Larry L. Rose

Sunday, April 23, 2000

Getting the facts, and perceptions behind them, right

  There are two major aspects of copy editing that affect daily newspapers. The first is taught in journalism school. That's content editing. Get the facts right.
   The second is not taught at journalism school and is practiced at too few newspapers. That's editing for perception.
   The first is difficult enough, but the second sometimes seems impossible because it involves getting into people's heads.
   The Caller-Times is one of 165 daily newspapers in the country participating in an awareness training to help us frame stories through the eyes of others.
   As part of this exercise, we've been doing a content analysis of the newspaper to examine our sources, as well as examine the people whose names and photos appear in the newspaper. The examination framework comes from the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education. It is designed to help journalists look at people through the prisms of race, class, gender, generation and geography.
   Design Editor Alberto Martinez has been through a portion of the Maynard training, and he and Managing Editor Deborah Fisher are leading discussions with the news staff on the first part of the analysis.
   The full results of the analysis aren't complete, but one item shows that the sources we use for local stories are out of balance along gender lines: 67 percent of our sources during the analysis were male; 31 percent female. The male percentage on the front page was even higher. When the analysis is complete, we'll share the results with readers.
   Another exercise in perception takes place this summer in a program that trains minority journalists to become copy editors. These professionals range in age from the mid 20s to the late 40s. They will go to California for six weeks from newspapers around the country.
   The first five weeks of training focus on the nuts and bolts of editing. In the sixth week, I provide case studies to challenge their judgment, perception and decision-making skills.
   Added to the case studies will be an April 14 Caller-Times story about grand jury indictments of school officials. In that story and in a separate box, we listed the judges assigned. With two of the three judges, we named the judges' spouses and occupations, and with one of those judges we listed her spouse's friendships.
   No problems factually as far as I know, but perception-wise, maybe.
   I think it was a mistake to include the spouses.
   An incident in the 1980s at the Dallas Morning News took a number of people by surprise. There, as here, we tried to present a mix of stories on the front page. If the page was filled with government-oriented stories for example, we'd try to add a lighter story for relief.
   One week, the state desk editors said they had an entertaining article with photos that would be good for the mix on Sunday.
   A large number of people got together somewhere in North Texas for a cookout, games and a good time every year. They called the event a raccoon hunt, although I don't recall that they did that. The story and photos were light and fun, and they ran in the center of the front page.
   A story at the bottom of the page had to be moved inside for a breaking news story later in the day.
   We had a political style, for balance and fairness, for that breaking news story. We ran candidates who announced for the presidency in a three-column position with a one-column mugshot at the bottom of the page.
   The next morning, we learned a lesson in perception. Although everything was factually correct, although the party story was separated from the bottom-of-the-page news story by an unrelated story, more than a thousand callers believed we had chosen to put the annual party story on the front page just because Jessie Jackson announced for the presidency.
   We didn't know then to look at a whole page through the prisms of race, class, gender, generation and geography.
   Speaking of generation, atop the Caller-Times front page Thursday was an article about a woman who lost her cat. We included the owner's age, 66, but not the age of her daughter who found the cat. The likely perception of why we did that - ageism. We failed to look at the story through the prism of generation. And in this case, what importance was the owner's age? No more than the friends of a judge's spouse.
   Looking through the five prisms will be a good exercise for the staff, and it wouldn't be a bad one for the whole community.
  

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