The L.A. Times Crusades to Make a Difference

But it doesn’t stop there. The Times has a full-time employee working on reading workshops and conferences for teachers and principals, leadership training for administrators, book drives, tutoring programs. She also works on attracting other corporate involvement – not things newspapers, certainly not the Times, are usually known for doing.

The paper recently gave away $10,000 in scholarships to the winners of a writing contest it sponsored and had 4,000 children attend the awards ceremony in the Universal Studios theater, where celebrities such as Jamie Lee Curtis, read the winning stories.

Why Reading?

Why is the Times focusing such attention on reading? The paper asked that very question, itself, in an editorial the day the series started, last Sept 13. Its answer: “Because it is in the best interests of the communities we serve and in our own self-interest. We need life-long readers. The region needs employees with high language skills if it is to keep a competitive edge. Self-interest, community interests and statewide interests align on the goal of better reading.”

But Times editors and reporters readily admit that the inspiration – even the title – for the project came from a smaller Times-Mirror paper, The Sun in Baltimore. The Sun, last year, launched a highly successful reading project, also called “Reading by 9,” that combined energetic public service reporting to explore why kids were not reading by third grade, or age 9, with a newspaper-led tutoring program in the Baltimore area. (The project shared the 1998 Batten Award for Excellence in Civic Journalism, sponsored by the Pew Center.)

Staffers say Times publisher Mark Willes admired the Baltimore project and began casting around for a “crusade” of his own, determined the paper would have the kind of impact on its readers that The Sun had in the Baltimore area. He solicited ideas, they say, but none seemed to have the combination of factors that The Sun’s reading series had: The human interest, compelling public policy issues, economic consequences, the universal appeal of its goal and the benefit, for the paper, of creating readers.

A daunting task

Ultimately, Willes decided to recreate the Baltimore project in Los Angeles, despite staff misgivings that the size and complexity of Southern California would make the project unwieldy.

“Baltimore had five or six school districts to look at; we have 181,” says Jan Berk, director of communications and public affairs for “Reading by 9.””There are 1.1 million students in the five counties that make up our core market; 65 per cent are not reading on grade level. There are 90 different languages spoken here.”

Berk was assigned from the marketing department to work full-time on “Reading by 9.” She spent months just assessing the needs of each of the districts and trying to figure out what the paper could do to help improve reading scores. Activities she has planned, such as a statewide education conference, will require months more of planning and a sizable investment from the paper.

But Willes is undaunted. In a question-and-answer session co-sponsored by the Pew Center and Atlantic Monthly, last October, he explained that as he explored the literacy situation in the Times market, he became convinced the paper should step forward. “In our marketplace in southern California,” he said, “there are 250,000 second and third graders who don’t read at grade level. That means that over the next five years, unless we can cause significant change, there will be a million kids whose lives will be permanently impaired because we didn’t teach them how to read. It is inconceivable to us that we can stand by and not do something about that.”

Making a Difference

Project editor David Lauter says Willes’s fervor – the Times refers to “Reading by 9,” in print, as a “crusade” – makes some people at the paper uncomfortable but Lauter likes it. “I think it’s kind of refreshing,” he says, “to have a publisher who thinks newspapers can make a difference.”

Lauter says he has enjoyed editing a series that is attempting to highlight solutions to the problem of low reading achievement. “We devote a lot of time and attention to explaining to people what the problems are,” he says. “You can have the effect, after a while, of making people think things are hopeless; nothing can be done about it so why bother reading about it. So, simply from our own selfish standpoint of wanting people to read our stories, and also because we live in this community, we want people to see, yes, there is a problem, but there are things you can do about it.”

The series, which ran on page one on consecutive Sundays between Sept. 13 and Nov. 15, included stories about schools in low-income areas with good reading scores; programs that proved effective in teaching reading; and techniques that seem to work. The paper even took a stand, editorially, that the state should require the teaching of phonics rather than whole-language instruction in reading.

“This is something new for us,” says science writer Robert Lee Hotz, who contributed one of the series’ most talked about pieces – how brain function influences the ability to read. “As a journalist, you’re conditioned to standing outside your community and this kind of project acknowledges that you are part of your community, whether you choose to be aware of it or not. So it was new for us at the Times. It’s not normally how we do things. But we’re excited by it.”

Lauter stresses that the paper has been careful to keep separate the editorial side of the project from the community involvement aspect.

Minding the Lines

For example, he says, no reporter or editor covering education is participating in the paper’s volunteer tutoring program. “We have to be in a position to go out there and do the story that ‘this tutoring program isn’t working’,” he says. “There are certain lines you don’t want to cross. We will shed light on the problem and generate a lot of community interest and intensity about the need to boost reading scores in this region. That’s what we’re good at. The other end – using the paper as a forum, a catalyst, a meeting place – that’s not something we’re particularly good at in the newsroom. It’s not a good idea to mix the two. They’re both important but we try to keep them on two parallel tracks.”

Berk says she respects Lauter’s position and expects the paper’s corporate efforts to be judged on their own merits. “Senior management,” she adds, “has been very hands on in helping make decisions about the direction we’re going and the processes we’re using.”

Willes has committed to putting $5 million into the reading effort over five years. But Berk says, lately, she’s heard Willes say the paper may stick with the project for 10 years – or longer, if that’s what it takes to see significant gains in reading scores.