In the bad old 19C, political party membership embraced choral singing, group outings and subsidised bars — and yes, even uniforms.

I’m sure that’s not what you mean by societal engagement but…

Today in Britain, three times more people belong to an organization devoted to preserving ancient buildings than all the political parties combined. A lot of people want to spend time free from politics.

Me? I like politics and argument. But there is a flip side. Having been to several places with high levels of societal and civic engagement — where everyone had a political opinion to share with you — there was usually a war going on.

Schudson seems to be suggesting it’s not enough for news organizations to provide news; maybe they also have to provide concurrent civics lessons for people to see value in being informed about their communities.

But as I recall, public journalism never really took off, either in the U.S. or Canada (my country). I’d like to know why not. Does Schudson offer any thought? Was the concept of public journalism ever discussed much or acted upon in Britain?

And you’re right; politics is a dirty business. That’s one reason why fewer than one per cent of Canadians belong to a political party and why our voter turnout in 2006 was a whopping 64 per cent (Canadians will be going to the polls on Oct. 14 and turnout at advance polls this year is down from the same period in 2006).

It would be good on so many levlels to reverse this decline in societal engagement. I look forward to reading whatever ideas you can pass along through this forum (I’m ashamed to admit I haven’t picked up your book yet. :) )

As Schumpeter said, parties are just coalitions of people who would like to exercise power.

That is the role of the political process.

Mr. Schudson would have to provide examples of how the media imbues the public with an “undertone of cynicism.”

One could fairly argue that an average citizen, watching the opportunistic machinations of politicians, might develop an undertone of cynicism on their own.