Reporting an Urban ‘Box Score:’ the Journalistic ‘Sports’ Record to Measure Local Urban Performance

Abstract

For the press to “keep score” on the performance of urban games and players, it should recognize and apply the use of both sports reporting techniques and social indicators in coverage of urban affairs. It should also make a stronger and more reasoned commitment to the local community by re-organization of newsrooms, new definitions of news to fit urban reality, an intelligent check on the urban experts, a provision for “distant-early-warning” news, and abandonment of its journalistic myopia that politics is “bad.”