Using the Right Tool   

The Spokesman-Review’s e-mail database cuts down on legwork.

It feels too easy, like cheating," one Spokesman-Review reporter remarked after a single e-mail produced numerous sources for a story within a couple of hours. Who knew that databases and bulk e-mail could be so good?

In my last column I urged local news organizations to consider new ways of connecting with readers and viewers online. The Spokesman-Review's Reader Advisory Network is a remarkable example of interactivity that works.

In July 2000, Ken Sands, interactive editor at the Spokane paper, fused a couple of computer programs into a new application named the Newsroom Portal, a.k.a. The Tool. The first part of The Tool is a database of 5,000 people who've contacted the newspaper via e-mail, snail mail or phone in the past two years, mostly in the form of letters to the editor and story feedback. E-mail addresses are known for about 3,000 people; these constitute the paper's Reader Advisory Network.

Using a script that selects names from the database and sends them through his e-mail program, Sands routinely contacts hundreds of people at a time. He can zero in on geographic regions or topics of interest, such as the Seattle Mariners, or send to a random sample from the entire list. The applications are many:

• It generates opinion and commentary. At least once a week the Spokesman-Review queries a couple hundred readers on an issue of local concern and receives a few dozen responses. Some are published on the paper's opinion pages or in a person-on-the-street sidebar.

• It finds sources fast. In one case, mass e-mail was used to find victims of a rash of burglaries in a particular neighborhood. In another, it helped a reporter who was investigating a doctor accused of overprescribing pain medication.

• And it's used in breaking news. On September 11, Sands sent an e-mail to nearly 1,000 readers to find out whether they had personal connections to the unfolding events. "We heard from people so quickly that we were able to publish some comments" in the "extra" edition that afternoon, he writes in an e-mail to AJR.

In each instance, readers were able to become involved when the story was in progress, a point at which they could advance the initial coverage. Such input fills the space between story feedback and news tips.

Sands' tool also cuts the time needed to conduct person-on-the-street interviews, which he describes as "the most god-awful thing ever created by editors and foisted off on reporters. Approaching people at random on the street is a monumental waste of time," Sands says. "When you send e-mail, only the people who have something to say will respond."

Sands has talked about the Reader Advisory Network at several industry conferences, and the newspaper recently received a grant from the Pew Center for Civic Journalism to expand the project. Other papers have experimented with similar concepts, though few if any are as sophisticated as the Spokesman-Review's.

Perhaps some managers are intimidated by concepts like "database" and "mass e-mail." Maybe they're daunted--with good reason--by the procedural and ethical issues that follow.

For example, the size of the pool is important--representative viewpoints can't be sustained with 200 users. Burnout is a concern; nobody on Sands' list receives an e-mail more than once every two weeks. There must be policies for removing people upon request and handling folks who reply to every single message. For privacy reasons, recipients shouldn't see other addresses on the list. Then there's the question of geography. Should all Web readers be included in the database? "Do we care what they have to say if they are living in Georgia or Japan?" asks Sands. "We're a local paper and we want local stories."

Even attribution can be a dilemma, with varying views among journalists about using e-mail quotes in stories. Hopefully those worries will fade as standards develop.

The most imminent concern is whether this self-selected group of readers is sufficiently representative. "We never use this as a substitute for polling," Sands says. "We never indicate in any way that this is scientific. We almost always get a wide variety of comments.... Nevertheless, we have committed as a newspaper to holding regular public meetings in neighborhoods throughout our readership areas as another method of reaching out to our readers. The vast majority of our news stories still rely on traditional reporting methods."

That's simple, clear advice: Don't allow any single mode of communication to dominate the newsroom. Continue meeting with readers and reading letters and answering the phone. And appreciate an efficient, empowering technology when you see it.