{"id":1215,"date":"2026-08-07T18:06:32","date_gmt":"2026-08-07T18:06:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev-testinglink.com\/projects\/civilorg\/?p=1215"},"modified":"2026-08-07T18:06:32","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T18:06:32","slug":"e-mail-extends-reporters-reach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev-testinglink.com\/projects\/civilorg\/e-mail-extends-reporters-reach\/","title":{"rendered":"E-Mail Extends Reporters’ Reach"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Ken Sands
\nInteractive Editor
\nThe Spokesman-Review<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Idaho, known for its potatoes, neo-Nazis and outspoken politicians, was about to get another black eye. On a Monday morning in February, a state legislative committee killed a proposal to study whether to remove the word\u00a0squaw<\/b>\u00a0from 93 place names in Idaho.<\/span><\/p>\n

Once again, Idaho would be the focus of a racially charged news event. It would be the lead story in the next day’s\u00a0Spokesman-Review<\/i>. As reporters began calling legislators and human rights advocates for comment, I sent an e-mail message to the 750 members of our Idaho Reader Advisory Network.<\/span><\/p>\n

Within three hours, I had received 17 comments, representing a broad spectrum of opinion. I edited the comments into a 20-inch sidebar that added a community perspective too often ignored. And it also helped address this question: “Who voted these people into office?”<\/span><\/p>\n

My mission as an interactive editor is to experiment with ways to connect better with readers. Historically, newspapers have had difficulty cultivating readers as news sources. E-mail, I’ve discovered, can be an effective tool.<\/span><\/p>\n

With encouragement from Managing Editor Scott Sines, I started building the e-mail network in 1997 by contacting people who had sent e-mail comments to the newspaper’s Web site. I also began collecting the e-mail addresses of readers who submitted letters to the editor via e-mail. A few reporters and editors were also willing to pass along e-mail addresses.<\/span><\/p>\n

At first, I used the network primarily to solicit letters to the editor on hot-button topics for our Idaho edition. But I quickly realized the potential in involving readers before and during the news gathering process. As my e-mail list grew, I began targeting specific areas. I now have nine separate lists of names based on geographic locations in Idaho.<\/span><\/p>\n

For example, I asked Kootenai County residents to tell us whether they had problems with barking dogs. By the end of one work day, I forwarded to a reporter a dozen e-mail messages she used as the basis for a story.<\/span><\/p>\n

Another reporter was struggling to find patients of a small-town doctor accused of over-prescribing pain medication. An e-mail message produced several solid leads. Yet another simple query -“Do you have any crime problems in your neighborhood?” – led to an investigation of meth labs in an area becoming gentrified.<\/span><\/p>\n

I spoke of these examples at a February forum co-sponsored by the Pew Center. In the audience was Jim Godbold, executive editor of\u00a0The Register-Guard<\/i>\u00a0in Eugene, who decided to launch his own “virtual focus group.” He said he is both startled and excited by its immediate success.<\/span><\/p>\n

“I’m up to 75 members who range from anarchist to borderline white supremacist,” he wrote in a recent e-mail. His newspaper quoted eight unnamed players in a story about a university women’s basketball team, and he asked the focus group how they felt about the use of anonymous sources.<\/span><\/p>\n

“Got some\u00a0great<\/b>\u00a0responses…,” he wrote. “Anyway, it was exhilarating. People were actually thanking me for giving them an opportunity to comment on such a high-falutin’ journalistic topic. Bottom line for me is, this is way cool. These people are so interested in giving feedback to the paper, it’s almost scary.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Dianne Whitacre, transportation writer at\u00a0The Charlotte Observer<\/i>, has been collecting e-mail addresses since 1999 and now has 1,200 contacts in her database. Her e-mail address is listed at the bottom of every story she writes.<\/span><\/p>\n

When people respond on a particular query about such things as “litter,” “left turns” or “gas prices,” she stores their comments in a computer file labeled by topic. Then, when she needs the voice of a commuter, she retrieves names from the list and calls them for fresh quotes.<\/span><\/p>\n

“It really zeroes in on a target,” she said. “And it gives the story more of a personal context.”<\/span><\/p>\n

She also posts “fetchers” on the newspaper’s Web site that solicit reader ideas on specific topics. A recent fetcher asked whether readers had gotten lost because of bad directions from computer mapping programs.<\/span><\/p>\n

The response led to a terrific story. “We never could have gotten that information with man-on-the-street interviews,” Whitacre said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Last summer,\u00a0Spokesman-Review\u00a0<\/i>Editorial Page Editor John Webster created a database of everyone who had submitted letters to the editor. About 40% of the 2,500 names included an e-mail address. A link between this database and the e-mail program became functional in March, and the newspaper is gradually opening it up for use by reporters and editors.<\/span><\/p>\n

E-mail, obviously, has its limitations. The results of an e-mail query are not scientific, for example, and not everyone has access to the Internet. Sometimes readers “pop off” in an e-mail without thinking, and those responses typically aren’t publishable.<\/span><\/p>\n

But, in terms of effective communication with a large number of readers, e-mail holds great promise. Plus, it can be fun.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Ken Sands Interactive Editor The Spokesman-Review Idaho, known for its potatoes, neo-Nazis and outspoken politicians, was about to get another black eye. On a Monday morning in February, a state legislative committee killed a proposal to study whether to remove the word\u00a0squaw\u00a0from 93 place names in Idaho. Once again, Idaho would be the focus […]<\/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":[83,71,79,88],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-catalyst-by-date","category-civic-catalyst","category-online-civic-journalism","category-spring-2001"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev-testinglink.com\/projects\/civilorg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1215","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=1215"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dev-testinglink.com\/projects\/civilorg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1225,"href":"https:\/\/dev-testinglink.com\/projects\/civilorg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1215\/revisions\/1225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev-testinglink.com\/projects\/civilorg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev-testinglink.com\/projects\/civilorg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev-testinglink.com\/projects\/civilorg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}