Getting Readers Involved p. 22

By: David Noack

Programs aimed at encouraging reader participation are
chipping away at the journalistic purity of newsrooms sp.

READERS BECOMING EDITORS.
Editors listening to readers.
That's the sort of man-bites-dog story that gets noticed as it applies to the often rocky relationship between the journalistic purity of the newsroom and programs designed to increase and encourage reader participation in reshaping the old axioms.
But a new kind of role reversal is taking place, one that would have been unheard of years ago.
Buffeted by increased competition, recession, and advertising and circulation losses, newspapers are continuing to push reader participation programs, which are part of an ongoing process to reverse the industry's lackluster fortunes during the past couple of decades.
Daily newspaper circulation has stagnated and a number of big-city newspapers have closed or succumbed to joint operating agreements.
Competition for readers is not only coming from other media, such as magazines, television, radio and cable but also from lifestyle changes: there are more two-wage earner families in which reading a newspaper from cover to cover is a luxury.
As newspapers grapple to retain and entice readers, they have created programs and policies to include readers in the process of critiquing, evaluating and assessing the editorial side of the business.
Trying to apply a tourniquet to stem the flow of readers, newspapers are eager to meet and talk to them, actively soliciting their views and suggestions.
There are forums, roundtable meetings, discussion groups, reader award contests, accuracy questionnaires and a variety of other methods to involve and engage readers in the newspaper.
It's not surprising to see editors taking telephone calls during special reader call-in nights and some editors are even putting their e-mail addresses on the bottoms of their columns to garner reader comments. Reader participation and awareness programs, which take place at large, medium-sized and small newspapers, started about a decade ago and are now the norm at many newspapers rather than a novelty.
John Morton, a newspaper industry analyst with Lynch Jones & Ryan, said newspapers have found that they ignore readers at their own risk.
"We are probably on the cusp of some kind of information revolution and how newspapers fare in this is to keep their customers happy and think this is all part of that. We are at a time now when we are training today's young children not to use newspapers anymore. They get stuff off video display terminals. Certainly, when they come of age, the revolution will be here," Morton said.
Examples of reader participation programs include special sections and pages, reader columns, call-in-to-the- editor nights, polls and readers' writing awards contests. Many newspapers have redesigned their look with the help of readers.
Major newspaper companies, such as Gannett Co. Inc., through its News 2000 program, and Knight-Ridder Inc.'s 25/43 Project, have implemented changes in content, presentation and style. The goal is to capture the imagination and loyalty of readers.
While much emphasis is placed on readers' likes and dislikes, editors said they will not surrender their editorial judgment. But readers have been elevated to a level where their comments matter. It's clear that readers have acquired a new degree of respect and importance.
The Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, a Tribune Co. newspaper, launched an aggressive reader participation program three years ago.
John Christie, senior editor for training at the Sun-Sentinel, has met with hundreds of readers in a variety of settings, all in an effort to involve them in creating a more responsive newspaper.
He said that as newspapers became more professionalized, they began to lose sight of whom they were writing for.
"Professionalizing the staff was a good thing. But we became less connected to everyday people and ended up writing for ourselves, prizes and sources," he said.
Christie said newspapers need to involve readers much more than they currently do and it must be a continuous process.
"Reader awareness is a process that is never ending. We must keep the reader in mind and hear the word 'reader' mentioned in the newsroom as often as deadline and scoop. You have to keep in touch with the readers. The technique will be up to you," he said.
Since the program started in 1991, the Sun-Sentinel has brought in more than 300 readers to more than 60 meetings with the staff.
Readers are quizzed about what they read, don't read and why. Mock sessions are held in which readers play editor and pick the stories for page one so they better understand the pressures and compromises that have to be made because only a few stories make it on the front page.
Gail Bulfin, the readers' editor at the Sun-Sentinel, said she remembers when Gene Cryer, the newspaper's editor, assigned her a new and somewhat daunting task: Develop a program to hold on to current readers and attract new ones.
She was asked to develop new approaches in which the newspaper could communicate better with readers to figure out what they wanted and didn't want.
The paper began a program called Project Reader Awareness to create a dialogue among reporters, editors and readers.
Bulfin said there was some staff resistance and skepticism when the program was introduced.
But instead of the paper being hammered with a lot of criticism from readers, Bulfin said, they made useful suggestions and learned about the difficult decisions that editors face in putting together a daily newspaper.
"What our readers told us is that they like graphics. While they do like short stories and news digests, they also like long stories. It's the quality of writing that defines interest in the story," Bulfin said.
Some changes made at the Sun-Sentinel include:
? Creating a weekly science page in the form of a full-page infographic.
? Building a high school correspondents corps of about 100 students, who produce weekly zoned school news.
? New beats on the elderly, families and autos.
? And even bringing readers together with top Florida public officials to discuss taxes, education and other issues.
Readers now judge stories and dole out a Readers' Choice Award. It's an editorial department contest to recognize readers' favorite headlines, stories, graphics and photos.
In addition, the newspaper contains special pages focusing on science and youth as well as letting readers become newsmakers by sponsoring "Tell it to the Governor" and "Tell it to the Legislature" forums and polls.
Across the South Florida Everglades, the Fort Myers News-Press, a Gannett newspaper, has carried out News 2000, the corporate plan designed to promote a new relationship between readers and newspapers.
Tom Callinan, executive editor at the News-Press, has implemented a series of programs aimed at getting advice and comments from community leaders and readers.
"It's an overall sense in the newsroom that we should be thinking outside in instead of inside out," said Callinan.
He said that when the newspaper took a look, through a survey, at what readers were interested in, government reporting, a staple of most newspapers, was not at the top of the list.
"We still cover government pretty well, but we're looking at a lot of things that are untraditional," he said.
Some new programs included a series of stories examining change in South Florida, especially dealing with crime, social programs, development and growth.
Callinan noted that the demographics of Lee County are changing, with many younger residents moving in who "have less time to read the newspaper."
To counter that, a program was developed aimed at what the News-Press refers to as "time-impoverished" readers.
The new feature is "Bottom Line," which is a short list of useful information to meet the needs and interests of busy readers.
The feature appears on a daily basis on the cover of the Lifestyles section and weekly in Sunday's Insight, the weekly news analysis and editorial section, and it may be expanded to other sections as well.
One part of the new program was to sit down with community leaders and discuss where Lee County and Fort Myers are heading regarding health care, taxes and education among other issues.
And because Florida is a winter haven for seasonal residents from colder climates, Callinan said, the News-Press pays particular attention to news from their homes.
The feature is called "News from the North" and a good example of the coverage afforded this section was highlighted during the March 1993 winter storm that blanketed much of the East Coast.
Callinan said the newspaper covered the snowstorm as if it was a big local story.
"That winter storm of the century in March 1993 in the Northeast was a local story to us and we blew it out of the water. We had reports from everywhere. We called newspapers up north," he noted.
He said the changes to the newspaper regarding layout, style, new sections and coverage took place during a couple of years.
Callinan described the improvements as "evolutionary, not revolutionary. It took a couple of years to change the thinking at the newspaper. It took a lot of meetings, talking to the staff a lot and it was a pretty smooth transition," he said.
Peter Bhatia, a former managing editor at the Sacramento Bee, a McClatchy newspaper, started to get readers involved in critiquing the state capital's newspaper.
"I think it was valuable. You get a different perspective. We live in newsrooms and our views, because of where we live and who we are, may tend to get a little uniform. I think the more outside people we bring in, the more listening we do, the better understanding potentially of what our readers really want and need," he said.
Bhatia said readers participated in weekly news budget meetings where they could hear the discussion about stories set to appear on the front page of the newspaper the next day.
"We let them pick what they thought the top six stories were. We would not necessarily use those top six stories, we did not suspend our judgment. But we invited their participation and input," he said.
Bhatia believes that reader call-in nights are a good way for editors to learn about what people like or dislike about the newspaper.
"All the top editors, some of the columnists as well as some of the business side, advertising and circulation people manning the phones," he said.
Bhatia has fielded calls from readers asking why certain changes have been made to the newspaper, such as stock market selections, or about a columnist who has been controversial.
"The more we allow readers to feel they are part of the paper or at least that their input is valued, the better off we will be. After all, they are the people buying and reading the paper," said Bhatia, who is now managing editor at the Portland Oregonian.
He said the attempt to reconnect to readers was something that had to happen in the industry after years of moving in the opposite direction.
"I think we were getting a little distant from our readers. I also think, and it's no secret, that part of this has been fueled by declining circulation and declining profit margins in a tough economy," Bhatia said.
"I think the self-examination is producing better newspapers that are still very strong journalistic products that are still fulfilling our prime directive of telling people things they need to know and remaining the watchdog on government and everything else."
Cox Newspapers' Dayton Daily News editor Max Jennings began a program where staff members mix it up with readers, discussing the newspaper in general or a particular story or issue.
Jennings said that about 30 minutes before the start of the daily news budget meetings, readers come in and critique the newspaper.
"We invite staffers to volunteer and come in and we will announce ahead of time who's coming in and it may be somebody with an agenda, somebody who wants to complain about the way we handled [a story] based on their agenda or it might be just an ordinary reader but from a particular demographic group."
After the news budget meeting, once editors have discussed and decided where stories are going in the next day's newspaper, the group then is asked what they would do in this situation. "We listen to them carefully and sometimes stories chosen by a guest are often similar, sometimes they are different and sometimes they surprise us."
Jennings said the program has been in place for the past few years.
"We must do a better job of listening to our readers and responding to their needs. I think that in the past we've been rather callous to that notion and I think to our detriment," he said.
Jennings also is using technology to keep in touch with readers.
At the end of his columns, he states that he's a member of the Prodigy Information Service, the on-line joint venture between IBM and Sears, and provides his e-mail address. "We are trying to make ourselves available to our customers in as many different ways as possible," Jennings said.
At the York (Pa.) Dispatch, a Garden State/MediaNews Group Newspaper, editor and publisher Nancy Conway said several reader participation programs are under way.
"We often ask readers what they think about issues and have them call in and leave messages on the answering machine and then try to get back to them or use whatever their comments are," she said.
There is also a feature called "Pet Peeves," where readers sound off on an issue or problem.
The reader participation programs have been in effect for a little more than a year, and Conway said the impetus was to "know what readers are thinking, our desire for a response."
Conway said one way the staff localizes national or international stories is to place a "box" in the newspaper, asking anyone who has a relative near the action to get in touch with the paper.
"We had some wonderful local stories because of that. We did a lot of stories on Hurricane Andrew and got wonderful personal experiences by asking people to call or write us," she said.
Conway also started a program where red pencils and a newspaper were randomly dropped off at readers' homes for them to mark what they read and did not read.
"We sent out a bunch of red pencils and a self-addressed, stamped envelope and asked readers to check what they read, cross out what they did not read and tell us how far they went into a story," she said.
Of about 60 newspapers and red pencils dropped off, 45 were returned, all of them pretty well marked up.
Conway said readers are bombarded with information and have more choices of where and how they get their news.
"I think that something has happened to the industry and I think that is we have a kind of competition which is different from any we've had before," she said, citing broadcast and cable television.