Editors have many ways to discover what readers want from their newspaper, but none has quite the impact that John Jackson did when he looked across a newsroom conference table and asked, “Why is the Neighborhoods section so thin?”
Polls can — and do — tell editors that readers want more local news, more national and international news, less bias and better printing.
But, editors do not hear the message in quite the same way that they do when it comes from a member of a Courier-Journal reader group.
That’s why we’re so grateful to Jackson and 10 other men and women who have just finished a five-month tour of duty as unpaid reader-advisors to The Courier’s top editors.
We recruit reader groups periodically to give editors a better understanding of how people read the paper — or don’t — of how they react to what they read and what they find lacking. Their responses give life to the dry results of polls and breadth to editors’ contacts with our community.
When we recruit for the groups, we look for thoughtful, reflective people with different backgrounds and life experiences. We try to draw from different geographic areas, ages and political perspectives, to get a mix of people who are likely to see things differently.
Then we invite those people to sit at a conference table in The Courier-Journal Building to discuss the newspaper with Managing Editor Ben Post and other top editors. They meet once a month, focusing on different areas of coverage at each meeting. When they discuss a section such as Metro or Business, the editors of those sections come to listen carefully.
Reader groups aren’t scientific, but they are always interesting.
Part of what makes them interesting is the way members react to each other’s reactions.
For example, the two youngest members of our most recent group, Gusti Newquist and David Helton, were different in many ways, but their approach to reading — or not reading — the newspaper is strikingly similar.
They don’t have much use for the newspaper during the week because they get most of their news from electronic media.
“I know you all like your paper newspaper, but I live online,” Helton said.
Newquist nodded vigorously.
They want more news, especially stories from our Neighborhoods sections, online. We expect that to happen by the end of this month.
The group’s ideas and observations spanned many issues. Among them:
The newspaper needs to do more with national and international news. Briefs are useful, but we need to provide more depth. “What I look to the C-J for is the details, the meat and potatoes,” said Rocky Toll, who works at Ford’s Louisville Assembly plant and lives in Shepherdsville. “I would like to see more details.”
The readers want us to work harder to link what’s happening nationally and internationally with life at home. If Congress moves to change social security, they want to know how it will touch people here and how they feel about it. If the U.S. talks about selling tobacco to China, they view that as a local story that needs local insights.
“I want a Courier-Journal with more heft,” said Catherine Sutton, who teaches at Bellarmine University.
Members of the group see bias in our coverage of western Louisville, city-county merger and police issues. “I’m really disappointed in The Courier-Journal for snowballing” merger, one said. She found only one story on merger that she felt fairly presented both sides. Some members of the group felt strongly that we present a very negative picture of western Louisville in the daily paper and don’t give broad enough play to the better news that appears in the Neighborhoods sections.
While the Indiana edition has gotten better, Don Sodrel of New Albany said, the Indiana section contains too much Louisville news. “We would like to see the Indiana section be the Indiana section,” he said. “That’s the biggest complaint that I hear.”
They want more Neighborhoods stories, and they want them in all editions. Perhaps, they suggested, Neighborhoods should appear twice a week. And, we should carry more about non-profit agencies, schools and libraries.
While the group wants more local news, they think we’ve overdone some issues, including efforts to build a new downtown arena and attract an NBA team. They found our coverage of former University of Kentucky basketball coach Rick Pitino’s transformation to the University of Louisville overwrought. Some of the group’s ideas result in immediate changes or stories. Some simply feed into editors’ long-term thinking.
And, some provide important, lasting impressions that no professional researcher can match.
“They reinforced for me the importance that this newspaper has for this community and its relationship to people who have no voice,” said Post. “It showed me the affection that people have for this newspaper.”
Post plans another reader group in the fall. If you’d like to volunteer or suggest someone as a member, drop Post a note at The Courier-Journal, 525 West Broadway, P.O. Box 740031, Louisville, Ky. 40201-7431.
