Exploring the Second Phase of Public Journalism1

This paper examines the new forms of audience participation in journalism with regard to their possibility in achieving the goals of public journalism.2 A typology of five models of audience connections is proposed: (1) traditional journalism, (2) public journalism, (3) interactive journalism, (4) participatory journalism, and (5) citizen journalism. Identifying the higher goal of public journalism as engaging the people as citizens and helping public deliberation, I argue that the new forms of audience participation could further these goals only by infusing the value from and learning the techniques of public journalism. The concept of community, of public deliberation, past research on the Internet, and data obtained from my field study is drawn upon.