News & Observer, Raleigh, NC
The Gazette, Colorado Springs, CO
Fredericksburg Freelance Star, Fredericksburg, VA
The State, Columbia, SC
“Project Reconnect” teamed four daily newspapers with four journalism schools to close the distance that had grown between the papers and certain groups of readers (or ex-readers). In Raleigh, The News and Observer wanted to reconnect with working-class readers. In Colorado Springs, The Gazette sought to lure back business readers. The Fredericksburg Freelance Star wanted to be more relevant to African-American readers and The State in Columbia wanted to reconnect with readers who had strong religious affiliations.
Each team took a different approach and each had different results. One common element, though, was that each met with focus groups of readers in the disaffected category and listened non-defensively for ways in which they could better serve those readers without compromising the paper’s overall quality.
The Gazette took the most radical step of the four, launching a whole new Monday business section, “Inside Track,” and hiring more business reporters, based on the suggestions of its focus group of business readers.
The News and Observer ran a major project on the blue-collar town of Garner, on Aug. 10, 1997, that included an entire page written by Garner residents. The project showed the paper could accurately reflect the ideas and concerns of working class readers, and the paper pledged to do more to get such stories in the paper on a regular basis.
Rather than a major project, The State took a more systemic approach to reconnecting with religious readers. Focus-group participants, who described themselves as “devoutly religious,” objected to being lumped together with labels such as “right-wing Christians.” The paper stopped using those labels and began giving more specific information about religious people covered in the news.
Only the Freelance Star saw a conflict between its basic mission and the focus-group suggestions for reconnecting with African-American readers. Focus-group participants objected to the paper’s frequent stories about Civil War battles fought more than a century earlier, but editor Ed Jones was reluctant to scale back such coverage, viewing it as a key interest of most readers. Jones said the project convinced him, though, he needed to add stories about African-American history.
Contact:
Judy VanSlyke Turk
Dir, Schl of Mass Communications
Virginia Commonwealth University
P.O. Box 842034
Richmond, VA 23284-2034
Phone: (804) 828-2660