THE CREDIBILITY PROJECT/ Gazette wants to print good news, too

Our high school-age auditors are too kind.

In the weeks they audited the paper, they found the preponderance of coverage dealing with young people was negative - stories of crime and tragedy. But that's OK, they say, because traditional news values cause journalists to define news in largely negative terms. Young readers, they argue, should be as willing to accept that as readers in any other demographic category.

There is a voice in all journalists, including all Gazette journalists, that will readily agree, will want to agree with that conclusion. However, it's not sufficient to explain a newspaper's role in such simplistic terms.

In fact, readers of all ages, not just young people, cringe when traditional news values translate into seemingly endless reports of violence, death, destruction and tragedy.

In recent weeks, Gazette journalists have engaged members of this community in an ongoing conversation about news and news values, connected to our upcoming redesign and repackaging. One of the most frequent complaints we hear is that the paper does not report enough positive news. Whenever we have school groups at our morning news meetings, the complaint we hear most is that we don't report enough positive news of young people.

Our defensive reaction, of course, is to point to this story or that - a story we ran last week or last month or will run next week that we view as positive and uplifting. Viewed from our readers' perspective, whatever positive reporting we're doing is not enough.

Journalists need to listen to that and pay attention.

I like to frame this issue in terms of the civic journalism this newspaper attempts to practice. The civic newspaper tries every day to reflect the life of its community in all of its complexity. Our job is to report on the lives of all citizens - their hopes, their dreams, their triumphs, their tragedies, the issues important to them, the things they do for fun, how they work and so on.

Some of what happens in our community truly is tragic and negative, and that must be part of any newspaper's daily report. But readers who complain about too much negative news really are saying their lives involve much more than tragedy.

In fact, all of the crime and all of the tragedy we report often affects the lives of very few of our fellow citizens. Most people lead relatively good lives in this community, touched by success, by low-key daily heroics, by friendship and by faith.

Why, they ask, can't the newspaper more often recognize those aspects of their lives?

The answer goes back to those traditional news values to which journalists desperately cling. However, if we are to truly serve our community, we need to rethink, challenge and supplement those traditional values.

Gazette journalists first began discussing these issues more than three years ago. Visitors to our news meetings - which are open to all citizens - will find we talk more frequently than before about solution-based reporting, about success stories, about stories of people doing good works.

They'll also find we place a higher value on such stories so they are more likely to run on Page 1 or one of our news section fronts.

We have, in fact, a stated goal to do something every day that reflects the life of young people in our community in a positive way, although we're not always true to our own goal.

Living up to our standard doesn't mean readers will see fewer reports of youth crime or teen tragedy. As our auditors note, such stories still constitute news. However, those reports will be balanced by stories that deal with the lives of young people in a more complete and authentic way.

The bad news/good news argument is at the heart of credibility discussions in many newsrooms around the country. Balancing important traditional news values with values that support more positive news is a terribly difficult challenge.

So we're asking you to help us continue the discussion and debate.

Go back and read the report by Josh Bassett and Phil Yakish. Reread this response. Then tell us what you think.

You can e-mail me at editor@gazette.com. Or send your responses to Assistant Managing Editor Jim Borden, the Our Town editor, in care of The Gazette, 30 S. Prospect St., Colorado Springs, CO 80903.

Next week, we'll report back on your reactions to this discussion.

- Smith is editor of The Gazette.

Copyright 1999
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