Content-Type: text/html Resolving Public Conflict: Civic Journalism and Civil Society Submitted to the Civic Journalism Interest Group AEJMC April 1, 2000 by Kathryn B. Campbell Department of Communication Southern Oregon University 1250 Siskiyou Boulevard Ashland, OR 97520 [log in to unmask] Resolving Public Conflict: Civic Journalism and Civil Society Submitted to the Civic Journalism Interest Group AEJMC April 1, 2000 by Kathryn B. Campbell Department of Communication Southern Oregon University 1250 Siskiyou Boulevard Ashland, OR 97520 Abstract Practitioners in civic journalism and public conflict resolution are independently experimenting with ways to facilitate communication and mediate conflict. Civic journalism can provide the public sphere in which conflict resolution can move from individual rights-based models toward public judgment models, where "the good life" might be realized. For journalists, public conflict resolution models offer a complementary philosophy and practical guides to mediation processes. Together, these transformative models of professional practice have great potential for enriching civil society. Resolving Public Conflict Resolving Public Conflict Resolving Public Conflict Resolving Public Conflict: Civic Journalism and Civil Society Introduction Theories of civic journalism and public conflict resolution should complement each other very well as journalists and citizens, community leaders and activists, philosophers and politicians struggle to find ways to "help public life go well." But in theory as well as in practice, the two ideas rarely coincide. Honeyman (1999), for example, notes wryly that "[newspaper] readers would be unwise to rely on journalists to paint a picture of what is going on in the handling of conflict these days" (p. 13). When these theories do converge, the combination generally attracts no more than a passing paragraph-and the appraisal is mixed. On the media side, journalist and civic journalism advocate Cole Campbell (1999) suggested recently that journalists should "learn more about the process of problem solving, so we can fashion more helpful news reports that address problems and [ways of] devising solutions to them" (p. xxv). Others strongly (albeit briefly) disagree; communications scholar Michael Schudson (1999) says flatly: "Whatever authority journalists may have, it does not lie in the area of community organizing or conflict mediation" (p. 125). Public conflict resolution theorists and practitioners give very little attention to the role of the press in general; for example, Pruitt and Rubin (1986), in their book Social Conflict: Escalation, Stalemate and Settlement, never mention the media. When others in this field do mention the press, they also are divided on its proper role. Their approaches can be arrayed along a continuum that ranges from careful avoidance of the media by participants in public conflict resolution processes (Susskind & Cruikshank, 1987) to "management" of the media (Lewicki, Litterer, Minton, & Saunders, 1994) to limited cooperation (Carpenter & Kennedy, 1988; Creighton, 1992) to full partnership (Susskind & Field, 1996). Susskind and Field (1996) specifically, albeit briefly, address the potential of civic journalism. Although the theory and practices of civic journalism and public conflict resolution have much in common, any attempt to link them quickly becomes challenging. On the one hand, civic journalism advocates have been reluctant to saddle their emerging movement with precise definitions, concept explications or clearly formulated theory. On the other hand, there are a number of models and variations on models of public conflict resolution. Therefore, a brief review of civic (or public) journalism and public conflict resolution models is in order. Civic journalism Although as noted, civic journalism proponents have been loath to commit themselves to definitions and explicit theories that might constrain their experiments, there is general agreement that journalists are uniquely positioned and morally obligated to help public life go well. Rosen (1995) speaks of civic journalism as a way to "model democratic habits of mind and conversation." He continues: To acknowledge a political 'identity' as a public journalist is to agree that you have a stake in public life-that you are a member of the community, and not a mechanism outside it. This does not mean that the press can become a partisan or advocate. But neither is it to withdraw into a stance of civic exile, where what's happening to the community somehow isn't happening to you as a professional. Public journalists see ordinary citizens as perfectly capable of good decision-making; these journalists understand their roles as facilitators of dialogue among various and diverse segments of the population, across race and class lines, among public and private organizations. They try, sometimes more successfully than others, to contextualize information, to open avenues for discussion, to connect people and policy makers and institutions in ways that facilitate problem-solving. Problems of crime and urban decay contributed to the general feeling among some journalists and academics in the late 1980s and early 1990s that their profession-and the democratic process-was in trouble. These journalists "saw that the very problems they had come to journalism to help solve still weren't being solved, or even being very intelligently addressed. Inner cities continued to decay, deficits to grow, schools to flounder; city hall and statehouse policies were as unfocused as ever" (Charity, 1995, p. 1). The responses of editors and reporters in diverse cities coalesced into one basic premise: "Journalism ought to make it as easy as possible for citizens to make intelligent decisions about public affairs, and to get them carried out" (Charity, 1995, p. 2). "The truth is that American society doesn't make it easy for busy people to be good citizens. . . . Public journalists are simply those people who began to look for opportunities to make citizenship easier through the specific powers of the press" (Charity, 1996, p. 7-8). In other words, public journalists have defined themselves as those willing to help reconstitute and empower the public: In effect, public journalism would add the duty of public involvement to the traditional responsibilities of the press, e.g., surveillance, agenda-setting, watchdog. The philosophy as applied would have a news medium purposefully organize its resources and activities to educate and interest people in the public sphere. (Denton, Thorson, & Coyle, 1995, p. 3) Public journalists further define that role as promoting process, not solutions. Charity (1995) calls it public journalism's "golden rule": "Journalism should advocate democracy without advocating particular solutions" (p. 146). Merritt (1995) adds: "Public journalism is a search for ways that journalism can serve a purpose beyond . . . merely telling the news. That purpose is reinvigorating [civic] life by re-engaging people in it" (p. 262). Yankelovich (1991) outlines three stages of public deliberation that have been accepted as the basic blueprint for most civic journalism projects: consciousness-raising about an issue; working through the problem in a deliberative dialogue; and finally, resolving the problem in full recognition and acceptance of the solution's compromises and deficiencies (pp. 63-65). The idea of civic journalism clearly offers some possibilities for complementing public conflict resolution theories, which will be explored next. Public conflict resolution Campbell and Floyd (1996) offer a concise definition of conflict: "Conflict is the result of scarcity of either tangible or intangible valued objects" (p. 235). Carpenter and Kennedy (1988) define public conflicts as "controversies that affect members of the public beyond the primary negotiators" (p. 4). Public disputes, they say, are characterized by complicated networks of interests, reflected in the emergence of new parties during the dispute; varying levels of expertise in legal, financial or other areas; varying forms of power; short-term relationships among the parties; different corporate cultures involved in decision making procedures; and unequal accountability to the law, to employers, or to volunteer group members (pp. 5-8). Public disputes are also characterized by strongly held values, a broad range of issues, and a lack of standardized procedures for dealing with them. One approach to understanding public conflict resolution theories or models is to view them in one of two ways: diagnosing the nature of a dispute or describing the process of dispute resolution. In the first group, for example, is a triad of models that view conflict either as a misunderstanding, resolvable by simply clearing it up; as conflict of interests that are amenable to compromise; or as a conflict of basic principles not easily mediated away (Campbell & Floyd, 1996; Crowfoot & Wondolleck, 1990). Greenhalgh (1999) offers a conflict diagnostic model that identifies various dimensions, such as the type of issue itself, i.e., a matter of principle or the size of the stakes involved, and places each on a "viewpoint continuum" of difficult- to easy-to-resolve. A second approach is look at public conflict resolution as "dispute processing," as Dukes (1996) calls it. Lewicki et al. (1994) summarize and integrate seven "phase" models that pinpoint stages of negotiation in a conflict resolution process, such as stating and defending a position, i.e., the initiation stage; searching for solutions, called the problem-solving phase; and negotiating an agreement, dubbed the resolution phase. The authors also distinguish between prescriptive and descriptive models in the current literature. More significantly, however, they offer three other ideas. The first is an alternative model that incorporates the idea that conflict resolution processes are shaped by underlying social structures, such as "a shared mental model of the task to be accomplished . . . and the recognized rules of conversational exchange" (p. 178). The second is a concern that descriptive models show how successful negotiations proceed but often do not address those negotiations that stall in one phase or break down entirely. The third concept of special note is the recognition of "the problems of perceptual error and framing that precede and shape" (p. 179) the first phase of negotiation. Much of this perception arises from "past situations, attitudes and behaviors . . . gained through direct or vicarious experience" (p. 180). (This vicarious experience is arguably a product, at least in part, of the press coverage of the issue at hand.) The authors run through various perceptual distortions that afflict parties to a negotiation: stereotyping, halo effects, selective perception, projection, and perceptual defenses-all designed to filter new information so that it does not clash too terribly with people's preconceptions about the issue and each other (p. 182-184). In addition, the disputants are subject to the variances in issue framing and prone to the "fundamental attributional error" in which they tend to give undue weight to the impact of situational elements and underestimate the impact of personal factors in predicting outcomes (p. 185). Pruitt and Rubin (1986) model a conflict escalation curve that shows how conflicts tend to escalate over time, especially when the parties involved each feel powerful, fail to see any mutually beneficial solutions, and see the other as having high aspirations they are unlikely to abandon (p. 65-67). They outline five transformations that occur during conflict escalation, either singly or in combinations (p. 64): ù Influence attempts move from light to heavy (ingratiation/persuasion to threats/violence); ù The number of issues tends to proliferate and parties commit more and more resources to their stance; ù The issues tend to move from a specific problem to more general problems; ù The parties move from wanting to do well for themselves to wanting to hurt the other; ù The number of parties tends to increase. Pruitt and Rubin also offer the aggressor-defender model. in which the aggressor initiates the conflict by seeking something he sees that would improve his position. In this model, the defender reacts in response to the aggressor. If the aggressor escalates the conflict, the defender reacts in kind. Another view is the structural change model; in this model, the conflict itself leaves behind structural changes, such as psychological changes, changes in groups, and changes in communities, that encourage further conflict, making the escalation both "antecedent and consequent of structural changes" (p. 92). Carpenter and Kennedy (1988) elaborate a slightly more dynamic model in which a "spiral" of unmanaged conflict evolves in the following way: ù The problem emerges; there are no easy answers, and citizens become worried. ù Sides form. ù Positions harden. "People talk more with others of similar views and less with people with whom they disagree, even in circumstances that not related to the dispute" (p. 13). ù Communication stops, i.e., "public discussions [turn] to public debate" (p. 13). ù Resources are committed to defend positions. ù Conflict goes outside the community, as people look to national groups or politicians for support. ù Perceptions become distorted, i.e., "shades of gray disappear and only black and white remain" (p. 14). ù A sense of crisis emerges. In this last stage, the authors simply assert that "newspapers highlight arguments between community leaders and ignore positive efforts toward resolution" (p. 15). They also point out that modeling public conflict resolution as a spiral illustrates how unmanaged conflicts become more serious as people become fearful and end up raising the stakes of their claims without really knowing what they are facing. They conclude: "The great value of taking a hard look at where the dispute is on the spiral is that one can then choose an interim strategy that will slow down or stop expansion of the conflict" (p. 16). Susskind and Field (1996) outline a prescriptive model for dispute resolution they call the "mutual gains approach." It has six principles (p. 37): ù Acknowledge the concerns of the other side; ù Encourage joint fact finding; ù Offer compensation for both known and unknown impacts; ù Accept responsibility for mistakes and share power; ù Act in a trustworthy fashion at all times; ù Build long-term relationships. Susskind and Field advocate trust in the public's ability to understand a problem and cope with it. They call on business executives to exhibit "principled leadership" in the face of an angry public, such as the ones that emerged in the wake of the Exxon Valdez oil spill and the Three Mile Island catastrophe. Dukes (1996) argues that the "dispute processing" models have preoccupied theorists and practitioners, pointing out that different models work in different ways in different communities; to try to catalog them invariably leads to impoverished theory that cannot account for the "dynamic nature of conflict . . . [or] the flexibility and adaptivity of dispute processes . . . [while] it implicitly accepts the 'conflict is bad' paradigm" (p. 103). Dukes has much broader aspirations for public conflict resolution: "Public conflict resolution ought instead to challenge fundamental problems of community and governance" (p. x). Dukes rejects the idea that public conflict resolution should be a management tool used to address the "crisis of governance"; instead, he argues, public conflict resolution can be "a vehicle for transforming citizenry, communities, and the private and public institutions of contemporary democratic society" (p. 7). He argues passionately that a means must be found to move beyond the practical need for agreement in public life. There is a moral need, he contends, "to move beyond the type of fighting which characterizes so much public conflict. This moral need has led to the search not only for common ground for but higher ground: a ground for engagement in public issues on terms such as fairness, integrity, openness, compassion, and responsibilities" (p. 2). Dukes summarizes the problems of contemporary democratic society as seemingly intractable, accompanied by the growing and potentially permanent disillusion and disenfranchisement of the underclass. Public life is seen as nasty and argumentative; citizens are interested in participating but the cost is too great in terms of ugly adversarialism. Political myth is responsible for polarizing citizens in terms of "left" or "right" (pp. 3-6). Public conflict resolution, he concludes, "has considerable potential for challenging the sense of decline, hopelessness, and distrust permeating civic culture" (p. 7). Dukes (1996) proposes a transformative ideal of public conflict resolution, whose goals are an engaged community, responsive governance, and a capacity for problem solving (p. 9). In this way, drawing on the political philosophies of Barber (1984) and Habermas (1991), Dukes meshes a detailed history of public conflict resolution with the crisis of postmodern life and its inheritance of empirical science, industrial capitalism and liberal democracy, which together produced doctrines of instrumental reason, market rationality and possessive individualism-and an impoverishment of civil and social life. In the tradition of Robert Park, George Herbert Mead, and Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Seidler, and Tipton (1985), Dukes argues that "it is through social interaction that the individual reaches full autonomy, and it is fully realized human beings who take responsibility for others and who best nurture community" (p. 146). Dukes' work provides the necessary segue to move this discussion from its starting point in the media, through public conflict resolution and on to theories of civil society. First, however, a brief return to the idea of civic journalism and its role in social processes, including conflict resolution, is in order. Rosen (1996) emphatically argues that [Civic] journalism at its best is independent . . . and also connected. It stands apart from the community in certain respects but it is a part of the community in many others. Public journalism is about staring this fact in the face. But it is not only journalists who must face it. Corporations, universities, foundations, community leaders, neighborhood associations, businesses, volunteer groups, political parties, public officials everyone who enters the public arena in the United States-have learned a way of public negotiation that actually reinforces the isolation of the journalist. . . . Public relations, publicity-seeking, "media relations," or corporate communications . . . imply a stance toward journalists that expects the worst (negative news) and hopes for the best: a positive spin, a press release printed, a story that will reflect well on a group and impress its funders, its bosses, its customers, its voters and the folks at home. Given the power of the news media, this attitude is entirely understandable. In fact, we understand it so well that almost all of us have become experts at the manipulate-the-media game. Each of the models of public conflict resolution described above envision a role for the media, either implicitly or explicitly. As noted earlier, these roles range from the invisible, in which the public conflict resolution theorists simply do not address the media at all, to models that include a specific approach to dealing with the media. Some prescriptive models, most of them developed a decade or so ago, urge participants in a public conflict resolution process to agree in advance on rules for talking to the media (Susskind & Cruikshank, 1987; Carpenter & Kennedy, 1988, p. 124). Carpenter and Kennedy appear to look more favorably on the media than most, noting the advantages to public conflict resolution process when the media are "treated as interested members of the community, rather than as adversaries" (p. 186). Dukes (1996), in arguing for his expanded scope of public conflict resolution, gives civic journalism a nod in noting that some study circle groups have worked with civic journalism newspapers. The most extensive treatment of civic journalism, however, is in Susskind and Field's 1996 book, Dealing with an angry public: The mutual gains approach to resolving disputes. They have a much more productive role in mind for the media than simply being "used" by parties to the public conflict resolution process. They suggest that people on both sides of a dispute approach the media together and ask them to play an educational role, not to take sides, and to be a partner in the dispute resolution process (p. 213). The media "might learn something," they declare (p. 219), from the example set by the principles of the mutual gains approach. And although they have reservations about the media, who "do not make the best forum for resolving public debates" (p. 221), Susskind and Field nonetheless suggest that the media can help the public conflict resolution process if both those who seek to manipulate the press and the media themselves develop a new relationship. Susskind and Field (1996) introduce their media section by comforting their fellow conflict resolution practitioners: "If it's any consolation, the media has an angry public on its hands, too. . . . The media are viewed by the public as part of the problem-polarizing the debate, turning complex arguments into overly simplified sound bites, and transforming the search for justice into a spectacle" (pp. 218-219). And communications scholars Anderson, Dardenne, and Killenberg (1997) suggest an explanation for the tendency of public conflict resolution theorists to marginalize the role of the press: Journalism may be considered peripheral because journalists have sold themselves as mere conduits of information. The message to journalism is that it's part of the problem but not part of the solution (p. 102). Journalists have defined themselves that way as well. The authors contend the media are present in the debate over civic life mostly as a scapegoat; they worry that civic journalists are mostly talking to themselves. But, "Even more alarming is the virtual neglect of journalism by proponents of political community building, who rarely mention institutional journalism, much less assign newspapers a vital role in stimulating democracy and citizenship. . . . This neglect suggests journalism's thin credibility in the larger social discussion of democracy itself" (Anderson, Dardenne, & Killenberg, p. 100). As the above discussion indicates, there is not much evidence of public conflict resolution as democratic practice and civic journalism converging in practice. One reason may be that public conflict resolution work has tended to focus on discrete issues, such as environmental conflicts (for examples, see Crowfoot & Wondolleck, 1990). Single-issue disputes are generally not the focus of civic journalism initiatives, which lean toward broader discussions less focused on resolving a particular problem. Civic journalism projects tend to focus on election issues, broad neighborhood revitalization issues, or structural issues such as poverty. Dukes' (1996) vision of public conflict resolution as a way of engaging more global issues of civic life provides the best philosophical match for civic journalism. Putnam (1993) sees social capital, created by a vigorous civic life, as the critical component that enables people to work together to resolve intractable problems. It is in the notions of enhancing community and civic life the civic journalism and public conflict resolution can come together. The good life and civil society In The Good City and the Good Life (1995), Daniel Kemmis tells a gentle story about Missoula to make two central points: "No individual citizen can be whole or healthy except as a member of a whole and healthy community" (p. 81); and "City-states [may] prove to be more capable than nations of generating prosperity [and] or deploying that prosperity to address social problems. . . . A city is by its nature organic, , and . . . it bears to its surrounding region an organic relationship that is the very essence of a successful economy" (p. 105). The synthesis of these two ideas is summed up as follows: "Refocusing of human energy around the organic wholeness of cities or city-states promise a profound rehumanizing of the shape and condition of our lives" (p. 151). Kemmis barely acknowledges, however, that disputes over how the good life is to be realized may not be so easily resolved in the midst of competition to achieve individual goals (for example, a clash between entrepreneurs and environmentalists). In earlier work, he had noted that classic liberal democracy has no room for common values (Kemmis, 1990, p. 60). "In most localities on most issues, the political pendulum is pushed back and forth endlessly, but the higher public good which everyone feels must be there never emerges" (p. 67). He uses as his example clashes over rural development outside Missoula, where city folks and rural folks couldn't see that what made them devoted to their way of life was in part the existence of the other (access to open space for the city-dwellers, access to city amenities for the ranchers). Kemmis builds his idea of the good life on a particular vision of community; his favorite adjectival phrase is that of a "city in grace" and his favorite metaphor for such a city is the Missoula Farmers Market, where weekly the people of the city celebrate their life together in organic wholeness. In this, Kemmis has melded Bender's (1978) definitions of community as an aggregate of people who share a common interest in a particular locality; of community as an experience more than a place or local activity (i.e., "Community is where community happens," p. 6); and of community as "a network of social relations marked by mutuality and emotional bonds" (p. 7). In Bender's conception of community, such mutuality and emotional bonds mediate political conflict. But achieving the "good life" is more than a matter of vision of community bonding. Fischer (1991) distinguishes between social and political ties, arguing that subcommunities such as neighborhoods provide fewer social ties but stronger political ties. These strong local political ties engender a neighborhood ideology of NIMBYism, and a strengthening of the idea that "free pursuit of the private good is the public good" (p. 89). Such "free pursuit" leads inevitably to conflict, and this conflict is seen by many as instrumental in the decay of public life. Sociologists and others argue that a decline in associational life has reduced our capacity to resolve differences by diminishing our sense of common purpose and knowledge of each other (e.g., Putnam, 1995). Others contend that associational life has not declined but merely changed (Ladd, 1996); or that in any event, some kinds of voluntary associations are more conducive to promoting civic life than others (Galston & Levine, 1997). Some observers, such as Bloomberg (1966), are not impressed with associational projects undertaken for the "good of the community," arguing that such claims are almost always for the good of the few, may harm others, pretend that "the community has no special interest groups, no factions, no conflicts, no major disagreements over means and ends, . . . and may be [most] useful as political rhetoric" (p. 363). Bloomberg is even more cynical about what he calls the "life cycle of bourgeois civic revolt": Good Citizens Discover Disturbing Problems, Good Citizens Determine the Cause, Good Citizens Throw the Rascals Out or establish a Key Reform, Good Citizens fail to recognize that they have made no difference. Participation in voluntary associations make citizens feel they are doing something, but "it never occurs to them that this may be an illusion sustained by group ideology and supported by a deferential local press" (p. 399). Their "impact on community development" he concludes, "is usually conservative or trivial" (p. 401). And lest it be argued that Bloomberg's 33-year-old ideas are dated, consider Himmelfarb's 1998 worries that the "ubiquity" of the phrase "civil society" has drained it of meaning. She complains that with people of all political persuasions agreeing that "mediating structures, voluntary associations, families, communities, churches, and workplaces are the corrective to an inordinate individualism and an overweening state" that civil society has become a "rhetorical panacea" (p. 117). She argues that some advocates of civil society are using it as a way to avoid hard moral choices and to transfer social responsibilities from the state to "civil society" (p. 122). Walzer (1998) defines "civil society" as "the space of uncoerced human association and also the set of relational networks-formed for the sake of family, faith, interest, and ideology-that fill this space" (p. 124). He identifies four rival ideologies competing for the "good life." The first two come from the left: ù The good life is embedded in the political community; "to live well is to be politically active" for the process itself allows us to express our best rational and moral ideas (p. 125). This, he says, is an illusion; it may be a good life but it's not one that we actually live (p. 126). ù The good life "involves a turning away from republican politics and a focus instead on economic activity" (p. 126). In this view, the state's job is allow productivity of the type envisioned by Marx, where "we can all be producers" (p. 126). Creativity is the highest calling, and the "cooperative economy" co-exists with a nonpolitical, conflict-free state. Walzer's next two ideologies come from the right: ù The good life is available through the marketplace where consumers choose among a number of options. Personal choices are the key, regardless of what that choice is, it's the ability to make a choice that counts (p. 128). Protecting the marketplace, he notes, requires state action but it doesn't require citizenship (p. 129). ù The good life is set in the nation, "within which we are loyal members, bound to one another by ties of blood and history" (p. 130). However, this ideology requires little more than rituals and vicarious participation in community (p. 131). None of these ideologies, Walzer argues, is sufficient because they all "miss the complexity of human society, the inevitable conflicts of commitment and loyalty" (p. 132). The ideology of civil society is not so much a fifth alternative as it is a corrective to the other four. It is "a liberal version of the four answers, accepting them all, insisting that each leave room for the others, therefore not finally accepting any of them" (p. 132). Kemmis' vision of the "good life" does just that. Walzer (1998) concludes: "Civil society is tested by its capacity to produce citizens whose interests, at least sometimes, reach farther than themselves and their comrades, who look after the political community that fosters and protects the associational networks" (p. 140). Accepting this conclusion brings this discussion back full circle to the complementary ideas of public conflict resolution and civic journalism. If citizens need to look beyond themselves, it is because their personal interests are not always perfectly aligned. Conflict is the result. To resolve it, citizens need to communicate. Civic journalism and public conflict resolution have been independently experimenting with new ways to facilitate communication and mediate conflict; independently, both have the potential to enhance civic life and provide a way to work toward "the good life." Civic journalism can help provide the public sphere where decision-making can move out of a competitive, individual rights-based model and into a public judgment mode, where visions of a common good can be realized. Public conflict resolution models provide complementary philosophies as well as practical guidance through the thickets of mediation and facilitation processes. Together, however, these two transformative models of professional practice have even greater potential for enhancing community and enriching civil society. Civic journalism's potential in public conflict resolution One way to look at civic journalism's potential to assist in public conflict resolution is consider again the various models of public conflict resolution theory and identify the points at which a different role for the media might be constructive. Lewicki et al. (1994) describe shared mental models and a number of perceptual and structural issues that all owe at least something to media framing, not only of specific issues but of the overall possibility of finding common ground. Civic journalists attempt to frame issues as solvable problems and downplay sensationalist accounts of conflict, while highlighting areas of public agreement-even if the agreement is simply recognition of a public problem. This approach, practiced widely and consistently, could do much to provide a problem-solving context for specific issues. Pruitt and Rubin's (1986) conflict escalation curve and the conflict spiral described by Carpenter and Kennedy (1988) both describe ways that positions harden, issues balloon from the specific to the general, communication stalls and perceptions become distorted. Media coverage that highlights conflict and fails to describe the developing areas of resolution simply exacerbates the dispute; conversely, media coverage, such as the model suggested by Honeyman (1999), can help support the process and contribute to problem-solving in the future: "Even when the main subject of the article has to be the substance of a particular dispute, or of its settlement, a sidebar note on 'how it got there' could be valuable in explaining the context," Honeyman says, and adds: Most stories treat . . . negotiations as if they were inexorable bilateral processes-rather than the product of carefully managed work involving a third party. . . . If journalists continue to fail to outline the dimensions of dispute resolution, this limits consumer choice. What's more, the void of information in the media about dispute resolution adversely affects communities' ability to generate social capital. People are less likely to volunteer time or think up new approaches to a movement that their local media seem to think insignificant. Susskind and Field's (1996) mutual gains approach is overly dependent on good will and the power of moral conviction to ward off the wrath of a wronged public. They fail to acknowledge the inequities of power and resources that complicate dispute resolution. As Campbell and Floyd (1996) have observed, mediation is used more and more frequently, in more and more institutional settings, to resolve conflicts. However, they say, mediation may not be appropriate when fundamental values are involved, and they also worry that citizen groups may be co-opted while power imbalances are perpetuated (p. 236). Rubin (1999) critiques most public conflict resolution models for their reliance on predictions of white, Western, upper middle-class male behavior. One of civic journalism's strengths is its commitment to illuminating the value differences that underlie most public policy disputes; civic journalism practices can also help balance powerful interests and the white male/class bias by its insistence on listening to all voices, most especially the non-expert ones. Civic journalism can also learn from public conflict resolution the differences between mediation and facilitation (Crowfoot & Wondolleck, 1990). From the associated planning literature, civic journalists can certainly get a better understanding of the multiple public roles professional planners, who are often major players in land use and environmental issues, are expected to play as well (Forester, 1987; Spain, 1993; Grant, 1994). Pruitt and Rubin (1986) point out that the process of de-escalation of conflict is undertheorized, in part because the conflict spiral and structural change models see conflict as a vicious circle. Incorporating the ideas of civic journalism as ways to intervene in the spiral might inform a new model of public conflict resolution that envisions a way to move entire communities further in the direction of the "good life." Critical responses Critics of civic journalism might respond, as has Schudson (1999) in the introduction to this paper, that "whatever authority journalists may have, it does not lie in the area of community organizing or conflict mediation" (p. 125). Other critics will insist that journalists do have a vested interest in outcomes, not to mention an overriding interest in economic prosperity, and that such interests cannot be camouflaged by claims that they are solely interested in building social capital, enhancing civic life, and increasing public capacity for problem-solving. Others, such as Merrill (1998), might argue that a search for the common good is misguided from the beginning if it infringes on individual liberty. But the critics generally have nothing to offer but more of the same; "just good journalism" should be sufficient, at least according to some high-profile editors such as Max Frankel (1995), William Woo (1995), and Michael Gartner (1995). Conclusion To accept the premise that entrenched journalistic practice is good enough is to say that the journalism and public life of today is as good as it's going to get. Civic journalists have opted not to settle for that, much the same way that innovative thinkers in the field of public conflict resolution have opted to look beyond institutional constraints and adversarial traditions to find better ways to settle disputes. Neither field makes the claim that the common good is simply a matter of obliterating all differences and enforcing a single value system; both fields are searching for a process that will allow citizens to find a way to live with each other's values in the inevitable give and take of community life. Daniel Kemmis (1995) suggests that politicians, on the whole, are good enough at what they do, but they can be better if their constituents "take on the challenge of becoming good enough citizens" (p. 182). Journalism, by the same token, is just about "good enough" to keep the whole social and political system from breaking down entirely; but it is not good enough to repair or improve it. Civic journalists have challenged themselves to be more than good enough; informed by the theory and methods of public conflict resolution, they can be even better. References Anderson, R., Dardenne, R., & Killenberg, G. M. (1997). The American newspaper as the public conversational commons. In J. Black (Ed.), Mixed news: The public/civic/communitarian journalism debate (pp. 96-114). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Barber, B. (1984). Strong democracy. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bellah, R. N., Madsen, R., Sullivan, W. M., Seidler, A., & Tipton, S. M. (1985/1996). 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