The State of the American Newspaper
Local Heroes   

They don’t have the exposure, clout or access of the reporters in Washington’s major bureaus. They don’t necessarily chase the glamorous story of the day. Instead, the capital’s regional reporters focus resolutely on issues that matter to the readers back home. And they learn to juggle.

Just before 10:30 a.m. in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, Lisa Friedman, Washington correspondent for Los Angeles' Daily News, seizes her best opportunity to grill Jack Valenti, chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America.

Valenti has turned up for a mid-November news conference on movie piracy, an issue unrelated to Friedman's story about importing assault weapons for use on Hollywood movie sets. But she is the lone Washington correspondent for a paper dwarfed by the behemoth Los Angeles Times--a position that does not guarantee a prompt return phone call from a sought-after Washington player such as Valenti. So Friedman heads for the press conference to catch him before the event begins.

In the shadows of Washington's largest and most prestigious bureaus labor scores of reporters who cover the nation's capital for small and midsize papers. Some correspondents work for prominent newspaper chains, such as Knight Ridder, Gannett, Hearst and Scripps Howard, and benefit from the name recognition and resources their bureaus can provide. Some toil alone in offices scarcely larger than a closet or share space with other reporters who work for the same newspaper or serve sister papers.

These "regional reporters," as they are called in Washington parlance, fill a patchwork of missions for papers as varied as the Chicago Sun-Times, the Watertown Daily Times in northern New York and the Deseret Morning News in Salt Lake City. Some correspondents juggle the demands of multiple newspapers. Friedman is the Washington correspondent for MediaNews' Los Angeles Newspaper Group, composed of the flagship Daily News and seven smaller papers in Southern California. Samantha Young, a reporter in Stephens Media Group's four-reporter bureau, writes for five newspapers in disparate regions that span five time zones: the Las Vegas Review-Journal; the Courier-Tribune in Asheboro, North Carolina; the Daily World in Aberdeen, Washington; and two Hawaii papers, West Hawaii Today and the Hawaii Tribune-Herald.

No matter how diverse the correspondents' responsibilities, however, similar obstacles dog most regional reporters. The nation's capital is a town that respects prestige and power. Correspondents at small and midsize newspapers often discover that access to federal officials does not come easily.

Mastering Washington's ways can be bewildering, juggling unrelated issues disorienting and competing on national stories daunting. "In Washington, they tend to respond to big fish," says Lee Davidson, Washington correspondent for the Deseret Morning News, a Mormon Church-owned paper with a daily circulation of about 71,000. "I'm not even a little fish. I'm plankton."

In countless telephone messages, seemingly "100 times a day," Davidson spells and defines "Deseret," a Book of Mormon term meaning "honey bees" that was also the name Utah used when it applied for statehood. Sighs Davidson, 45, a soft-spoken man with 15 years of Washington experience and 22 with his paper, "I get everything from Dessert to Desert to Desperate."

Jake Thompson, chief of the Omaha World-Herald's two-reporter Washington bureau, covers issues pertaining to Nebraska and western Iowa: the congressional delegations, agriculture, defense and education. Sources associated with Thompson's geographic area are usually helpful, "but if you leave your little island and call Florida," Thompson says, "you're in big trouble."

Federal agencies and the White House present a similar challenge. Press aides at the Department of Agriculture understand why an Omaha World-Herald reporter would call about farm subsidies or obscure conservation programs, but officials at other agencies are less responsive. "The basic thing about being a regional is you can never expect to make one phone call and have people jump," Thompson says. "You have to make two to five, and you shouldn't even be vexed at making five calls. By the fifth phone call, they're pretty used to hearing from you."

Thompson, 47, is president of the Regional Reporters Association, an organization of about 200 that facilitates access to Cabinet secretaries and other high-ranking Washington officials by using the group's combined clout to schedule briefings. The RRA also offers a guidebook, seminars and a newsletter to help crack Washington's logistical code: Where can you find lawmakers' travel records? When should you look for the latest campaign-finance reports? Whom should regional reporters contact in the White House Office of Media Affairs?

Because most regional reporters do not compete against one another, the newsletter offers story ideas that can be reproduced for different audiences. These range from lawmakers' strategies for slipping earmarked "pork" projects into spending bills to fresh angles on the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee, an annual exercise in which hard-bitten journalists briefly shed congressional oversight duties to monitor their hometown speller's triumphs or tragedies.

Friedman, 31, started her Washington reporting career in 1999 as the correspondent for the Oakland Tribune, another MediaNews paper. "Capitol Hill was like Mars," she recalls. "Everybody was speaking this Martian language, and nobody gave me the Martian-to-English translation book." The Regional Reporters Association "saved my life," says Friedman, who served as its president from 2001 to 2002.

Among the conundrums for regional reporters: getting into briefings in secure buildings such as the White House and the Pentagon. National beat reporters and some regionals have passes to these buildings, but many reporters have to call ahead to obtain clearance, a less-than-reliable transaction.

Tammy Lytle, a former correspondent for the New Haven Register, recalls watching other reporters interview then-Connecticut Gov. Lowell Weicker inside the White House gates while she stood outside on the sidewalk, waiting for clearance. (Lytle, now bureau chief of the Orlando Sentinel, has since obtained a pass.) The Pentagon is conveniently located next to a Metro stop, but non-pass holders can't use this entrance and instead must enter at the other side of the building--about a 10-minute walk--and wait for an escort. (See Free Press, November 2002.) A Pentagon aide in charge of press credentials refused to renew Davidson's pass, which he'd had for 13 years, after the September 11 terrorist attacks because he didn't visit the Pentagon regularly. "We don't know you enough," Davidson recalls the aide saying. "You could be a terrorist."

But Capitol Hill remains an accessible institution for regional reporters. Not only are most hearings open to journalists, but even regionals who work for the tiniest papers can seek comment from Senate heavyweights such as Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) and Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) by waiting in the right place. Every Tuesday when Congress is in session, senators hold private caucuses around noon. Reporters wait outside the meeting rooms behind rope lines, and when the senator they hope to interview emerges, they hop over the rope and either stop or trail after the senator--depending on the lawmaker's patience level--and spout their questions.

The ornate Speaker's Lobby on the second floor of the House affords a similar opportunity. Lawmakers mingle or stride through the lobby, which has strict rules of dress and decorum. Cameras are prohibited, and tape recorders are banned except at a designated table on the lobby's west side. But journalists can stand in this bustling corridor of legislative activity and interview House members. Reporters also can submit a card to request that a lawmaker sitting inside the House chamber come to the lobby for an interview; the success of that technique, of course, depends on the representative's inclination to talk and does not always please press secretaries.

The "stakeout," another Washington staple, involves waiting for lawmakers or officials to emerge from closed-door meetings on Capitol Hill, the White House, federal agencies or the studios of NBC's "Meet the Press" and other Sunday-morning news shows. Since setting up interviews can be difficult, planning the best way to snag an official or corporate executive, as Friedman did with Valenti, goes a long way for regional reporters. "You need a little longer for a big-picture story than the New York Times" and you have to employ creative techniques to get what you need, says Craig Gilbert, Washington bureau chief of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, which has two reporters and a half-time editorial assistant in D.C. "You end up juggling a lot of different balls, thinking short-term and long-term, gathering string" for future stories.

Washington's treasure trove of government reports and investigations provides regional reporters with stories that don't require access to the highest echelons of the White House or the FBI. Davidson has filed hundreds of Freedom of Information Act requests to obtain reports the government would rather not show him. His investigative articles have revealed shortcomings of a federal compensation program for cancer victims of atomic bomb testing and have documented the wide range of secret Cold War atomic, chemical and germ-warfare testing in Utah. Davidson's efforts have earned him myriad regional and national awards; he is a three-time winner of the National Press Club's Robin Goldstein Award for Washington Regional Reporting, most recently in 2003. Davidson pursues his investigations in spare moments between chasing spot news, from the confirmation of Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency to the latest salvos on judicial nominees from Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Unlike national beat reporters, most regional correspondents are generalists, a reality that requires dexterity in covering issues as diverse as local highway projects and national energy policy, antiballistic missile systems and immigration disputes.

"Like a lot of large regional papers, we pick our targets and kind of go in and go out," says Stephen Koff, bureau chief of Cleveland's Plain Dealer. For nearly the past two years, a primary target for the Plain Dealer has been the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The Davis-Besse nuclear plant outside Toledo has been closed since March 2002, when plant workers discovered that leaking reactor coolant had eaten a pineapple-size hole in the reactor lid. Davis-Besse cannot reopen without the NRC's permission.

Covering the NRC investigation presented a steep learning curve. "You can't go into one NRC meeting and understand what's going on," Koff says. "They all use these alphabet-soup terms. Nobody has a 'meltdown' or an 'explosion.' They have a 'loss of coolant event.' " Koff and his staff worked extensively with John Mangels, the paper's science writer, and John Funk, its business writer who covers utilities. The Washington bureau interviewed experts at watchdog groups and NRC staff and attended NRC advisory committee meetings. "You have to be comfortable enough to say, 'I have not a clue what you just said,' " Koff says.

But other breaking news competes for their time. Koff, 48, and his three reporters also stayed busy last fall tracking the investigation of the massive August 14 blackout that cut power to eight states and parts of Canada. "I hadn't set foot in the Department of Energy until [Secretary Spencer] Abraham announced the joint Canadian-U.S. task force at a news conference," Koff says, laughing. "Now they're my new best friends."

The Bush administration's "Clear Skies" initiative, a proposal to slash power-plant emissions that has been dubbed "Cloudy Skies" by environmental groups, demanded mastery of shorthand for nitrogen oxides and sulfur oxides. "It's very scary where you could have a conversation about NOx, SOx and mercury," Koff says. "It's not good cocktail chatter. My wife begs me, 'Don't talk about that, please.' "

Besides gaining familiarity with a dizzying array of issues, most regional reporters have endured the pressures of competition with national newspapers that have larger staffs and better resources. These stresses take multiple forms: chasing a story and hounding sources while accepting that an official may leak the news to a national reporter; reassuring editors inclined to believe a national story if it differs from a regional reporter's take on an issue; and protecting scoops.

"As a regional, if you're in on something national in scope, you feel panicked, like you have to get it in the paper in the next five minutes, if possible, because you know the [Washington] Post is going to have it," the Omaha World-Herald's Thompson says. When Thompson learned the United States Strategic Command would host a meeting at Offutt Air Force Base south of Omaha to discuss the next generation of nuclear weapons, he wrote the story that day rather than spending an extra day developing it. "I was afraid of the Post or the New York Times," Thompson says.

When NASA was considering bestowing former astronaut and then-Sen. John Glenn (D-Ohio) with a final encore in space, Jack Torry, then a Washington reporter for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Toledo Blade, insisted to a skeptical Post-Gazette editor that he would not get scooped on the story. Kathy Sawyer, the Washington Post's space reporter, is "drinking with these NASA guys every night, and they're going to tell her first," Torry, now a Washington correspondent for the Columbus Dispatch, remembers his former editor in Pittsburgh saying over the phone. Torry rolled his eyes and responded: "Glenn's office will watch out for us."

An aide to Glenn had told Torry he couldn't guarantee the Post-Gazette wouldn't get scooped, but he would do his best to tell the paper the moment he knew--a promise the aide kept. The Washington Post, the Post-Gazette, the Plain Dealer, the Dispatch and a handful of other papers all carried news of NASA's expected announcement on January 16, 1998.

Because Washington coverage can lead regional reporters in so many directions, one of the secrets to survival is figuring out exactly what role a bureau fulfills for the paper. "I think of the paper as my client, my sole client, and I'm here to serve my client," says Lynn Sweet, the Chicago Sun-Times' Washington bureau chief and lone D.C. correspondent. Her paper--which has a daily circulation of about 482,000--has a high threshold for news and a strong appetite for stories that have an impact on the Chicago area and Illinois.

Sweet doesn't usually write about lawmakers introducing a bill. She doesn't write "thumbsuckers," long series or takeouts. Instead, she careens from story to story, describing her modus operandi as "journalistic triage." "I'm always willing to stop on a dime and change what I'm doing," Sweet said over breakfast one morning at the National Press Club's Reliable Source restaurant. Proof came about 15 minutes later when Sweet suddenly remembered she was supposed to be somewhere else. She sprinted out of the restaurant with me trailing behind her.

The nearly overlooked obligation turned out to be a briefing at the press club by Northrop Grumman Corp., which has a facility in the Chicago suburb of Rolling Meadows. The defense company was looking for business with the Department of Homeland Security to put antimissile devices on commercial aircraft, a proposal in its infancy. Northrop Grumman builds such systems for military jets, so Sweet had a strong local angle. She grinned, scribbling furiously. "See, this could be neat."

Back in her office, strewn with newspapers, books, gym clothes and Senate candidates' expenditure reports, Sweet called Dan Miller, the paper's business editor, to make her pitch for a story about Illinois' role in national defense. The piece appeared the next day on the front of the business section.

Sweet has carved a niche for herself by focusing on the relationship between money and politics, including the influence of donations on lawmakers in her congressional delegation and the role of prominent Illinois donors on the national political scene. "I like to explain and let people know that things don't come out of the blue very often," says Sweet, 52, who was her paper's chief political writer before moving to Washington in 1993.

She spends a lot of time scanning names--in campaign-finance reports, in fundraising invitations, in newspaper ads--and frequently attends fundraisers. "You have to put yourself in a position to get lucky" with a story, she says.

At the Stephens Media Group bureau three blocks from Sweet's office, the focus stays resolutely regional. But Bureau Chief Steve Tetreault says his staff competes with larger papers and wire services on nuclear-waste stories and some Western environmental and public-land issues. Tetreault and three other reporters, including Samantha Young, share responsibility for the flagship Las Vegas Review-Journal and 10 other dailies in eight states.

Young covers environmental issues, public lands and tourism for the Review-Journal and serves as the sole Washington correspondent for her four other papers. She has broken stories about federal management of the wild-horse overpopulation in the West and the debate over sovereignty for Native Hawaiians. An RRA board member, Young also received one of the National Press Foundation's Paul Miller Fellowships in 2000, attending monthly seminars that train regional reporters in Washington coverage. Now 27, with nearly five years of Washington experience, she files one or two stories daily and has written up to four in a single day.

As a correspondent in a small bureau, she pitches in wherever she's needed. On April 8, 2002, Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn vetoed President Bush's designation of Yucca Mountain as a nuclear-waste repository. The governor's emissary delivered the veto message to the offices of then-Senate President Pro Tem Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) and House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.). Young photographed the emissary with a 35 mm camera (they've since upgraded to a digital), rushed the film to Ritz Camera and its one-hour photo service two blocks from her office, scanned the photos and sent them to a city editor.

At the Washington bureau of the Hartford Courant, which shares an office with the Chicago Tribune and other Tribune Co. newspapers, the dominant political story for the past several years has been Connecticut Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Joseph Lieberman. "We obviously cover Lieberman night and day, and we've been doing that since he got here, but we ramped it up in 2000" when he was Al Gore's running mate, says David Lightman, 54, the Courant's Washington bureau chief for 19 years. "We decided early that we were going to be the experts on this guy. We knew him better than anybody else."

Lightman is proudest of stories that have "played truth-squad" and noted inconsistencies in the senator's words and deeds. A May 30, 2002, story described a Rodeo Drive lunch attended by Lieberman, "the Eastern politician and social scold who routinely castigates the film and entertainment industry," and Warren Beatty, "star of such movies as 'Bonnie and Clyde,' the 1967 film that many believe helped legitimize graphic movie violence." Lightman also is comfortable with the way his bureau has handled Lieberman's religion--he is the first Jewish American to mount a major presidential bid--by taking care not to push the issue but paying attention to voters' concerns. A front-page October 26 story noted, "Lieberman has a unique political problem. Though his views on the Middle East are generally inseparable from those of his Democratic rivals and even those of President Bush, he is often seen as someone whose positions are heavily influenced by his Orthodox Jewish faith."

Regional reporters who cover presidential candidates--including Lightman, John Wagner of Raleigh's News & Observer and Deirdre Shesgreen of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch--enjoy an expanding sphere of influence because of the Internet. With political Web sites such as Hotline and ABC's The Note, "people are discovering our stuff after all these years," Lightman says. "Twenty years ago, you probably could blow us off. Nobody read the Kansas City paper, the Hartford paper, outside of our regions. Now we're all over the place."

Mark Halperin, ABC News political director and coauthor of The Note, says regional reporters who have a long history of tracking local candidates often bring a deeper understanding to coverage than their national counterparts.

"It's the accumulation of their take on the individuals, their families, their longtime political advisers and financial supporters that no national reporter can catch up to," Halperin says. "You can see it in almost every word choice and emphasis--the textured treatment of a biographical piece or a news analysis that just doesn't exist anywhere else."

Halperin says he's been "delighted" to see talented reporters like Lightman, Wagner and the Boston Globe's Glen Johnson receive increased attention for their work. The "ability of publications like ours to bring them to a wider audience has been one of the real satisfactions we've had so far this election season."

The Internet also has dramatically changed the way regionals do their jobs. They can scour agency Web sites, which post press releases, agency reports and sometimes transcripts from briefings. They can add themselves to agency e-mail lists and more quickly obtain Supreme Court decisions, lobbying reports and candidates' financial-disclosure statements.

Friedman, of Los Angeles' Daily News, combs through lobbying reports online (at www. fecinfo.com) to glean California and entertainment-industry angles. The story she questioned Valenti about was born when she noticed a filing for a group called the Entertainment Armories Association. Friedman thought the name sounded interesting enough to merit some phone calls.

She discovered that about a dozen companies in the United States provide guns to movie studios. Most are based in California's San Fernando Valley, an area the Daily News covers. Strict laws have complicated the companies' ability to import the guns they need. They claim their difficulties are contributing, at least in a small way, to a problem called "runaway production," in which moviemakers increasingly film outside the United States to benefit from cheaper working conditions and generous tax breaks. So the Entertainment Armories Association was lobbying the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms for permission to maintain an inventory of weapons, heavily guarded and reconfigured for Hollywood.

Distance from editors and readers can stir a sense of isolation and disconnect among Washington correspondents, who sometimes wonder whether faraway readers are remotely interested in their Beltway copy. But here, again, the Internet has helped. Some newspapers, such as the Orlando Sentinel, include reporters' e-mail addresses at the end of stories. Readers e-mail Lytle with comments and suggestions, particularly when she writes about controversial topics like oil-and-gas-drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico or sensitive subjects like veterans' hospitals and disability pay.

Lytle visits her paper in Orlando two or three times in nonelection years--and three or four times in election years--to renew connections with her editors, colleagues and community. She visits senior centers and local businesses to develop sources. Lytle also trails local political candidates. Years ago, she tried to meet Mel Martinez, a promising lawyer. He expressed little interest initially, but the two later met through coincidence: They were both waiting for an appointment with then-Florida House Speaker Daniel Webster. Martinez jokes he didn't make time to meet Lytle because she was a D.C. reporter and he didn't need to deal with D.C. reporters. Martinez later became secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Today he and Webster are both U.S. Senate candidates--proving that local contacts can benefit Washington reporters in unexpected ways.

On ideal days, Washington reporting is awash in possibilities. "It's kind of like a great big buffet, and you can't eat everything, so you go for the best stuff," says Lytle, 42.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Gilbert takes an expansive approach to his mission. One of his bureau's priorities is writing strong front-page enterprise stories for the Sunday paper, pieces that don't necessarily include Wisconsin angles. "We don't have that problem of having to feed the beast in little morsels on a daily basis," Gilbert says of a luxury not all regionals share. His bureau not only covers the congressional delegation and Wisconsin-related issues but also gives his paper a voice on national and even international issues. He has covered nuclear-proliferation disputes and political debates. He writes frequently about trade and has visited Havana to report on the impact of the Cuban trade embargo. "The whole universe, in theory, is open to us," Gilbert says. "We're kind of scanning the horizon, looking at everything."

Friedman limits her horizon to stories with strong Los Angeles or Southern California angles, particularly on the film industry, immigration and transportation issues. She says there's no way she can compete with the 38-reporter Los Angeles Times bureau, so she keeps her focus parochial.

"The L.A. Times is so big and has so many resources, and I'm so small," she says. (Literally so: Friedman is 4'10"). "But I like being the local reporter. My favorite stories are explaining Martian Land"--more commonly known as Washington.