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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

A Community’s Paper Journalists Are Learning They Need To Grow

Gregory Favre Special To Perspective

A dear friend of mine, who was born in Cuba and came to this country as a teenager, was telling me a story about going to confession before she was fluent in English. She usually went to a priest who spoke Spanish. But on this day he wasn’t there. So she asked a friend to help her write down her sins in English.

She got into the confessional and started off, “Father, forgive me for I have sinned. It has been a week since my last confession.” Then she looked down at the paper, but it was too dark to read. “I’m sorry, father,” she said. “I can’t see my sins.”

It seems to me that we in the newspaper business have been unable to see our sins. Or perhaps not willing to look for them. And we had better start. There is a need now for imagination and change in our business as there never has been before.

One of the problems we have is that too many people in our business haven’t progressed beyond dinosaur responses and, like those early beasts, they deal in movements that are coarse rather than precise. I know that dinosaurs are popular again, but the fact is they are extinct.

We have to find ways to edit our papers to meet readers’ needs, to produce newspapers that are both educational and pleasurable, to embrace change as our readers are doing in their own lives, to grab and please readers and become a daily addiction.

Bill Gates not too long ago observed that newspapers have the current advantage over electronic information delivery because they are “easy to use, portable and cheap.” Nevertheless, he foresees electronic “tablets” being small enough, light enough and readable enough to challenge the traditional newspaper format in about 15 years.

The more the new media gurus talk, the more questions we ask ourselves.

Are we obsolete? Will we be around? What about our basic values - freedom of expression, fairness, truthfulness, accuracy, ethical behavior, responsibility for serving our communities? Will the traditional public agenda-setting role of the media be diluted? Will all that anonymous and unfiltered information being sent out invite abuse?

Do we have a deep understanding of our community, or of the communities within our community? Do we represent diversity in our newspaper? Do we supply context and meaning or just facts and data? Do we promote our sense of connection with our community? And, finally, are we afraid to admit that we have an affection for where we live?

I prefer to look at the positives. We will be around as we are for many, many more years. And in addition we are already computer-driven and we are ready to plug into the new media. We have the talent. We already own the data bases. Journalism will stand as the voice of credibility as never before. We are the premier creators of and deliverers of usable information. We have the best opportunity to be the most creative.

But we can’t stand still on the side of the highway with a sign saying we are willing to work. We have to change. We have to keep learning. We have to build partnerships. We have to reconnect with our communities. As greater choices become available to the news consumer, we have to fight to hold on to our old values.

When I started in this business things were much simpler. The canvas on which we painted was much smaller. The evolution of change was much slower. The challenges we faced were much less overwhelming. The need to explain in greater detail what was taking place in our society was much less demanding. And those seeking comfort in extreme positions were fewer.

The changes, in society and in our newsrooms, have made our jobs tougher. But it also makes what we do more important and more rewarding. If we do it well. If we give our readers the layers of information they need and do it with depth and sophistication. And if we understand that the value of communities must be asserted.

I know that to ask some journalists to truly care for their communities is perhaps a new way of thinking. But if there is a single positive that can come full bloom from the economic bleakness many of us are facing today, it is that journalists may be forced to, maybe even inspired, to connect with their communities. Maybe they will be more eager to plant roots, to invest in the community and even offer something back, knowing that the days when our resumes read like train schedules are behind us.

Never before have we been needed as much as we are needed today. We are living in a time when communities are breaking up, public places are becoming scarce, values are disappearing and newspapers are probably the last refuge, the last hope to keep people together.

I frankly don’t know exactly how we will be delivering the news in the next century. I don’t think anybody really does. That’s why we have to open our minds, seek new creations, new ideas, new ways to do old things.

When the reader tells me that he or she doesn’t have time to read a newspaper, that tells me loud and clear that we have to do something different. That we have to make our newspaper important to that reader again. That we have to return to putting context and perspective into our reporting. That we cannot oversimplify to compete with television. We must produce newspapers that are expert but not aloof, warm but not cute, informal and fun but not haphazard, agenda-setting but not patronizing. We also have to make reading joyful again and pay more attention to the quality of our work. At times, it seems we work at not being interesting and informative.

I have been in the newspaper business essentially my whole life. I grew up on my dad’s weekly in Southern Mississippi and when I was tall enough to reach over a table I was enlisted to fold papers by hand and I still love the smell of printer’s ink and the roar of a press.

And I have never forgotten the lessons I learned working on that weekly. I knew that whenever I wrote something for the paper back then that I would soon see the people I wrote about on the streets and that I had better be correct. I learned that there was no substitute for face-toface communications, for that conversation across the back yard or at the dinner table. My memories of those years have helped me through the rest of my years. I rely greatly on the foundation that was built back then.

What we do now is not perfect. But what we do is honorable. What we do is based in the concrete of ethics and morals and credibility. And sometimes there even is a little nobility in it. I know that change is washing over us and we must embrace it. But I also know that we cannot stray from our basic values, that things such as balance and accuracy and fairness and our role in creating social cohesion will continue to grow in importance as delivery systems increase. I also know that if we lose our commitment to content, we will be lost.

Our responsibilities to the truth, to our readers and to our communities have not changed. Our responsibility to make sure that the background and culture differences of all people will be recognized and that everyone can have an opportunity to be heard has not changed. Our responsibility to deal with the apathy, hypocrisy, cynicism and the meanness that exists in our streets and, sadly, in some of our newsrooms, has not changed.

This means we must reach out into the community for advice and help. We must create an environment where no one is invisible by empowering people who never had power before. We must create community advisory boards, or diversity groups, or conduct town hall meetings or promote community events, everything we can do to connect with the people we want to serve.

If we don’t have enough voices on our pages, we must go get them - and let readers hear the voices of their neighbors, hear their cries of pain or shouts of joy, or their pleas for help and understanding, or their good news stories.

When done right, newspapers are alive, alive with spirit and with energy and with soul. And that spirit, that energy, that soul must mark all of our content, no matter how we distribute our information.

Newspapers may not be as essential as they used to be, but they are needed perhaps more than ever. There are groups of people who are losing a sense of connection with our institutions. My greatest fear is that we will wake up one day without communities to serve. Society is segmenting itself and at times it seems there is nothing we can do about it. It appears once again that our national soul, that which binds us together as a people, is at risk.

And it is our responsibility, those of us in the news media, to help bring us together. No other institution can fulfill a newspaper’s role of creating social cohesion, certainly not government and as media fragments, no other medium. That means we have to continue to examine and reexamine ourselves. It also means that sometimes an act of contrition might do us some good.

More than ever, there is a tremendous need for vision today, the kind of vision that John Gardner wrote about in his book, “On Leadership.” Gardner quotes church elders in Seville, who in 1401 were building a magnificent cathedral.

They said: “Let us build a church so great that those who come after us may think us mad to have attempted it.”

It took 150 years to complete the cathedral. And many thought they were mad to attempt it. I had the wonderful privilege to see that cathedral a few years ago and there is no question that the end result proved the wisdom and validated the vision of those church elders.

We need that kind of vision, that kind of wisdom. We can provide it. We must provide it.

Any thoughts on Favre’s essay? Interactive Editor Rebecca Nappi would like to hear from you. Write The Spokesman-Review, P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210-1615. Or e-mail Rebeccan@spokesman.com

MEMO: On Monday, during the Blizzard of ‘96, Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. Mark Schweiker declared that broadcast journalists were essential and could travel on snow-packed roads, but print journalists were non-essential and could not. His words cut to the thick of a discussion going on now among the nation’s print journalists. Are newspapers essential anymore? How must newspapers change to survive into the 21st century? Gregory Favre, executive editor of The Sacremento Bee and past president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, tackled those tough questions in a speech he gave last fall at The Spokesman-Review management retreat. This article was adapted from his speech.

On Monday, during the Blizzard of ‘96, Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. Mark Schweiker declared that broadcast journalists were essential and could travel on snow-packed roads, but print journalists were non-essential and could not. His words cut to the thick of a discussion going on now among the nation’s print journalists. Are newspapers essential anymore? How must newspapers change to survive into the 21st century? Gregory Favre, executive editor of The Sacremento Bee and past president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, tackled those tough questions in a speech he gave last fall at The Spokesman-Review management retreat. This article was adapted from his speech.