Coverage is framed in terms of people's daily experiences, instead of treating people as incidental ornaments in stories about official politics. Articles describe the values people bring to an issue, including the gray areas and complexities, rather than simply describing the conflict. Citizens' knowledge is valued along with experts' knowledge. In writing about who, what, why, when, and where, they also try to explain to citizens why they should care. Reporters try to explore how people resolve issues, suggesting that solutions are possible and that readers may have a role to play.
Public journalists believe that the news is more than a spectator sport.
Treating people as an audience makes them passive voyeurs, random visitors seeking entertainment. Inevitably there are going to be conflicts between the entertainment function of the media and the news function, but public journalism is about trying to get the news function right so it can compete better against entertainment and pleasure. This would invalidate journalists' ability to monitor the community's public life. Nevertheless, public journalism is controversial among news professionals because some feel it weakens their hard-fought independence and objectivity. Ed Turner of CNN, Len Downie of The Washington Post , Max King of the Philadelphia Inquirer , and editors at The New York Times are among the most skeptical.