{"id":1160,"date":"2026-08-07T17:19:25","date_gmt":"2026-08-07T17:19:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev-testinglink.com\/projects\/civilorg\/?p=1160"},"modified":"2026-08-07T17:19:25","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T17:19:25","slug":"project-reconnect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev-testinglink.com\/projects\/civilorg\/project-reconnect\/","title":{"rendered":"Project Reconnect"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Pat Ford<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

It seemed the Colorado Springs business community might never agree with the local paper,\u00a0The Gazette,<\/i>\u00a0on anything. Local business long complained of an anti-business bias and lack of sophistication in\u00a0The Gazette’s<\/i>\u00a0business coverage.<\/span><\/p>\n

But after meeting together in focus groups last summer, Gazette editor Steve Smith says the two sides found a view they held in common: “We were doing a really crummy job.”<\/span><\/p>\n

The Gazette’s<\/i>\u00a0effort to reconnect with business readers by hiring reporters, adding more column inches for business coverage and launching a special Monday business section called “Inside Track,” is one of the products of Project Reconnect, an undertaking of the Change Committee of the American Society of Newspaper Editors funded in part by the Pew Center for Civic Journalism.<\/span><\/p>\n

The project teamed four daily newspapers with four college journalism schools to attempt to close the distance that had grown between the papers and certain groups of their readers. In Colorado Springs, it was business readers but in Raleigh, NC,\u00a0The News & Observer<\/i>\u00a0sensed a disconnect with the working man. The Fredericksburg, VA,\u00a0Freelance Star<\/i>\u00a0suspected African-American readers were turned off by its extensive Civil War coverage. And at\u00a0The State<\/i>\u00a0in Columbia, SC, religious readers complained their concerns were largely excluded from the paper.<\/span><\/p>\n

Each team took a different route to rapprochement but all began by listening to the disaffected readers in focus groups.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Gazette’s<\/i>\u00a0decision to launch a new business section was, by far, the most aggressive response to reader feedback. The three other papers involved in the project report little institutional change but all say they learned from the readers and made small adjustments that they believe have improved both relationships with the targeted readers and the overall quality of the paper.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
In Raleigh, The News & Observer wrote about Garner, a blue-collar community, by having a team of journalists and a group of residents write side-by-side stories. There were key differences in nuance and tone.<\/i><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Take, for example, The State’s experience with readers who described themselves as “devoutly religious.” During focus groups, those readers objected to being lumped together and described in ways they believe are inaccurate. “Evangelical Christians are not all fundamentalists. All fundamentalists are not in the Christian Coalition,” is how University of South Carolina Journalism Professor Ernest Wiggins summarized their sentiments in an interview. “To paint them with the same brush is poor journalism.”<\/span><\/p>\n


\nAvoiding Labels<\/strong><\/span>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

Carolyn Click,\u00a0The State’s<\/i>\u00a0religion reporter, says the staff took that message to heart. “We’ve stopped labeling people. We don’t just use that ‘conservative Christian’ shorthand but give more detail.”<\/span><\/p>\n

However, Click says, the staff was more wary of the group’s criticism that\u00a0The State<\/i>\u00a0seems to excise the “faith component” of general news stories. Religious readers wanted reporters to include in their stories, and pursue in their reporting, references to God made by politicians or sports figures. But, Click says, “People will use that. You have to be careful to be sure it’s legitimate.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Fredericksburg\u00a0Freelance Star<\/i>\u00a0editor Ed Jones is promising more stories about African American history after conducting surveys and focus groups on the paper’s Civil War coverage. Located in the heart of Civil War country, the paper treats history as a beat. Barely a day goes by without a story about a nearby battlefield or events that took place 135 years ago.<\/span><\/p>\n

African American readers questioned the need for so many articles and the purpose of certain specific items that appeared in the paper, according to Barbara Baylor Hines and Connie Frasier, the Howard University professors who worked with Jones.<\/span><\/p>\n

One editorial cartoon, in particular, they say, generated heated discussion in the focus group. It showed Martin Luther King astride a horse with Confederate generals Jackson and Lee, telling them, “Someone has to sit in back” — an observation on Virginia’s practice of celebrating Jackson-Lee Day on the same day as Martin Luther King Day. Hines and Frasier say African Americans in the focus groups were offended by the drawing, by the reference to sitting in back, and by the cartoon’s seeming acceptance of the coupling of the holidays, which they say outrages many African Americans.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jones says he expected to find African Americans less interested in Civil War coverage than white readers but was surprised by just how uninterested they were. He recalls one woman saying, “I shut down completely. I’m not interested at all. I move on immediately.”<\/span><\/p>\n


\nSeeking Relevancy<\/strong><\/span>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

Jones says he sees the paper’s duty as making the coverage more relevant to African-Americans and better explaining local interest in the topic but not reducing the paper’s commitment to the Civil War.<\/span><\/p>\n

At the Raleigh\u00a0News & Observer,<\/i>\u00a0Project Reconnect culminated in a major Sunday spread — stripped across the top of the front page, jumping to three full pages inside — on the nearby, blue-collar suburb of Garner. Part of the project was written by newspaper staff and part was written by Garner residents.<\/span><\/p>\n

Metro editor Ned Barnett says he thought the side-by-side comparison would reveal the gap between readers and writers.<\/span><\/p>\n

Barnett says he was particularly interested in working-class readers because they appear to be drifting away from papers. As they drift, he says, papers stop trying to appeal to them; they offer more contextual stories, think pieces, punditry, and the audience narrows even more.<\/span><\/p>\n

“We are exploring what we can do to make different kinds of groups want to read the paper every day,” says Barnett.<\/span><\/p>\n

Focus groups and surveys turned up familiar criticism: The paper has a liberal bias; it favors alternative lifestyles over old-fashioned values; it’s full of bad news. But when the Sunday project ran last fall, a surprising thing happened. Both the trained reporters and the uncoached citizens wrote about the same thing: Garner’s rapid growth.<\/span><\/p>\n


\nChecking Tone and Nuance<\/strong><\/span>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

The differences between the two sets of stories were in tone. The journalists took the traditional, nostalgic view of the disappearing countryside. The readers focused on practical issues such as traffic and overcrowded schools.<\/span><\/p>\n

Barnett says it was heartening to see that the paper and the readers shared the same basic concerns. But, he says, the project showed that it will take more than a big Sunday spread to hold on to those readers.<\/span><\/p>\n

“What we found is that when we put a lot of resources into looking at a place, we do generate an accurate picture of what we see. The question is, why does it take something like this to get us into this town; why is the receiver so often turned off.<\/span><\/p>\n

“We have to find a way to listen more, to listen better. We have to show the media are not some know-it-all wise guys. Otherwise, papers won’t be able to survive.”<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

Pat Ford is a former foreign correspondent for National Public Radio.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Pat Ford It seemed the Colorado Springs business community might never agree with the local paper,\u00a0The Gazette,\u00a0on anything. Local business long complained of an anti-business bias and lack of sophistication in\u00a0The Gazette’s\u00a0business coverage. But after meeting together in focus groups last summer, Gazette editor Steve Smith says the two sides found a view they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[83,71,78,100],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-catalyst-by-date","category-civic-catalyst","category-research-topics","category-spring-1998"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev-testinglink.com\/projects\/civilorg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev-testinglink.com\/projects\/civilorg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev-testinglink.com\/projects\/civilorg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev-testinglink.com\/projects\/civilorg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev-testinglink.com\/projects\/civilorg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1160"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dev-testinglink.com\/projects\/civilorg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1185,"href":"https:\/\/dev-testinglink.com\/projects\/civilorg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1160\/revisions\/1185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev-testinglink.com\/projects\/civilorg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev-testinglink.com\/projects\/civilorg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev-testinglink.com\/projects\/civilorg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}