It is the question that haunts every newspaper ombudsman. What does the reader really want? Sometimes, in the daily flurry of feedback on the demise of “Calvin and Hobbes” or our coverage of the Beltway Budget Boogaloo, we can miss the forest for the trees.
So a month ago, I convened a skull session with 11 Boston Globe readers. The goal was not to elicit everyone’s pet peeve or most recent aggravation but to generate a critique of the Globe’s priorities, performance and values.
The group — composed of six men and five women ranging from a rabbi to a social worker — reflected diverse interests and viewpoints. Most panelists relied on a variety of media sources, and a majority listed the Globe as one of their most trusted news outlets. Often the group fell short of certainty and consensus, but some provocative currents did emerge. (By the way, the views expressed here represent the panelists’ and not necessarily the ombudsman’s.)
Politics: There was a desire for the Globe to do a better job as a “newspaper of record” in covering candidates for the minor political offices that often are missed by press radar. “I hate going into a polling place having read the Globe pretty faithfully and seeing half the names on the list that I barely know about,” noted one participant. There was also strong support for the paper’s efforts to monitor the accuracy of candidate advertising and to expand that mandate to campaign rhetoric as well.
There wasn’t much enthusiasm, however, for election projects — like those the Globe has initiated under the rubric of public journalism — in which so-called “average citizens” are regularly asked their views on candidates and issues.
“I’m a little suspicious of attempts to pick a set of representatives, everyman and everywoman,” and then suggest that “what they say is what’s going on,” noted one member. Another called for more “leadership” on the part of the paper, asserting that “public forums often don’t clarify things very well.”
But the surprise to me was the attack on candidate endorsements, which apparently sow seeds of mistrust among some readers. One participant noted that when she reads an endorsement, “I always wonder what’s down the road” in the relationship between the pol and the paper. Clearly, some readers feel the process smacks of unsavory, back room dealing.
Privacy: The panel was unsure about the proper approach to the travails of the rich and famous — whether it be wars of the heart between William Koch and Catherine de Castelbajac or the business battle within the hotel-owning Saunders family. Panelists were evenly divided about whether the Globe should provide a regular forum for gossip and were wary of the fine line between information and voyeurism.
“If the real focus of the story is this squabble and who hates whom, that to me is not the story,” said one woman.
“I will read those stories and feel good about reading them if I can draw some kind of larger lesson,” added a male counterpart.
There was broader agreement about which lines not to cross when covering the victims of crime and tragedy. One panelist asserted that in an attempt to heighten reader interest in crime stories with “more heart-rending victim pictures, frequently people’s privacy is fundamentally violated.”
“If you’re simply sharing the person’s description of their loved one, that’s one thing,” said a group member, who spoke for many. “But when you start describing the tears, the shaking, when you start trying to lay on the emotional tone of what the reporter was seeing, I think that’s exploitive.”
Crime: The panelists weren’t squeamish about the need to report on violent crime in the Globe, but several felt that context and followup were often missing from the coverage.
“The courts, community policing, the causes of crime are things I think are crucially important. Individual crimes are not,” noted one participant. Another wanted more emphasis on “the responsibility of the neighborhood and the citizens, how we can diminish it.” Several others asked the Globe to follow cases more rigorously — from crime scene to sentencing — to provide a better sense of how the system functions. Trial results, complained one man, are “dumped on page 23 of the Metro section when a month ago it was the lead story. And we don’t ever hear what happens to these people.”
And finally: Several panelists said they’d like to see a changing of the guard, so to speak. One recommended that beat writers be regularly rotated to avoid stale, predictable perspectives on a subject. Another advocated the use of more nonjournalist guest columnists in the op-ed and Metro pages to weigh in on their areas of expertise.
But the best advice may have come from panelist Doug Cummings, who warned: “I don’t think you should underestimate your readers. That’s one of the curses of legislators. No offense, I’ve been one.”
