Keeping Readers Awake   

Here are several tips from reporters and editors for invigorating government coverage:

Select topics imaginatively. "We're trying to report what everyone is talking about, whether they're sitting down at a bar or talking with their family and friends," says Deborah Howell of Newhouse. "During the gulf war, we had staff meetings every day and asked, 'What do we want to know today?' as contrasted to 'What will happen today?' We were trying to think as readers as well as journalists." As another example, during the confirmation hearings for Clarence Thomas and Robert Gates, her bureau produced an article on "the ethics and morality of not telling the truth to get a job."

Reduce preoccupation with episodes. A central problem of daily journalism, as educator James Carey once wrote, is that "depth – the how and the why – are..properties of the whole, not the part." As the Soviet Union seemed to break up this summer, a gigantic story by any measure, journalists were faced with leading the day's paper with the breakaway threats of still another republic. Instead of covering so many episodes, Jonathan Salant, a reporter for two Syracuse newspapers, says, "I'm trying to write more that 'This is what's really going on, and this is why you should care.' "

Get out of the press galleries. This means, among other things, reducing the number of quotes from politicians and bureaucrats and increasing those from "real people." As Kathryn Christensen, managing editor of the Baltimore Sun, says, "We need more local coverage that matters. We're not going to treat public affairs as if it is just beats and buildings." Or, as another editor put it, "Let's not just cover the meeting, let's cover the city too."

Stress substance over process. "Process" reporting features a high ratio of words like meeting, facility and proposal. "Substance" cuts to the bottom line. Instead of writing, "The legislature will consider the governor's proposal to combat the drunk-driving problem," a reporter might substitute, "Anyone convicted of drunk driving will go to prison for five years if the governor gets her way today."
Newhouse's James Lileks likens process coverage to "reading a company newsletter. It makes sense to people who live around here. But to people who don't it seems dry and mechanical." Christensen advocates not just tracking the motion of government but "crawling behind to see what difference it makes." This might entail redefining beats, increasing team reporting, and upgrading executive and judicial coverage at the expense of the legislative.
Some journalists campaign for refocusing their mission, not to cover government so much as to cover key issues, such as day care or toxic waste, as government affects them. They suggest doing more stories on, for example, what local bridges a government agency found to be unsafe for school buses, and fewer stories on a House subcommittee's markup of that agency's budget bill.

Stop cozying up to insiders. Former New York Times reporter John Herbers, writing in his regular column in Governing magazine, urges the press to "illuminate the activities of those the public perceives to be the real wielders of power... Rather than investigate the power brokers, the press largely feeds off them for quotes and analysis, giving them a legitimacy they do not deserve... The public, it seems, knows better and turns off on all of it, including the press."

Write in English. Perhaps more than anything else, reporters and editors should avoid jargon and gobbledygook and write in the natural tongue. In an amusing article in the Oregonian's house publication, writing coach Jack Hart told of a hypothetical reader sitting in a local bar next to the journalist responsible for writing such actually published mouthfuls as, "In arguing for passage, supporters of the resolution said the availability of health care, including rights to abortion and family planning services, has a serious impact on the family and work lives of union members."
"Yeah," the reader reponds. "I kinda figured that." And then he "rises from his stool, slowly pours his beer in [the journalist's] lap and saunters out the door."
C.S.S.