Convener: Kathy Rutledge
Note taker: Reed Eckhardt
The group
- D. Reed Eckhardt, Cheyenne
- Pamela Dugan, Birmingham
- Walter Johns, Houston
- Will Pleas, Marquette
- Suki Dardarian, Seattle
- Doug Floyd, Spokane
- Barbara Janesh, Green Bay
- Kathleen Rutledge, Lincoln
Discussion
Ideas for getting more ordinary people into the newspaper and reading the newspaper
Publish news stories about ordinary people when it feels right and when you’ve found a good story, rather than on a schedule that breeds obligation rather than inspiration. At Seattle, they call it “that new thing.”
Some TV stations give ordinary people videocams and ask them to submit “community reports” on certain events. Perhaps there’s a way for newspapers to ask ordinary people to report on events they’re witness to — via email, called-in reports?
Ask ordinary people to write mini reviews of movies, concerts, etc., to supplement or replace professional reviews. Publish their views with their mugs.
Get reporters out of the newsroom talking to ordinary people.
For those papers with the luxury of having whole teams devoted to general assignment, name a GA team devoted to getting ordinary people into the paper. Give them the equipment to file from the field.
Write stories for readers, not for reporters and not for the elite.
To help readers understand, consider a “footnote box” or explainer box on basics that young people and others need to know in order to understand the story.
Resist at times the journalistic fascination for the bizarre, the obscure and the extreme and focus more on topics that concern ordinary people.
Give Page One play to good feature stories about ordinary people.
When ordinary people are thrust into the news for a time, tell readers about the rest of their lives, not just their role in the trial or the protest.
Develop relationships with unofficial community leaders who know what’s going on and can help you find ordinary people to write about.
Write obituaries about ordinary people.
Set up an immediate way for ordinary people to respond to stories without waiting to get into the letters to the editor column. For example, run a solicitation box with a Page One story and run the quotes in a Page 2 column. If you’re not getting much response, maybe your front-page picks aren’t catching ordinary people.
Change reporter email taglines to explicitly ask readers to say what else they want to know about this story and what they thought of it. Change the attitude of reporters about ordinary people stories by painting the vision, giving those stories good play and publicly praising them.
Conduct regular meetings with readers to discuss issues.
Tell readers how the paper works. Develop a two-way conversation.
Encourage ordinary people to give you story ideas by crediting them in a shirttail: “This story idea came from so and so in the public.”