As the national campaign season reaches full swing, a new series of polls reveals that American's top concerns are directed much closer to home, with dramatic frustrations over sprawl and growth now edging out more traditional issues, such as crime. Moreover, minorities view their local institutions starkly differently than white Americans, according to the surveys released by the Pew Center for Civic Journalism.
By Pat Ford
Pew Center
With a big city like Portland to cover, The Oregonian has no short supply of conventional police stories – homicides, fatal car accidents, crimes of passion, random violence. But it wasn’t until the story about a two-bit car break-in that the paper knew it had really reached its readers.
The story, last July, was one of the first products of the newly revamped OregonianCrime Team, reflecting the changes the paper has made in its crime coverage: Reaching deeper into the community for sources; initiating more and reacting less; changing the reflex that once put any sensational crime on the front of the metro section, regardless of its impact on the community.