Charlotte takes pride in convening community.

You'll find no better place to practice strong, engaged advocacy than on the editorial page.

Assemble a half-dozen newspaper folks these days and you have the makings of a debate about civic journalism. Or maybe it just seems so to me, for The Charlotte Observer in Charlotte, N.C., stands among the leaders in this vaguely defined movement.

Critics voice many fears about civic journalism, including these:

It may ally the newspaper with outside groups and compromise independence; and it may plunge reporters into advocacy.

Reasonable fears, I'd say, but not a problem here. Our news side doesn't ally itself with outside groups; it reports on them. Our editorial board forms partnerships for some public events, but only with carefully chosen nonpartisan groups for specific, limited purposes. The Observer practices strong advocacy, but in its proper place - on the editorial page.

In fact, the Observer's first civic journalism project was born in an editorial board meeting.

One morning in 1990, we sat in our daily meeting griping about Lake Norman, a nearby body of water almost the size of the Sea of Galilee that was created by Duke Power Company in 1963 to generate electricity. As Charlotte grew, the lake became a hot spot for entrepreneurs. We feared that its shoreline soon would look like Times Square, its water would be nasty, and its natural beauty lost unless somebody did something.

Many players were involved - federal, state, and numerous county and municipal governments, the power company, and more. Nobody had overall responsibility.

In editorials we called for a conference to bring the players together to look at problems and solutions. Nobody took the lead.

Then it occurred to us: We could take the lead.

We secured a partner, the Urban Institute at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and planned a day-long conference on the future of the lake. The news side did extensive reporting on conditions at the lake. We brought in experts to speak. We invited residents, developers, businesses, recreational users, environmentalists, regulators, and others to listen and to take part in workshops on the lake's future.

The conference was a big success. The attendees spent a day talking with, rather than at or about, each other. They learned what had happened elsewhere and what could happen here. They developed a little common ground.

We reported on the conference and editorialized about it.

The conference set the precedent for public involvement in the lake's future. It has become an annual affair, cosponsored by UNCC and a commission created by the regional council of governments.

A worthy role

We now consider "convening the community" to be one of our editorial board's core functions.

Last year we sponsored candidate forums during the city/county school board election. Our goal: no stealth candidates. We wanted the candidates' views and intentions to be fully, publicly explored.

Again, we engaged a cosponsor - the local Education Foundation, a nonpartisan group created to support public schools. Its staff handled organizational details. We moderated the forums. The views aired in them informed our writing, and our readers.

Our other non-traditional approaches:

* Empower readers. When we arouse readers with an editorial, we also tell them how to take action. A what-you-can-do box with an editorial can make officials' phones ring off the hook.

* Spotlight issues. Several times a year we focus on an important issue, using a page (or two) to define terms, explain the basics, provide arguments from advocates of various viewpoints, tell where we stand and (when appropriate) what readers can do.

* Host debates. Sometimes we sponsor public debates, but more often we publish pro and con pieces. When important debates take place in our community, we want them to take place in our pages, too.

This isn't ground-breaking stuff. Many newspapers do some of it. What's different at The Observer and a few other newspapers is that we do it resolutely, as a key part of our editorial mission.

Why? We're not content being oracles. We want to be catalysts.

We find these non-traditional efforts to be invigorating and educational - not only for our readers, but for our department as well.

How will public journalism affect editorial writing in the next 10 years? The next 50 years?

It will help if we use it to renew our commitment.

- ANONYMOUS

Public journalism is a very American thing.

- STEIN B. HAUGLID

Opinion pages, editorial writers will/should have a big role with that; hopefully it will be a success.

- ERIC GORMAN 

Public journalism may sharpen the work of editorialists and lead them to understand their readers more, but I think it will fade away, if not in 10 years, at least far short of 50 years.

- BILLY SKELTON

That's a cute phrase, but permit me to say as an old-timer, all journalism is public and it always has been.

- C.R. LYLE II

Unless we're careful, public journalism will turn editorial pages into piles of mush.

- MINDY CAMERON

Good journalism is and always has been public journalism.

- DON GALE 

It may be THE fad for 10 years and forgotten in 50.

- HERB HARRINGTON

I guess public journalism is a disparate fad that will not be much remembered two years after the Pugh trusts lose interest.

- D. MICHAEL HEYWOOD

Nuisance value.

- DON HARRISON

More local and less worldly wise.

- BOB STIFF

There is a sort of junior league that can't wait to get more community advisory panels organized, while the grown-ups of our profession continue to report and comment on the news . . . and thrive (just as The Wall Street Journal continued to thrive even though it didn't embrace McNuggets and full-page, 3D weather maps).

- FRANK PARTSCH

Public journalism will make our pages more effective by tuning them in to their communities.

- DAVID KLEMENT

NCEW member Ed Williams is editor of The Charlotte Observer's editorial pages.