Monthly Archives: July 2008

Using Twitter as a news pipeline

July 31, 20086:30 p.m.

Interesting discussion by Chris O’Brien on a PBS site, MediaShift Idea Lab, about using Twitter to report news. Eagle Courts reporter Ron Sylvester experimented with news reporting on Twitter during a recent trial, and we were excited about the results – and especially surprised by the number of people who found him to follow his reports, even though we hadn’t publicized the Twitter coverage. (The American Bar Association took note of Ron’s Twitter coverage, too.)

In addition, we send tweets through the day with Wichita Eagle headlines.

O’Brien’s right that there are some drawbacks to Twitter as a breaking news source – but also some significant reasons for newsrooms to plug in to a new way of sending information out and getting information in from people who are seeing news happen.

By Sherry Chisenhall | Filed under Headlines, Kansas.com, News content, Technology, Web/Tech | Comments Off

Why we ran the photo containing a racial slur

July 27, 20085:54 a.m.

Some might find the photo on the front page of Sunday’s paper of a defaced Obama sign objectionable.
We debated whether to run a photo of something that we could so easily describe in words.
Tell someone that a campaign sign of a black candidate was defaced with a racial slur, and it’s not hard to imagine what the sign said or what it looked like.
On one hand, we thought that running the photo might be fanning the flames of racism. That we were insensitive to older readers who lived through some of the painful experiences of the civil rights movement. That we were helping to spread a message scrawled by a bigot that only a few people would have seen before the sign was taken down.
On the other hand, some felt strongly that we should shine a light on racism that still exists in our community and not hide it.
The article by Christina Woods states that the Obama campaign is furthering a dialogue on race.
The photo should also spark discussion.
By running the photo we are saying that this isn’t typical behavior. This is wrong.
We didn’t want it to be a dominant photograph on the front page, because we didn’t feel like the sentiment expressed dominates our reality today.
It is a vestige of an ugly past. But as Christina’s article points out, our future is much more hopeful.

By Jean Hays | Filed under Current Affairs, Newspaper ethics, Politics | Comments (3)

A reminder on our comment policies

July 21, 20081:26 p.m.

Here’s a reminder of our terms of use for Kansas.com message and comment boards. As I’ve explained here in the past, we don’t routinely monitor user comments, but when an offending comment is flagged to our attention, we’ll remove it if it violates the terms of use. The most common reason comments are removed is if they are defamatory or abusive.

While that occasionally sets a comment poster into a rant about censorship, we want this web site to be about civil, constructive and meaningful conversation. No one has a given right to use this site to post comments that are offensive.  The Web is wide open for you to create your own site if that’s the conversation you want to have.

If you’re a site user who is bugged by comments that you find off-topic or offensive, please don’t hesitate to flag them for review. We’ll be glad to do that to keep these pages open for civil communication.

By Sherry Chisenhall | Filed under Kansas.com, News content, Newspaper ethics, People, Reader issues, Web/Tech | Comments (3)

Check out Eagle’s new e-edition

July 11, 200811:35 a.m.

Yesterday The Eagle launched an electronic version of the newspaper – clickable images of the actual newspaper pages that allow readers to zoom in and read stories, look at photos and view advertising from the printed edition of the paper. The “e-Eagle” is available for now at no cost, but within a week or so, it will require a subscription and log-in.

You can find the e-Eagle from the Kansas.com home page each day by clicking on the link near the top left-hand rail.

By Sherry Chisenhall | Filed under Kansas.com, News content, Reader issues, Technology, Web/Tech | Comments (5)

Are the right people giving up golf?

July 11, 200811:26 a.m.

News reports in recent months indicate that across the nation, numbers of golfers are declining as people give up the game because they lack time to play. Here’s hoping that the people who are quitting are the ones who keep spitting sunflower seed shells on the greens.

By Sherry Chisenhall | Filed under Current Affairs, People | Comments Off

Faith & Values section placement

July 11, 200811:19 a.m.

A couple of readers have written to ask us to move the Faith & Values section, published Saturdays, in front of an automotive advertising section that currently is positioned in front of the Faith section. They want to know why a news section would be placed behind advertising, and wonder what message it sends about how we prioritize faith news.

I think it sends a very strong message that The Eagle publishes a section with faith news, and devotes the front of a section to it. Last week I was looking at several newspapers from larger cities, and they all gave faith news a single page (or three-fourths of a page) inside an entertainment section, or on the back page of the section. One reader wanted us to remove entertainment news from the back of the Faith section, feeling that it devalued the religion stories.

I don’t see it that way. Entertainment is an important topic for thousands of our readers on the weekend, and that content is important to help people plan their free time. We chose to make faith stories a higher priority and give them a more prominent position. I think that speaks volumes about our priorities.

The section is behind the automotive advertising for a key reason – advertisers pay most of the newspaper’s costs for gathering and printing news, including for a prominent position such as the automotive section. Without those advertisers, we wouldn’t be able to offer the range of content we do on Saturday: news, sports, home and garden features, religion, and entertainment.

We have to find a balance of meeting the needs of readers and advertisers both. In addition, automotive advertising is very popular with readers, especially on Saturday. Faith & Values is right behind that section, so it shouldn’t be very hard to locate. Nor should our priorities for topics we consider important to cover.

By Sherry Chisenhall | Filed under Headlines, News content, Reader issues | Comments (2)

Who doesn’t know Sebelius is a Democrat?

July 7, 20086:51 p.m.

A reader took us to task for recent story headlined, “Governor Warns of Revenue Shortfall.” In the fourth paragraph, reporter David Klepper attributes a quotation from Kathleen Sebelius this way: “said Sebelius, a Democrat.” The reader, another David, wonders why we had to refer to her party, and what implication we were trying to make – that if the governor were a Republican, there would be no revenue shortfall?

Sometimes, a Democrat is just a Democrat. The reference to the governor’s party wasn’t meant as an implication of anything other than identifying her political party. One thing to keep in mind as Sebelius’ name floats as a potential vice president candidate – stories about her are being read online across the country as people seek to learn more about her. Such seemingly minor details help readers less familiar with Kansas politics. So the party affiliation – while extraneous to some – can aid clarity for thousands of other readers.

By Sherry Chisenhall | Filed under Current Affairs, Headlines, News content, Newspaper ethics, People, Politics, Reader issues | Comments (6)

One new American’s thoughts on America

July 7, 20086:27 p.m.

Check out this terrific column by Adrian Pratt, publisher of the Centre Daily Times in State College, Pa. The CDT is a sister paper of ours, also owned by McClatchy. Adrian’s column about being sworn in as a U.S. citizen last week is beautifully written.

By Sherry Chisenhall | Filed under Current Affairs, Headlines, News content, People | Comments (2)

Update on changes to stock listings

July 7, 20086:23 p.m.

A week after we eliminated most of our printed stock listings, phone calls are slowing down. We’ve taken a little under 200 phone calls or emails. Five years ago, when we reduced our stock listings to a single page, we took 1,500 phone calls.

The decrease in calls from angry readers is open to interpretation, but one probable explanation is that a dominant majority of our readers access stocks information on the Web, from Kansas.com or one of dozens of other sites that offer up-to-the-minute quotes.

I do understand why those 200 readers are angry. A reader named Melinda left me a voice mail asking me to share the numbers of complaints and subscription cancellations we’ve had. She’s furious that we dropped the listings, and hopes other stock-users have joined her in protest. I’ve had the same feeling toward companies I’m angry at – and I’ve hoped that thousands of people joined me in protesting a decision I didn’t like about rates, service or products.

In this case, though, we’ve had one subscription cancellation. A caveat: Unless a reader specifies that he/she is canceling because of stock listings, I wouldn’t be able to pinpoint a cancellation to the stocks decision. However, so far, we’ve seen no spike in general cancellations.

None of that means we don’t care that we’ve upset readers. We do. I recognize that some of our readers don’t have computers, or don’t want to be tied to them for news. Because we serve tens of thousands of readers each day, we have to focus our available space on features that are of use and interest to the widest range of readers. I know that explanation doesn’t hold much water when you’re angry or your routine has been upended – and I’ve been on the other side of unpopular decisions as a consumer. Our hope is that readers find much more value than stock listings to bring them back to the printed paper each morning.

By Sherry Chisenhall | Filed under News content, People, Reader issues, Web/Tech | Comments Off

Discussing Colombian hostage story with a reader

July 3, 20083:48 p.m.

Sherry: I was in NY yesterday, and traveling back to Wichita. Throughout the day, there was massive TV news coverage (at least on CNN) about the release of the Colombian hostages. John McCain was involved to some degree. Certainly the story generated national attention, and parallels to the Iranian hostages were drawn. There are current hostage situations in other parts of the world, as well. I couldn’t get all the details, as I was traveling, but assumed the Eagle would have an in-depth article on the front page. I was very surprised that the article was relegated to the back page (8A) of today’s paper, with no mention of McCain’s involvement (or whether he was just grandstanding). The front page was almost all local news, including a soft article on the parks.

I am disappointed that the Eagle relegated the hostage release article to the back page, and am curious as to why. Does the Eagle think Kansans don’t care what happens on the national/international front?

**********

“Douglas, thanks for your note. I would be glad to talk about our philosophy of local vs. national/international news, and the factors that drove this story decision.

I have a very different perspective from what you describe in your email. Today, we ran full-length versions of six national or international news stories. We ran “briefs” of six others. We chose those six stories – from a menu of hundreds of national/international stories moved by our wire services yesterday – because we believed they were the most relevant and/or interesting news of the day from outside our region. We devoted more space to the Colombian hostage story than any other non-local article in today’s A-section. In my view, any story that rises to the top 1% or 2% of news stories available for the day isn’t being dismissed in its news value.

In addition, because readers often like to flip the newspaper over before turning inside, the back page of the A-section (whether it’s page 8, 12, 24 or whatever) is generally one of the most popularly read pages of the paper, after the front page. That’s where the hostage story  was published.

Newspapers across the country, regardless of size, varied widely in where they played the hostage story. Some, such as the L.A. Times and Kansas City Star, ran the story on the front page. Others, such as the Boston Globe, St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Baltimore Sun, did not. Fewer mid-size newspapers, such as the Eagle, put the story on the front page. (You can  find front pages each day on the Newseum’s site.)

We define our primary mission as highlighting local news that our readers can’t get anywhere else. While you may dismiss the parks story as “soft,” I would urge you to drive out to one of the local lakes this weekend. There you will find thousands of people who create small cities with the mass of population camping at the waterways during the summer holidays. That will explain to you why, as of lunch hour, the parks story is the sixth most-read story on our Web site.

When I plug the Colombian hostages into Google, the top sites – of dozens that have this story today – are msnbc.com, yahoo.com, nytimes.com, npr.com, cnn.com, time.com, foxnews.com. The story is available everywhere. The story describing camping conditions at the major state parks is not.

While I’m sorry you’re disappointed in the positioning of the hostage story, I’m confident that the best service the Eagle can provide for the local community we serve is to focus our finite resources – reporting power and news space – on stories our readers can’t find anywhere else.”

By Sherry Chisenhall | Filed under Current Affairs, Headlines, News content, Reader issues | Comments (1)