Our goal was to examine how the newspaper portrays young people in light of frequent public complaints that we unfairly focus too much attention either on bad news about youth or on high school and college sports.

Q: Please detail the process by which you implemented the initiative.

We started with the idea of examining broad themes of reader complaints about bias. The newsroom had previously looked at a number of specific practices that readers thought betrayed bias. We solicited reader comments in the newspaper and held reader discussion groups to explore reader ideas. The Journalism Credibility Project initiative – buttressed by national research – offered an opportunity to cast a wider net in defining bias and examining ways to make coverage fairer.

Michele McLellan, then the public editor and coordinator of the effort, distilled three broad interrelated themes from survey data and direct feedback from The Oregonian’s readers.

Readers frequently thought the newspaper:

Another theme that played in many areas, including fairness, was that readers often do not understand the purpose of specific stories. And absent that understanding, they tend to assume the worst motives.

Coverage of young people includes the complex issues they face.

The next step was to identify a topic area that was of keen interest to readers and that brought into play these major themes. We decided to focus on young people, teen-agers and those in their early 20s. A secondary goal was to create a process we could use to examine concerns about fairness in other areas.

The baseline question was whether or not the newspaper presented a fair picture of young people over time. After conducting a content analysis, interviewing a range of experts, including dozens of young people, we concluded that our report was too narrowly focused on sports, crime and public policy problems related to young people.

Two major changes in coverage came in summer 1999:

In fall 1999, the newspaper created a new youth beat designed to report directly on young people without typically going through official sources or agencies dealing with youth problems.

In January 2000, the newspaper shifted the weekly youth voices feature to the cover of the Living section. Also under way are efforts to increase coverage of high school competitions in nonsports activities and, in the long term, to work with a range of beats to bring more youth sources and perspectives to our main news report. Through all of this, we remain committed to aggressive coverage of public policy issues related to youth and to high school sports coverage.

Q: How easily did the newsroom come aboard? How did you handle communication, motivation, and commitment?

Reaction in the newsroom ranges from enthusiasm to skepticism. Younger reporters and those who cover education and other youth-related beats are the most enthusiastic. Others question whether more attention to everyday problems and concerns of young people will produce truly newsworthy stories.

McLellan and Bhatia have at various times updated the staff on the project. McLellan held discussions with virtually every team at the outset of the project and has continued to hold regular discussions with key staffers.

Q: Describe community outreach efforts related to the project.

Public feedback was important in developing the project. In particular, several editors and reporters met regularly during the summer with about a dozen high school students from around the area to talk about ways to improve. McLellan and Bhatia also wrote columns explaining the changes to readers and soliciting response.

Q: How aware were your colleagues in other newspaper departments of the credibility project?

The Zone, a page that highlights young people and the issues they care about, runs weekly.

We have kept the directors of the business-side departments informed of the newsroom plans. We consulted with staff from our Newspapers in Education program.

Q: Did the credibility initiative spark other ideas and/or changes in your newspaper? Please describe.

The youth initiative is far from complete. But we continue to see it as an opportunity to develop methods and models for broadening our sources and doing stories that give a fuller view of local communities. We also hope the study process can be used to examine concerns about bias in other topic areas.

Q: What were the most important lessons learned about credibility?

As with the crime initiative, we have learned:

Readers have good ideas for improving news coverage; they should routinely be part of the early discussions of content initiatives.

Michele McLellan's Public Editor columns explained to readers how and why youth coverage wash changing.

92% believe the youth initiative will make The Oregonian’s coverage of young people more fair and complete.

It’s important to ask fundamental questions about coverage, asking what parts of our coverage are shaped or possibly distorted by habit or because we have too few sources of information or because our beat structure produces a skewed picture.

Q: What were the toughest?

There is an inherent tension in any effort to expand definitions of news and to capture the everyday lives of communities without sacrificing the newsiness of the daily paper. It is tough for even the best journalists to distinguish between efforts that don’t work and efforts that don’t seem to work because they don’t look familiar.

As with the crime initiative, the youth initiative has required the staff to challenge old habits. This has been harder than the crime initiative because it involves the entire newsroom, not just one focused reporting team. As with the crime initiative, creating an opportunity for individual focus and leadership (McLellan’s in this case) has been key.

Q: If you had it to do over again, what would you do better or not at all?

As with the crime initiative, we have learned that we must do more to show the newsroom how the lessons of the youth initiative apply to other topics; that is a priority for 2000.

Q: How can newspapers continue to build credibility and increase public trust in the future?

The answer is the same as for the crime initiative. Newspapers will build trust if they consistently demonstrate that they are trying to meet the high standards of readers as well as those of the industry. We need to keep finding places within newspaper coverage such as crime and youth and go through a similar process. Coverage and topic-based initiatives are very powerful. In the long term, they will change public perceptions.