Don't fool yourself, the staffers in the bureaus feel like they're in the hinterlands; see what you can do to make them feel they're part of the "bright center"

Editors-in-chief tell their staffs that the future of newspapers lies in local news, ordinary news from ordinary neighborhoods where ordinary readers say they want to read about themselves. Those same editors speak of sending good reporters and editors out there to cover such news. Notice that the phrase "out there" means "not here," not in the bright center of the newsroom universe. Those same editors never say "out here."

Ambitious young reporters know that local-local news does not lead to foreign correspondent assignment, probably not to the capital bureau, and maybe rot even to city hall. They see that the reward system prizes length and space and time, and closeness to the center of agenda-setting and hobnobbing with fast-track editors and "serious" subject matter, and none of that happens in the Cluck County bureau of two souls. Both junior.

They ask me how to get their managing editor to read their stories. He reads the city edition over his Cheerios, and never even glances at the zoned editions. They're not sure the executive editor has even heard of their bureau. Geography isolates them from the real actions and their imaginations color their futures drab.

Helpful newsroom managers recognize that people on the fringe need cultivation so they don't act fringy. Most of all, bureau staffers need a sense of belonging to larger organization, especially to the bright center where everything happens. So how does an overworked editor tend to the marginal people and still get the paper out?

Well, first you might decide that no one's marginal, neither the bureau reporter or the suburban reader. If you come to that conclusion, you've moved yourself out of the bright center. The real action for editors, as everyone knows, lies in important stories about important people written by important reporters and played in important sections.

You might decide that serving your readers by helping your reporters is more vital than meeting endlessly with other editors. That conclusion also flings you off the ladder upwards, because everybody knows that editors advance by impressing higher editors, usually in person.

You might decide to set an example for your peers by moving "out there" and becoming the model bureau editor, showing them all how old-fashioned ground-level newspapering meets the needs of modern corporate journalism. But everybody predicts that you might not get back to the bright center, and you might spend the rest of your career out there, with other faceless characters.

The problem isn't finding resources for covering out there, or finding staff to send out there, or even finding time to manage the people already stuck out there. The problem is the newsroom culture we have inherited. That culture values the center and downgrades everything not central as marginal. We reward centered people by making them more central. (By the way, I find this kind of thinking even in small papers, without bureaus).

How do you change such a strong cultural assumption and still get the paper out? Here are a few solutions, in increasingly radical order:

• Hire the best editors from small community papers, and put them in charge of regional bureaus.

• Hire people who live in a suburb to cover it.

• Pay bureau staffers more than downtown, and nominate only suburban stories for prizes. (Don't offer a prize for the best suburban story; the judges will award it to a series on highways to the suburbs.)

• Put the managing editor in an office van, operating by driving through the suburbs and communicating by cell phone.

• Break the large paper up into smaller papers with separate news staffs.

You won't adopt any of these measures because they all violate our inherited culture. So here's the secret: go write a few stories, yourself about ordinary people in the suburbs. They're more interesting than you or your newsroom.

Fry, an affiliate of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, is an independent writing coach in St. Petersburg, Fla. Call him at 813/866-3460.