the DC One City Summit

5 Replies

As a former long-time resident of Washington, DC and a current member of the AmericaSPEAKS board, I’m pleased to read that 1,700 DC citizens recently spent seven hours in the Convention Center, deliberating about big strategic questions facing the city.

Using the AmericaSPEAKS model, they deliberated at small tables that were networked together by means of computers and then voted–their votes and key quotes displayed on big screens as simultaneous feedback.

Participants were a demographically diverse group (e.g., 44% African American and 19% Latino), and they held diverse views even after talking. For instance, gentrification was the top concern even though only 17% chose it. A different 15% chose “corruption and perceived corruption.”

The Washington Post chooses to lead its article by noting that the event has been “praised for engaging the public but criticized for its $600,000 price tag and seeming bureaucracy.” In this short piece, they also make sure to inform us that Mayor Anthony “Williams wore a plaid shirt and khakis, an everyman outfit” to a similar event in 1999, whereas Mayor Vincent “Gray appeared Saturday in a sports jacket and tieless.” By way of an explanation of the whole Summit, we read that “The Gray administration acknowledged the summit was a throwback to the administration of former Mayor Anthony A. Williams, a two-term mayor who often had to fight the perception that he was aloof.”

I was hoping the Post might actually report what all those citizens thought and said about the city. But I guess that’s not news; only the electoral motivations of professional politicians count as newsworthy.

5 thoughts on “the DC One City Summit”

  1. Larry Schooler

    Peter, thanks for posting this, and thanks to Washington, DC, and America Speaks for putting on the event.  As a former journalist, I would not defend the Washington Post’s reporting, but I would submit that just because they did not report thoroughly on citizen input does not mean that it isn’t newsworthy.  For one thing, other news outlets may have reported on that more extensively, and for another thing, the extent to which a news outlet reports on what citizens say depends, in part, on how new and different what they said seems to be.  It would not be newsworthy, for instance, if New York citizens said with a strong voice that Broadway musicals are an important part of the city’s global reputation.  I don’t know what the citizens in DC said, but I would just suggest that a) we look to outlets other than daily newspapers for coverage, though dailies still play a vital role, and b) we consider how citizen comments and news value align. 

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  2. Sharon Almerigi

    The Washington Post coverage was deplorable. I hope that some folks wrote this to the Editor.  However, I would say the event got good coverage of another kind – that of the people who were there who have vast networks. Great going America Speaks!

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  3. Pingback: NCDD Community News Blog » A tour of the media coverage for AmericaSpeaks’ One City Summit

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