Lawrence, KS: Common Ground on Growth

Meanwhile, the three news organizations, owned by the same company but long riven by competitiveness, also learned how to work together, easing the move last fall into a converged newsroom.

“The growth project went a long way to breaking down some of the mistrust and the stereotypes that each of us had about the other side,” said Journal-World Managing Editor Ric Brack. “It showed a lot of people in our newsroom and a lot of viewers and readers what convergence could do for them.”

“Lawrence is Growing,” partly funded by the Pew Center, absorbed a major share of attention and resources in the newsrooms. Beginning with a three-week series of daily reports last April, the Journal-World and 6News reviewed the history of growth in Lawrence, where the University of Kansas and Hallmark Cards are the biggest employers. The partners examined what had and had not worked, future challenges, and what other communities had done.

While the series ran, reporters gathered information by attending community meetings, focus groups and a public forum the news organizations held. They added the information to poll results and zeroed in on six crucial growth issues: Schools, traffic, transportation, open space, business and economic development and “social capital,” the value of people knowing one another and, as a result, working together.

Each media partner brought a different strength to the project. The newspaper went deep on each issue while 6News reached a different audience and created a sense of immediacy with live public forums and other coverage. The Web site, www.ljworld.com/section/growth, included reader-reaction boards, survey questions and maps that users could click on to see how Lawrence changed as it grew and possible scenarios for future growth.

Over the summer, the partners convened six groups of 30 to 50 people each to discuss the issues and devise a plan for accommodating growth. Then the plan was presented to officials and policy-makers to guide decision making at a second public forum in September. The Journal-World published the plan in an eight-page tab, “Common Ground Found.”

The paper has followed up on how officials are using the report. According to Brack, the officials say they find the proposals useful and intend to act on many but they are long-term goals, some of which would require new taxes and bond issues. For instance, the schools committee suggested a longer school year and the transportation committee sought completion of a limited access highway to carry traffic south – both costly ideas.

Brack said the series’ most immediate benefit is a change in the tone of the conversation about growth. By working together on the committees, he said, people have come to understand that there is a lot of middle ground between the pro-growth and anti-growth extremes.

“In a lot of communities, the challenge is to get people involved and engaged,” he said. “That wasn’t the case here. We have a very activist community. The objective here was to lend gentility to the discussion. We gave it some direction to try to make it go someplace positive rather than negative.”

Kate McAlish, Lawrence Chamber of Commerce business development director, said the project, “helped people appreciate each other’s point of view.”

The media partners also were transformed. All are owned by The World Co. but they retained a sense of competition that was hard to shake even when the company announced plans for a converged newsroom.

The convergence plans coincided with the growth project and that gave the news operations a chance to get to know each other before all three began to share the same newsroom every day.

The “Lawrence is Growing” project “was the first time we thought about how we can do a better job on the story,” Brack said.

In September, the news operations moved into a refurbished post office building, now known as the News Center. Its centerpiece is a large, horseshoe-shaped desk where Brack and Cody Howard, 6News news director, sit. Both are finding advantages to the new set-up.

Brack, for instance, can use TV reporters to cover certain stories – say a fatal car accident or traffic pileup – that are likely to feature prominently on 6News but require only brief treatment for the paper. Howard said his staff of young reporters benefits from being with seasoned print reporters.