direction of a new kind of journalism known as civic or public journalism. Civic journalism is a way of approaching news coverage that attempts to engage readers in the process of solving problems in the community.
I knew that we had moved a long way from the old style of journalism when the issue of naming the building surfaced at a city council meeting and instead of being elated that we had a major conflict to write about for weeks to come, the entire staff felt sad.
That's when we realized that we had developed a strong sense of pride in being part of a community that had experienced dramatic demographic changes and had done such a good job of making it work.
It's not that we were unaware that race relations were an issue. One of the questions we like to ask people is: What is the master narrative in the community? In other words, what is the one thing that people know is a problem but they don't want to talk about, the issue bubbling just beneath the surface? Whenever we've asked this question in Cupertino, the answer has always been race.
We knew it was there, even if it was hidden. Really, with the dramatic demographic changes Cupertino has experienced, how could race not be in the community consciousness?
Still, we were startled when the proposal to name the community building after a major contributor to the library fundraising effort—a Chinese-American man—caused such divisiveness.
When Courier editor Sandy Sims and I talked about it, we were frustrated and sad. Sandy wrote an opinion piece for the paper that suggested it was time for people to begin talking. She said people needed to put political correctness aside and speak from the heart. But we didn't exactly know how to make that happen.
In fact, we received letters whose authors seemed more than happy to cast political correctness aside and call it like they saw it. But, frankly, some of those letters were mean and hurtful, and in spite of our call for people to speak from the heart, we weren't comfortable running some of those letters.
Sandy and I talked about a community forum. We're civic journalists, and inviting people who live and work in Cupertino to a forum is the kind of thing we should be doing, we agreed, but who would facilitate? We had no experience doing this sort of thing—and frankly, we were facing our own dilemma about how to let people express themselves on our opinion pages without crossing a line we felt we had to hold.
Happily, Sandy mentioned our discussion to City Manager David Knapp and he thought a forum would be a very good thing. What's more, he knew exactly who should facilitate it.
Shawn Spano, a San José State University professor and a member of the Community Dialogue Consortium, has worked with the Cupertino community since 1996, when Spano approached then City Manager Don Brown with a proposal—to allow PDC to work with the city to enhance the quality of public communication among and between the city and its residents.
As a result of that successful experience, which covered a period of about three years, Spano has returned to the city on several occasions to facilitate community dialogues.
Spano, Knapp assured us, knows how to keep a community dialogue focused, and he's superb at creating a safe environment for people to express their feelings through the use of skilled facilitators at individual tables where discussions take place.
After Sandy and I met with Knapp and Spano and SVCN publisher David Cohen, we were convinced that sponsoring a community forum was something the Courier should do.
Frankly, sponsoring this forum is a risk for us. We're much more accustomed to writing about a big flap in the community than we are at helping find solutions. But we also realize that asking people to put aside political correctness and speak from the heart at a community forum is asking them to take a big risk as well. We could all fall on our faces.
On the other hand, we think the opportunity to move forward, to make a strong community even stronger is a risk worth taking. We hope you agree.
"A Time to Talk," a candid conversation about Cupertino's changing demographics, takes place Aug. 9 from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in the community room of St. Jude's Church, 20920 McClellan Road at Stelling.
Dale Bryant is the executive editor of Silicon Valley Community Newspapers, which publishes The Courier. She can be reached at 408.200.1021 or dbryant@svcn.com.
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