Last Updated: November 09, 1999
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Explaining ourselves
This column ran in The Huntsville (Ala.) Times in April.
Ilike Janette Smith. I’ve never met her, and I like her. No matter that
she has some firm disagreements with me and the way we run The Times. She
reads the paper thoroughly and thoughtfully, and has for 30 years. That
makes her OK in my book.
This makes her OK, too: She feels strongly enough about her newspaper
to call the editor and tell him what she thinks.
“I hope you don’t think I’m just a critical person,” she said this past
week. I don’t.
Most of us hesitate to pick up the phone, chase down the person in charge
of whatever, and offer unsolicited advice on how to run that institution.
Who wants to take the chance that we’ll be told to mind our own business,
or made to feel stupid?
Too bad. Businesses and schools and non-profits and all sorts of other
enterprises would be better off if their customers or constituents were
more willing to volunteer opinions. That assumes, of course, that someone
at the receiving end is willing to listen.
Sometimes we don’t. The school principal is trained in education, and
doesn’t need some parent telling her how to run her school. The merchant
has run stores before, and doesn’t need the customer telling him how to
operate his business. The editors have been doing this for a long time;
they know what the news is.
In each case, the people in charge do ultimately need to make decisions.
But those decisions are more informed if we listen to the people we propose
to serve, even people with whom we disagree. If that’s true for other enterprises
— I told Janette Smith that if I ran an ice cream business, I’d sure want
to know if my customers didn’t like chocolate — it’s even more true for
newspapers. To be sure, we’re supposed to be talking to people, finding
out what’s on folks’ minds.
One reason for this little essay each Sunday is to give me ways to tell
you that it’s the official policy of the fellow with the mustache that
readers are worth listening to. I get to tell you what’s going on at the
paper and why; it’s only fair that you get to tell me what you think of
it.
That is not to say that the paper can follow every suggestion or accede
to every plea. Today’s newspaper is in 80,000-plus homes and has, I hope,
many more readers than that. All these people aren’t going to agree on
what they like in their coffee or in their politics or in their newspapers.
Besides, newspaper editors like to think that some enduring principles
of the profession ought not be thrown out to produce what some of my TV
news brethren term “a good show” that gets good ratings.
Those caveats aside, we learn by listening to individual readers, and,
over time, by synthesizing many conversations, many letters. Calls and
notes and e-mails to the newspaper are not presumptuous; they’re helpful.
(By the way: It’s P.O. Box 1487, Huntsville 35807. Or 532-4495, fax
532-4420. Or e-mail joed@htimes.com)
Janette Smith, the faithful reader, has called three times in the past
several years. She remembers each; she had a couple of suggestions about
syndicated columnists one time, and a suggestion for an editorial board
replacement another. This week, her message was more general: She wants
a greater proportion of national and international news in the paper, especially
on the front page.
“I’m the kind who watches C-SPAN,” she said. “I just enjoy the news.”
For her, the news is something like the China/military secrets controversy.
“I watched the Sunday talk shows and that’s all they talked about,” she
said. Her point is that we need more of that and fewer local stories on
the front page, especially local stories with feature angles.
We talked for some time. She told me about going to college in Florence
and moving here to work at Redstone Arsenal. I told her about our process
of choosing stories, about some of the considerations that go into that
process, about our reasons for emphasizing local news. (One reason: You
don’t get that information on the network talk shows.)
I also told her that the process is subjective as all get out. It’s
as inexact a process as your grandmother’s vegetable soup; you take what’s
on hand and attempt to make it tasty to most. Editors pick the stories
they think are important and that they think people who buy the paper want
to read. They make those choices based on their own experience, based on
precedent, based on a desire to serve the whole readership, and, importantly,
based on what we’ve heard from people.
I hope she understood that her call was an important part of that process
even if it didn’t result in a specific story being on the front page the
next day. I hope you do, too.
