About 18 months ago, I considered writing a column on The Oregonians inconsistent record in reporting on mental health issues.
Reflecting the broader society, too often the newspaper left people who are mentally ill on the periphery of its journalistic vision.
More often than not, stories were published on a case-by-case basis, depending on the latest crisis. The bigger picture remained, not ignored, but not systematically addressed, either.
The immediate story over, reporters and editors would turn their attentions to other, perhaps less perplexing, topics.
During the past year, the newspaper shifted gears dramatically.
One result was a solid, detailed, three-day package that appeared last Sunday through Tuesday. The stories focused on deaths of mentally ill patients and tied the deaths to lapses in mental health care provided by the state and counties.
Those stories, by reporter Michelle Roberts, concluded a year that began with an occasional Page One series illuminating the complexities and pain in the lives of mentally ill people people who might end up in jail cells instead of in hospitals, face serial unemployment, or encounter racial bias in the mental health system.
Stories also told of the frustration of mental health care workers who come up against often uncooperative, sometimes dangerous, patients.
Although each story explored distinct aspects of the lives of mentally ill persons and the system intended to support them, the articles also illustrated issues beyond those of any one person.
The three-day series last week arose from a defined effort to take the reporting further still, to detect if and where problems form a pattern.
Roberts and her editor, Susan Gage, began by examining the circumstances of a suicidal man who three times threatened to jump from the Fremont Bridge. Readers might remember the dramatic photograph by Ross William Hamilton of the second jump attempt, in which a Portland police officer nearly was pulled over the bridge railing.
Officers pulled the ill man to safety that time, but within two weeks he carried out his fatal jump.
When Roberts and Gage discovered the erratic aid given the depressed man after the first two suicide attempts, they and Stephen Engelberg, a managing editor, took their investigation farther.
Engelberg said last week that the one case was not enough to demonstrate systemic failings. They needed a more demanding test.
Using state records with names of patients who had died, their doctors and other key information blacked out, Roberts, Gage and researcher Lynne Palombo worked backward, tying the few facts they had to police and other records.
Eventually, they had not only the names of the dead patients, but also medical records and the names of family members who could add still more background. The research was painstaking.
The amount of reporting beneath the surface and not visible to readers is even greater than what could be seen, said Sandy Rowe, editor of The Oregonian.
The stories of confused and sad people and their deaths could have been sensational in tone, but that did not happen.
Rowe described them as even-handed, rigorous and dispassionate.
They were. The tightly told, reflective stories needed no added emotion to underscore the devastation in the lives of the patients and of their loved ones.
An important key to all of the stories in the past year was the ability and determination to let one story build upon another, to use the skills learned in one story to advance future reporting.
In the process, Gage said, We knew we would stumble onto something.
They might have stumbled, but not by chance.
The results have been intelligently presented stories that likely will contribute to better public discussion of support for people who most need it.
