On high school papers: Published by the NCJ June 7, 2007

Youth scoop

by MARCY BURSTINER

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If you want to read some of the most interesting and relevant journalism in Humboldt County you'll have only till the end of the month. That's because this year it's been coming out of our local high schools and when the school year ends, so do the publications; many of the reporters and editors will then head off to colleges elsewhere in the state and country.

It is unfair to compare a high school newspaper with a professional publication. It comes out monthly, which is a lifetime in the newspaper business. On the other hand, the students have no advanced training or professional experience and have far less life experience than their professional counterparts. What they do have seems to be a fresh perspective on life around them, a healthy curiosity and the energy that we all seem to lose after our teen years.

One of the two papers, Arcata High's Pepperbox, received media attention last month after it printed a letter from a student that called homosexuality an immoral lifestyle. The letter offended many students, parents and teachers and led to a backlash against the paper and its staff and teacher. Editor Jesse Alm said he personally found the letter offensive, but the writer was exercising his right to freedom of expression and the paper would print all letters that came in that were not libelous. The teacher told the Times-Standard that she agreed to run it since it did not rise to the level of hate speech.

California's high school students enjoy greater free speech protections than do students in many other states. In a 1988 decision in the Missouri-based case Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, the U.S. Supreme Court said high school administrators could curb student expression if they could show they had a valid educational purpose in doing so. But the California Education Code does not allow school teachers or administrators to censor expression simply because it is controversial or potentially disruptive. A California appeals court judge recently reaffirmed that in a case that arose out of Marin County involving two columns in a high school paper in 2002, one of which focused on immigration issues and which offended many Latino students.

Elsewhere, students face harsher curbs on their rights to free speech. In January, an Indiana high school teacher who advised her student newspaper was suspended and later transferred to another school for allowing the publication of a pro-gay rights column without first getting permission from the principal.

The attention the Times-Standard gave the Pepperbox controversy overlooked what has been a year of some terrific journalism from both that paper, overseen by teacher Joan Williams, and McKinleyville High's Pawprints, overseen by teacher Anne Sahlberg.

Earlier in the year, Pepperbox reporter Coral Bourne interviewed students who had family serving in Iraq or Afghanistan and quoted one student who explained how upset it makes her when she sees Humboldt County residents protest the war -- to her it is as if these people protest what her sibling is doing even as they say they support the troops. Reporter Zari Duff wrote about the local availability to students of the new human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, something a bit controversial since a girl is not at risk for HPV until she begins having sex. And Alm and reporter Charlie Hankin collaborated on a story about the problems of methamphetamine in Humboldt County. In the story, they interviewed the Arcata Police Chief and a man on probation for meth-related crimes.

Over at Mack High, the Pawprints published six stories in its December issue that focused on homeless students. They reported that 95 of 743 students at Mack High spent at least part of last year living on the streets or moving from one couch to another as they shuffled between the homes of anyone who would take them in. The stories profiled three students living at Launchpad, a transitional living program for 16-20 year olds, and explored how and why they ended up on the street -- one was kicked out of a foster home, another was living with her father in a van until she moved into the home of a family friend where she slept on the couch, and a third saw first his mother and then his sister evicted from apartments. Pawprints profiled Launchpad, and another support program, The Raven Project. In a story by Feature Editor Kalie Tomlinson which looked at the idea of what "system" to blame, she noted that since there are limited methods for finding needy students, there could be many more of these homeless students out there. Many teenagers, she said, don't know the support programs exist and struggle to get by with little to no guidance.

The reader finds out, through the interviews, that even as the students struggle day to day, they haven't stopped dreaming. One wants to go to College of the Redwoods and then transfer to a university, another wants to have a car and apartment of his own and become a marine zoologist, and the third wants a good education so that her future children will have a better life.

The great philosopher and innovator Buckminster Fuller once said that children have an incredible natural ability to learn and then we send them to school and teach them how not to. I sometimes think that way about journalism education and training. While some of the more important journalism tends to come from experienced reporters, much of the really interesting stories come from the ones with the least experience; they simply know a good story when they see it, and they haven't yet learned to train their brains to seek the stories that will get them promotions and journalism industry accolades.

Across the country newspaper readership is in decline. An annual report on the state of the news media by the Project for Excellence in Journalism noted this year that daily circulation dropped 6.3 percent over the last three years.

The future rests with our children and if newspapers want to be included in that future, perhaps newspaper editors should take a close look at what young people are writing and reading. They might learn something.

On marijuana coverage: Published by the NCJ May 3, 2007

Dope beats

by MARCY BURSTINER

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A small item in the April 21 issue of the Reporter began this way:

The unsanctioned celebration of the illegal drug marijuana on Friday commonly referred to as "420" didn't go unnoticed by the Arcata Police Department.

Forget the problem of the double negative. I ripped this 127-word brief out of the paper because it exemplified a problem in the local media. Here's what caught my eye:

Arcata's Redwood Park has become one of the main areas were [sic] celebrants congregate, according to the news release, and the crowd on Friday was estimated at approximately 3,500 people.

That's almost 4 percent of all people in Humboldt County 15 and over. The police were there, but the Eureka Reporter and Times-Standard missed it. So did the North Coast Journal, but that's because Heidi Walters was over at Clam Beach covering the several hundred campers over there. We don't know how many participated in 420-related activities elsewhere because the newspapers didn't follow it up. Omission of a newsworthy event is curious, but more so when the issue is one that affects a great number of readers, is controversial and, in this case, inherently sexy.

Consider another overlooked story. On April 18, the Lumberjack, of which I'm faculty adviser, reported that 80 people marched from the Arcata Community Forest to City Hall on April 4 to support the cultivation of medical marijuana. The march was in response to concerns HSU President Rollin Richmond raised earlier in the year that proliferation of indoor grows hurt the school's enrollment and added to the housing crisis.

I don't know how an assignment editor could ignore a rally of some 80 people in a town of 15,000. Years ago I covered a routine house fire. My managing editor asked me if I thought it should go on page one. I asked her what other stories she had, and she laughed. In Humboldt County on any given day, how many local stories are bigger than a march of 80 people from the forest to City Hall to counter HSU President Rollin Richmond, and how many are bigger than a gathering of 3,500 people at exactly 4:20 p.m. to illegally puff weed while police watch?

Last year I asked then Times-Standard editor Charles Winkler why no reporter on his paper covered marijuana as a beat, since it was an important part of the local economy. He said the Times-Standard did cover marijuana -- through its crime reporter. Hank Sims, editor of the North Coast Journal, suggested to me that as someone new to the area, I didn't know that much of the big production had moved away.

That could be. But consider this: I have the cleanest urine in Humboldt County and I see marijuana everywhere. A while back someone from a local fire department told KHUM's Mike Dronkers on air about dangers caused by people improperly rewiring rooms for indoor grows. He offered to personally check out wiring jobs to make sure they were safe, because he didn't want people to burn down their home and half the neighborhood. In 2005, County Sheriff's Drug Enforcement Unit Commander Sgt. Wayne Hanson told a Lumberjack reporter of environmental problems and fire dangers caused by marijuana growers improperly using petroleum generators in the tinderbox hills. And in last week's Journal, a long feature on a medical marijuana doctor who is prohibited from seeing female patients noted that a medical marijuana dispensary in Arcata has 1,000 clients on its books.

Meanwhile, the story didn't tell me how many other doctors in the county write pot prescriptions. Rumor has it that 215 cards are more common on the HSU campus than passing grades. Where do the students get the cards, and what ailments do they claim? I find it frustrating how little information the papers dispense on such an interesting and important topic.

Chris Durant at the Times-Standard recently did a story on indoor grows, but didn't follow it up. How much more do people pay in rent because indoor growers pump up prices? How much money does PG&E pocket because of all the electricity consumed? How much are indoor growers adding to global warming because of all that hydroponic lighting? How does a conscientious grower do it right?

Omission by laziness or naivete is bad enough, but I suspect willful omission. How else can you explain a profile about Honeydew in the T-S's community section a year ago that made no mention of weed, or a profile about Petrolia that included only this line:

One resident said this has caused many people to grow marijuana as a way to make ends meet and the practice has become widespread because of the area's secluded nature.

I e-mailed both Reporter editor Glenn Franco Simmons and T-S editor Rich Somerville about direction they give their reporters on marijuana coverage. Here's Simmons' response: "In my extremely quick research of The Eureka Reporter over the past three and a half years, I turned up more than 100 stories on marijuana that range from medical marijuana to busts," he wrote. "In the past two years, we have focused more on busts, it appears. This has not been by design, however. ... Each reporter has an assigned beat. If the subject of marijuana is newsworthy enough on a beat, it is up to the reporter to determine that and write about it."

Somerville noted that he'd like to see better coverage of the issue from his reporters. "You're right that most of our coverage is busts, with the occasional story about a CAMP raid or medical marijuana -- primarily by the cops/courts reporter, Chris Durant," he wrote. "It's hard to wean people away from that when they know any marijuana story on page one will sell a hundred more single copies. (No lie.) I would like us to do more depth, and I hope that we will in the next year."

Marijuana stories are difficult to do, because neither the feds nor HSU sanction either the growing or smoking; getting sources for stories is difficult. Only a beat reporter could cultivate those kinds of sources over time. The people who have stories to tell but are afraid to tell them need to have one person on the paper they know they can turn to.

We live in a county that officially condones the growing of medical marijuana. The newspapers need to educate readers how to be better growers and more educated consumers. There are important economic, health and environmental issues here. It's time the papers stop covering marijuana solely as a crime and dismissing proponents as a bunch of hippies blowing smoke.

Marcy Burstiner is assistant professor of journalism and mass communication at Humboldt State. While she serves as faculty adviser to the Lumberjack newspaper, she has no editorial control over its content. If you would like to comment on this story or give her ideas for future columns, e-mail her at mib3@humboldt.edu.

On balance: Published by the NCJ April 5, 2007

Overbalanced

by MARCY BURSTINER

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In the cardinal rules of journalism, balance ranks high. But it is a difficult thing for a reporter to achieve. Often that's because in trying to get two sides to a story -- or better yet, all sides to a story -- a reporter risks giving too much weight to representatives of one side, given how representative that opinion is of the general public.

There are a number of ways to tilt the balance -- the number and diversity of people quoted, the amount of words devoted to each side, whether one side is explained first in a story while another is buried, and whether the sources sought for one side are more articulate and/or credible than those sought for the other.

Consider coverage of AB 374, a bill working its way through the state legislature that would set rules by which doctors could help terminally ill patients end their lives. Since our assemblyperson, Patty Berg, is one of the bill's co-sponsors, reporters here have a much-needed "local angle." But it's of interest to people throughout the state, since if enacted it will make California only the second state in the country to allow terminally ill people to end their own lives.

The Eureka Reporter twice devoted stories -- one with a front page, five-column banner headline, above the fold -- to a group demonstrating in opposition. The Times-Standard ran an editorial that supported the bill, saying it came down to a matter of choice. Both papers focused on the controversial aspects of the story -- people adamantly for against those adamantly against.

The T-S editorial called the topic "an emotional and very sensitive issue." The paper also ran a long, front-page MediaNews wire feature that called the debate "a topic so controversial that experts agree there's not even a neutral term to describe it." The Reporter likened it to a revival of the abortion debate.

Yet each paper also noted in just about every story, that numerous polls show that some 70 percent of Californians support the measure. To me, that says that this issue, while arguably emotional, isn't all that controversial. Support for it is overwhelming. That's certainly not the sense you get from the Reporter stories. One story about a protest outside Berg's office quoted three people who protested and two reps from Berg's office, framing the issue as Berg against the people. The Times-Standard ran a similar story.

In another Eureka Reporter story headlined "Democratic lawmakers try again to pass assisted-suicide bill," ostensibly about support from Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, focused the first 256 words on support for the measure, but devoted the next 410 words to opposition; it quoted four opponents -- a woman who runs a center for independent living, an in-home care provider, the head of the California Catholic Conference, a Republican assemblyman from La Mesa -- and led the section this way: "Opponents include the California Medical Association, certain religious organizations and groups advocating for seniors, the poor and the disabled."

In this way, the story framed the debate as Democratic lawmakers versus not only Republican lawmakers but also all doctors, religious people, and old, poor and disabled folks.

When the California Association of Physician Groups, which represents doctors in some 150 medical groups, endorsed AB 374, the 270-word Eureka Reporter story was on page A10, with no byline.

Missing from the Reporter's stories was any in-depth conversation with people the proposed law will directly affect, terminally ill people faced with a terrible dilemma: whether to take each day they have left, possibly in great pain or incapacity, or to shorten that time. The Reporter devoted a Feb. 26 story on suicide to AB374 and began it by talking about a 73-year-old Eureka woman who had killed herself by overdosing on drugs days before scheduled cancer surgery. But there were no voices from terminally ill patients in the rest of the story.

The Times-Standard, in contrast, ran a wire feature from the Sacramento bureau of MediaNews, its parent corporation, that led with two men -- Walter Park, a 61-year-old San Francisco resident dying of AIDS who opposes the law, and Tom McDonald, a 77-year-old Oroville man with cancer who said he would shoot himself if the legislature failed to pass the bill. But starting the story this way also implied that support and opposition to the bill are evenly split.

And while the MediaNews story was fairly thorough, I would have preferred to have it localized. Are there no terminally ill people in Humboldt County with valid opinions on the subject? Are there so few people who have dying friends or families that they'd be difficult to find? Or is the problem that regardless of controversy, this is such an emotionally wrenching issue that reporters here are loath to go to someone whose wife, son or parent is slowly, painfully dying and ask that terrible question: Should the law allow your dying loved one to choose a quicker death?

As a police reporter for six months I had to go to people who'd just lost spouses, children or parents to shootings and car accidents and ask them questions. I hated doing that, hence my short stint covering cops and crime. But that was my job. It was vital for the coverage and so I did it, time after time.

Local coverage has failed to address some important questions as well: Should the law pass, would someone in Humboldt County even be able to find a local doctor willing to supply the life-ending drugs? Or would deciding to choose a speedy death mean you would have to leave home to die? That raises another question: If you'd have to leave the county to find the doctor who could help you die by choice, would that limit that choice to those who could afford to leave?

Missing from every story was a breakdown of support or opposition among terminally ill people. I'd like the Harris poll to go to every hospice across the state, and ask as many lucid, dying people what they think. Consider what difference it might make if, in contrast to the 70 percent of all residents in support, it turned out that 70 percent of terminally ill patients were against? Would some opposition soften if it turned out that 80 percent of terminally ill patients wanted the ability to choose the day to die? I wonder.

Marcy Burstiner is an assistant professor of journalism and mass communication at Humboldt State University. Please e-mail her with comments about this column or with your take on local media coverage or issues at mib3@humboldt.edu.

The tedium of daily news: Published by the NCJ March 1, 2007

Nuts and bolts

by MARCY BURSTINER

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The problem with a daily newspaper format is the reporters feel compelled to report news daily, and readers get the impression that they need a daily news feed.

In a rural area, where for 50 years people from Cloverdale to Trinidad have talked about the anticipated start of the Willits Bypass, how important is it to learn every new fact about Humboldt County the second it happens?

Reporters at dailies tend to work so hard producing daily news that they don't have time to live life the same way as their readers. Most of us don't sit in courtrooms or city council meetings. We're at jobs where not much changes on a daily basis, and back home we watch our children and plants grow. The result is a daily disconnect between what's important and relevant to readers -- such as the opening of the House of Omelets in Arcata, potholes in front of our homes and new programs for our young people and seniors -- and the crime and court stories the newspapers feed us.

Consider a few of the big stories here locally this past month.

First the Eureka Reporter covered daily a misdemeanor trial in Ferndale. Then the Times-Standard did a series of stories on grand jury charges against the Blue Lake police chief over a suspended driver's license. Meanwhile, the weekly North Coast Journal spent 2,400 words on a tiff between Sacred Grounds and Bayside Roasters that led to a libel suit over a hijacked website and a $37,000 libel verdict.

Now, I know that even as I harp on relevancy, many readers came to this column only after satisfying their appetite for the latest tidbit about Anna Nicole Smith's baby.

It's not that the papers should self-censor news when a police chief in Ferndale tosses the dad of a wayward infant in jail overnight for body language that he felt translated into an unspoken obscenity. Or that it's not serious if a Blue Lake police chief improperly wields power.

But a reader often doesn't need more than the initial story and a clear definitive wrap-up when it is over. In the meantime, it's nice to know about street repairs, new houses going up, stores opening and closing and what's going on in the schools. If it weren't that the Arcata Eye's layout is so hard on the Arcata eye, I'd argue that Kevin Hoover's little rag is the most relevant read in the county.

Outside of a couple of dozen people in Ferndale and about a dozen people in Blue Lake, I can't imagine that many people were at the edge of their seats waiting for the latest news on those cases. The Ferndale stories only became a good read because of a strange in-print dustup between Ferndale Enterprise editor Caroline Titus and Eureka Reporter Managing Editor Glenn Franco Simmons over whether the Reporter's reporter made mistakes, and whether a letter to the editor from jailed dad Sean Marsh written in the third person was in fact sent to both papers and printed in only one.

As for the Journal's story, Hank Sims knows how to tell a good tale. But it suffered from the same flaw I've seen in much of the local coverage here: It missed the bigger picture. What's important about the coffee roaster libel story was this: That anything people do on the Internet is potentially libelous. That means that if you go around dissing your co-worker, neighbor, ex-boyfriend or boss in a blog or by shooting e-mails to everyone on your Outlook address book, someone could sue you for libel. Just check out some of the local blogs. There's small-town nastiness out there that that could result in serious libel sanctions.

Here's the bigger picture: Instead of one distracted dad and a rambunctious toddler on a Victorian Main Street, how many Humboldt County children are endangered because their parents in fact, or all but, abandoned them?

Instead of one guy in Blue Lake with a suspended license, how many suspended licenses do we have in Humboldt County? In November, the Times-Standard reported this in a 164-word piece about a sting the Eureka police set up: More than half of the people who get their licenses suspended in traffic court drive away from the courthouse.

Here's an example of how to do it right. On Feb. 6, Heather Muller of the Eureka Reporter covered the abandonment of a 5-year-old German Shepherd after its owner killed himself. Eight stories later (a ninth was expected Tuesday, after this column went out) her readers know not only that Humboldt County has a per capita suicide rate that's twice that of both the state and nation, but who the victims are, what their deaths do to their surviving relatives and friends and the many possible causes for their demise.

The research behind it is impressive, the writing terrific and the reader leaves each 1,500-word-or-so piece wanting to find out more. In trying to find an explanation, she even went to the National Weather Service with the data she compiled and had meteorologist Treena Hartley analyze weather factors according to the date and location of the suicide to try to rule out or nail down gloomy weather as a factor. And she took the time to track down and interview those left behind, which had to be a heart-wrenching experience.

What makes the thoroughness of this series so good is that it is about a serious topic that hits hard for all readers in Humboldt County. Many of us have had or known people who have suffered from depression, and I would guess that most people have had thoughts of suicide at least once in their lives. It's mysterious and dreadful and something we need to know more about.

Marcy Burstiner is an assistant professor of journalism and mass communication at Humboldt State University.

Enterprising problems Part II: Published by the NCJ Feb. 1, 2007

What lies beneath?

by MARCY BURSTINER

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You know that the fight between the Times-Standard and Eureka Reporter is getting down and dirty when the Reporter follows the T-S's multi-part series on homelessness with a three-part series on dioxin in the bay.

Like the homeless series, this is a subject that deserves serious discussion. If there is one thing that connects us it's the water. If our living doesn't come off the bay, our dinner often does. And many of us spend our weekends wading in it, or surfing or paddling around on it.

Dioxin is one of those things most people would rather not think about, especially while biting into that grilled oyster burger at the Waterfront Cafe. That's because dioxin has been shown to affect a person's immune system and increases their risk of getting cancer. The county's business boosters don't want you to think about it either. More importantly, they don't want people outside the county, who might think of investing money or spending vacations here, to think about dioxin when thinking about Humboldt Bay.

So you have to give a newspaper credit for devoting three issues and almost 4,200 words to such a downer of subject. The trouble is that you get the feeling from reading the three stories that the Reporter would have ignored the subject altogether had not the State Water Resources Control Board listed Humboldt Bay as impaired for dioxin contamination under the federal Clean Water Act.

It's an odd series. To begin with, the controversy, as the Reporter sees it, rests with the negative impacts of the listing, not of the dioxin. And the solution it focuses on is a possibility that the county can get the state to reverse its decision, not on ways to clean up the water. It reminded me of stories I used to have to write when I worked for a San Francisco business weekly, which would focus on such topics as the difficulty corporate executives have managing a company after they've laid off hundreds of workers. But there, arguably, our subscriber base of 15,000 Armani suit-wearing execs would be more interested in evading a regulatory process than fixing an environmental problem. The Eureka Reporter's readership base, on the other hand, consists of residents of all stripes. One would think they would be at least as interested in the health and environmental ramifications of dioxin in the water as in the economic effects of the listing.

Now, I confess that I've given money to Humboldt Baykeeper, because of a naïve concept I can't shake that ocean water should be clean. If you read the Reporter stories, you'd know that it's Baykeeper's fault for causing this whole dioxin listing problem, by having the nerve to send the worst of its samples of dioxin-tainted bay water to the state water board. I also admit that as someone who came pretty darn close to dying of cancer not too long ago, I'm a bit sensitive about cancer-causing chemicals in my Crab Louie.

On the other hand, my father, grandfather, uncle, grand uncles and step-uncles were all in the food business. The livelihood of my family depended on people eating food and feeling good about the food they ate. Had New York State listed Bronx County for nitrate impairment, our small delicatessen would have been a goner.

The whole point of in-depth reporting is to get at all sides of a controversy so that the reader comes away with a good understanding of a complex problem. While I think objectivity in journalism is a farce -- a reporter stops being objective when she chooses one story to cover over another, and one source for information over another -- all stories require balance and proper perspective. What's more important: The listing under the federal Clean Water Act, or dioxin in the water? And in considering balance and perspective it's important to go back to the reader. How would your reader answer that question?

Often news organizations avoid reporting bad news because they think readers don't want to hear it. But I think they don't give their readers enough credit. Readers, I believe, want news agencies to report problems without inflating them, and to explain both the problem and possible solutions. What was most missing from the three-part series was a layout of what has actually been done in the past to clean up the bay, how effective those steps have been and what could and possibly should be done in the future.

Could the listing be a good thing in the short and long run, by bringing in state and federal dollars? The Reporter said this: "According to county officials, economic impacts to the area as a result of the listing might mean additional and costly scrutiny for dioxin testing for development permits and restoration activities for wetland and marsh habitats." For developers that's bad news, but for those in the area who like wetlands and marsh, that sounds as if dollars will be headed for good projects. The series says that the listing will force the regional water quality control board to initiate a plan to identify the contamination and plot a course to clean it. Maybe I'm crazy, but couldn't that be seen as a good thing?

Emphasizing only the economic ramifications of listing Humboldt County for dioxin impairment is a little like the mayor of Amity screaming at Chief Brody for closing the beaches during tourist season just because a 30-foot Great White shark had discovered that the shoreline was an all-you-can-eat buffet. Whether you sided with the mayor or the chief, I'd only hope the Amity Herald had reported both sides with balance and perspective.

Marcy Burstiner is an assistant professor of journalism and mass communication at Humboldt State University.

Enterprise problems Part I: Published by the NCJ Jan. 4, 2007

A questionable enterprise

by MARCY BURSTINER

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Mention the words "focus group" to most reporters and they'll groan. That's because for years, the focus groups whose opinions publishers sought wanted articles short and sweet; happy stories about dogs and babies that would fit easily on one page.

That was before the Internet siphoned off readers with more timely and customized news. Fearing extinction, newspapers are turning to the Readership Institute, a think tank out of Northwestern University supported by newspaper publishers. It's telling them that to attract and keep readers, focus on substance rather than speed.

If you've been reading the Times-Standard, the San Francisco Chronicle and the New York Times, the new trend is obvious: long, multi-part front page stories. The Chronicle came out with multi-parters on San Francisco General Hospital and homicides in Oakland. The New York Times spent a week with three sisters in a Mexican family split by the U.S. border. The Times-Standard put two of its reporters on the street to give us a look at homelessness in Eureka. In journalese, this is called "enterprise reporting." Enterprise stories are in-depth and proactive rather than reactive. That means that the news organization sought out a story rather than responded to a press release or event.

New Times-Standard Managing Editor Rich Somerville is a former research associate of the Readership Institute and a true believer in enterprise reporting. It's great news for Humboldt County readers that MediaNews owner Dean Singleton thinks he can fight his newspaper battle against Rob Arkley on substance.

This represents a major change. Over the past two decades, most newsrooms, especially in Singleton-owned papers, became workshops where reporters were expected to turn out as many as four stories a day. When at Gannett in the early '90s, I was once given two days to do one story. I considered that a great luxury.

I cheer on all enterprise reporting initiatives. But if you have any real respect for your readers, enterprise reporting requires time and resources. If a newspaper isn't willing to give it and reporters aren't willing to do the hard work, they shouldn't take on the project.

So let's get back to the Times-Standard's story on homelessness.

We need more in-depth reporting on this issue. In 2005 I sent 24 students out into Humboldt County to report on poverty. They conducted more than 100 interviews and we barely scratched the surface on what it means to be poor in this area. We did discover that poor people want their stories told, if only someone would seek them out and listen.

That's not what the T-S's self-described "Fat Guys" did. In their story, they talked to few people. You learn from the articles how being on the streets affected James Faulk and Chris Durant, but little to nothing about how actual homeless people think or feel.

In a good first-person story, the "I" is never the story. That the Fat Guys told us more about themselves than about street people is a result of the second problem with the series. They spent only two days on the street. How can any reporter expect to earn the trust and respect of people on the street in only two days?

But it is the third problem that's the most egregious. The Times-Standard began its investigation with a lie. If the Jason Blair scandal at the New York Times taught us anything, it's that honesty is everything. It's the first rule of journalism -- above accuracy, above clarity. I tell my students that honesty comes before all other journalistic rules, because you can't earn credibility without it. The Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics says this: "Conscientious journalists from all media and specialties strive to serve the public with thoroughness and honesty." It also says, "Journalists should be honest, fair and courageous in gathering, reporting and interpreting information."

This is what the Fat Guys said: "We concocted a story to fit in as best we could. We understood that Eureka's homeless population was small, and the community tight-knit, so we decided to be from out of town, and headed to Alaska to fish. ... Conversations with people at various locales told us that if we had claimed to be from here, we would have stuck out as interlopers."

How could they have gotten around the problem honestly? They could have flown down to San Francisco and hopped the bus north. If anyone asked where they were from, they'd have been able to say without lying, that they were just off the bus from the Bay Area. Or they could have done that from Crescent City. Or more effectively, they could have driven north or south and thumbed their way back. That would also have given them some good stories to trade with the people they met.

I don't think I'd have the guts to do that story, but if I did and someone asked me who I was, I think I'd have to say that I was a journalist spending some time on the streets to see what it is like being homeless. As a journalist, I've found repeatedly that only when you fess up do people offer you their own honest take on a situation. You can't expect people to be honest and open with you if you aren't honest and open with them.

In 2005, the Spokesman-Review in Washington hired a private detective to adopt an online persona as a homosexual minor to see if the mayor would try to entice him into having sex. The newspaper industry trade magazine Editor & Publisher then asked 10 respected newspaper editors across the country about that tactic, and not one of them approved. Anders Gyllenhaal, editor of the Star-Tribune in Minneapolis, said this: "Fundamentally, you don't misrepresent who you are. That is a problem." And Amanda Bennett, then editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer said this at the time: "I don't permit deception; I would not allow it. We go into reporting in a straighter way. We are not private investigators, we are journalists. Undercover is a method of the past."

Still, I would like to see more enterprise reporting from the Times-Standard. I'd like to see more from the Reporter, the North Coast Journal, the Arcata Eye and the Lumberjack as well. But the stories have to be done right. That requires time, effort and guts.

Marcy Burstiner is an assistant professor of journalism and mass communication at Humboldt State University.

On conflicts of interest: Published by the NCJ Nov. 30 2006

Arkley's voodoo

by MARCY BURSTINER

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You can't underestimate the level of Balloon Track paranoia. That's what recently hired Times-Standard editor Rich Somerville told us exactly two weeks before the election.

If you compare coverage by the Eureka Reporter and the Times-Standard of the Rob Arkley-proposed shopping center on the former railroad property, it seems as if both are a bit prickly on the subject, and not just over whether to call it a "tract" or a "track."

Somerville had referred to an Oct. 19 story in the Eureka Reporter with the headline, "Balloon Track Opinions Polled" and a subhead that read "Couple claiming to be with Times-Standard surveys businesses along the Waterfront." The Reporter's story told how some business owners felt that the people "claiming" to be from the T-S had tried to pressure them into admitting that they'd been pressured into supporting the Marina Center development.

It turns out that the T-S had sent a team of reporters to survey all the businesses in the vicinity of the shopping center that Eureka Reporter owner Rob Arkley has proposed for the Balloon Track. On Oct. 31, the T-S's Ann Johnson-Stromberg explained that her paper decided to poll businesses after "rumors surfaced over several months regarding business owners being pressured." The T-S did find a few people, unidentified in the story and accompanying poll, who said that they felt they'd been pressured to support the project and one person, also unidentified, who said that Rob Arkley himself directly pressured him.

A week earlier, in explaining its decision to endorse Larry Glass, Ron Kuhnel and Mike Jones for the Eureka City Council, the T-S had this to say about the Balloon Track issue: "The sides have lined up like the English and French at Agincourt. Seems like everyone is being sucked into this longtime political rivalry, whether they want to or not, and that includes newspapers as well as candidates. It is assumed that The Eureka Reporter, the Arkleys' free newspaper that went daily this year, is the mouthpiece of the Marina Center. Therefore, says conventional wisdom, the traditional paper in town, the Times-Standard, must be the anti-Arkley publication ... In truth, for the record, the Times-Standard has not made up its mind about the Marina Center."

Since no one has asked my opinion on the issue, I'm assuming I'm not the conventional wisdom that's been talking that trash about the T-S. And speaking of paranoia, Kuhnel, the candidate who won the endorsement of the T-S but whose vote count as of the preliminary count fell 81 short of winning the election, did ask my opinion, but not on the Marina Center. He wondered how much effect a subliminal message in a newspaper photo and story placement might have on undecided voters.

It turns out that the day before the election the assumed mouthpiece of the Marina Center ran a front page story with this headline: "Police investigating reported homicide in Old Town." What, you say, does that have to do with either the Balloon Track or the election? Well, above the headline was a photo of the front of an S Street house where parolee Anthony Evans had been found bleeding to death. Off to the side, and clear as can be, are two campaign signs for Kuhnel and one for La Vallee. On the other side of the house is a Halloween faux gravestone and finally, crossing the driveway directly in the path of the photographer Tyson Ritter's camera lens is a black cat. So that frames, in the same photo, Kuhnel, La Vallee, a gravestone and a black cat, all above the words "police" and "homicide." And while I haven't sent a team of reporters to survey people, I would bet that there are 81 registered Eureka voters who get the willies when they see a black cat around Halloween time.

Meanwhile, you didn't really need to assume that the Eureka Reporter is the mouthpiece of the Marina Center after reading the paper's Sept. 30 editorial on purchase of the Balloon Track by the paper's owner. The 498-word editorial began this way: "Rob and Cherie Arkley should be commended for their purchase of the nearly 40-acre blighted, polluted and at times dangerous Balloon Track." Further in the editorial is this observation: "...the Arkleys' purchase signals a positive, forward-looking era that will launch a small renaissance of new businesses, new homes for existing businesses, some residences and many jobs that go with all of the businesses that will hopefully find a home at the Arkleys' proposed Marina Center."

I'd hate to be in Wendy Butler's shoes these days. It was her job to cover Security National's news conference two days earlier announcing the Balloon Track purchase, a conference at which Cherie Arkley spoke and offered a champagne toast. (Although I might have been more loath to be Ritter, whose job that day was to take the photo of said toast.) When I used to write for an online financial publication, I often wrote rather harsh articles about one particular stock even though I knew it was a favored holding of the publication's owner. I knew it because every time I filed a story on it, he e-mailed me without fail to tell me how much of an imbecile he thought I was. But that was at a time when I could afford to lose my job. These days I have a 20-month-old daughter to raise and bills to pay.

By the way, have I told you how great the HSU administration is?

Marcy Burstiner is an assistant professor of journalism and mass communication at Humboldt State University. She once taught Eureka Reporter photographer Tyson Ritter, but as it was in a credit/no credit class she feels no disclosure is necessary at this time.