Project Reconnect

Each team took a different route to rapprochement but all began by listening to the disaffected readers in focus groups.

The Gazette’s decision to launch a new business section was, by far, the most aggressive response to reader feedback. The three other papers involved in the project report little institutional change but all say they learned from the readers and made small adjustments that they believe have improved both relationships with the targeted readers and the overall quality of the paper.

In Raleigh, The News & Observer wrote about Garner, a blue-collar community, by having a team of journalists and a group of residents write side-by-side stories. There were key differences in nuance and tone.

Take, for example, The State’s experience with readers who described themselves as “devoutly religious.” During focus groups, those readers objected to being lumped together and described in ways they believe are inaccurate. “Evangelical Christians are not all fundamentalists. All fundamentalists are not in the Christian Coalition,” is how University of South Carolina Journalism Professor Ernest Wiggins summarized their sentiments in an interview. “To paint them with the same brush is poor journalism.”

Avoiding Labels

Carolyn Click, The State’s religion reporter, says the staff took that message to heart. “We’ve stopped labeling people. We don’t just use that ‘conservative Christian’ shorthand but give more detail.”

However, Click says, the staff was more wary of the group’s criticism that The State seems to excise the “faith component” of general news stories. Religious readers wanted reporters to include in their stories, and pursue in their reporting, references to God made by politicians or sports figures. But, Click says, “People will use that. You have to be careful to be sure it’s legitimate.”

Fredericksburg Freelance Star editor Ed Jones is promising more stories about African American history after conducting surveys and focus groups on the paper’s Civil War coverage. Located in the heart of Civil War country, the paper treats history as a beat. Barely a day goes by without a story about a nearby battlefield or events that took place 135 years ago.

African American readers questioned the need for so many articles and the purpose of certain specific items that appeared in the paper, according to Barbara Baylor Hines and Connie Frasier, the Howard University professors who worked with Jones.

One editorial cartoon, in particular, they say, generated heated discussion in the focus group. It showed Martin Luther King astride a horse with Confederate generals Jackson and Lee, telling them, “Someone has to sit in back” — an observation on Virginia’s practice of celebrating Jackson-Lee Day on the same day as Martin Luther King Day. Hines and Frasier say African Americans in the focus groups were offended by the drawing, by the reference to sitting in back, and by the cartoon’s seeming acceptance of the coupling of the holidays, which they say outrages many African Americans.

Jones says he expected to find African Americans less interested in Civil War coverage than white readers but was surprised by just how uninterested they were. He recalls one woman saying, “I shut down completely. I’m not interested at all. I move on immediately.”

Seeking Relevancy

Jones says he sees the paper’s duty as making the coverage more relevant to African-Americans and better explaining local interest in the topic but not reducing the paper’s commitment to the Civil War.

At the Raleigh News & Observer, Project Reconnect culminated in a major Sunday spread — stripped across the top of the front page, jumping to three full pages inside — on the nearby, blue-collar suburb of Garner. Part of the project was written by newspaper staff and part was written by Garner residents.

Metro editor Ned Barnett says he thought the side-by-side comparison would reveal the gap between readers and writers.

Barnett says he was particularly interested in working-class readers because they appear to be drifting away from papers. As they drift, he says, papers stop trying to appeal to them; they offer more contextual stories, think pieces, punditry, and the audience narrows even more.

“We are exploring what we can do to make different kinds of groups want to read the paper every day,” says Barnett.

Focus groups and surveys turned up familiar criticism: The paper has a liberal bias; it favors alternative lifestyles over old-fashioned values; it’s full of bad news. But when the Sunday project ran last fall, a surprising thing happened. Both the trained reporters and the uncoached citizens wrote about the same thing: Garner’s rapid growth.

Checking Tone and Nuance

The differences between the two sets of stories were in tone. The journalists took the traditional, nostalgic view of the disappearing countryside. The readers focused on practical issues such as traffic and overcrowded schools.

Barnett says it was heartening to see that the paper and the readers shared the same basic concerns. But, he says, the project showed that it will take more than a big Sunday spread to hold on to those readers.

“What we found is that when we put a lot of resources into looking at a place, we do generate an accurate picture of what we see. The question is, why does it take something like this to get us into this town; why is the receiver so often turned off.

“We have to find a way to listen more, to listen better. We have to show the media are not some know-it-all wise guys. Otherwise, papers won’t be able to survive.”