Consulting Firm Picks Top Coverage of Urban News, Issues

By: Civic Strategies, Inc., recently announced its picks for best big-city newspaper and best urban journalist to cover urban news and issues in 2003.

The choices upset expectations that most of the winners would come from areas with established traditions of writing about cities such as New York or Chicago. Otis White, president of Civic Strategies, said in a statement that the best and greatest volume of stories originated mainly from the Sun Belt papers.

The Los Angeles Times took top honors for best big-city newspaper and the Houston Chronicle's political reporter, John Williams, garnered the title for best urban journalist.

Drawing from a database of the 20 largest metropolitan areas dealing with urban issues, the firm counted the number of articles it clipped and stored in its files to determine the winners.

From the 1,762 articles clipped from 21 newspapers, 140 came from the Los Angeles Times. Though the Washington Post came in at a close second with 139 clippings, White said the Post was easily the best paper in the country for covering suburban issues as well as urban issues.

The firm also determined that John Williams of the Houston Chronicle based on the 26 clippings he had in the Civic Strategies database, mostly from Williams' coverage of the 2003 Houston mayor's race, White said.

"We learned lot last year about how newspapers cover their regions," White said in the statement from Civic Strategies. "Some newspapers, like the Pittsburgh and Houston papers, depend on a few reporters to write a lot of stories about urban issues, and some, like the Los Angeles and Washington papers, get a lot of reporters to write a few stories each about the region. Either approach works."

Civic Strategies, Inc., is an Atlanta-based public policy consulting firm specializing in cities and regions. Further information including the complete report with list of runner-ups and newspapers clipped is available on their Web site, www.civic-strategies.com.