Abstract
Civic journalism's routine use of bringing more “average” citizens into the news was tested by comparing the Tallahassee (FL) Democrat, a nationally recognized civic-journalism newspaper, with its past, traditional-journalism self and a traditionalist contemporary. Nonelite information sources were elevated to numerical parity with elite sources in the civic journalism Democrat, but the frequency and directness of their news voices were largely unchanged. The news-voice profile of elites was diminished in the civic-journalism paper. Routine civic journalism at the Democrat did more to tone down the newsworthiness of elites than to raise the volume for nonelites.
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