Members of our research team traveled extensively throughout the North American West, conducted individual interviews and group surveys, read thousands of print editions of Western newspapers and reviewed the story archives on many of their Web sites. To do these jobs, we followed a set of criteria shaped by our project’s Board of Governors, a group of 15 professionals with extensive backgrounds in journalism, education and natural resources. Their names and credentials appear in the appendix to this report.

Here is a descriptive snapshot of the board-shaped criteria that we applied in making our assessments of newsroom performance:

Accuracy and Clarity–The newsroom reports clearly, factually and without serious omissions about the events, trends and issues of growth, development and the environment that are affecting the community and the region.

Significance and Relevance–The newsroom chooses to emphasize in its coverage those events, trends and issues of growth, development and the environment that clearly stand out as significant and relevant to the community and region.

Frequency and Persistence–The newsroom examines with sufficient frequency the significant and relevant events, trends and issues of growth, development and the environment. The newsroom also makes a concerted and sustained effort to pursue this coverage as the important stories continue to evolve.

Prominence and Proportionality–The newsroom demonstrates consistently sound judgment by reporting and displaying stories about growth, development and the environment in proportion to their significance and relevance. The newsroom also refrains from sensational or trivial treatment of important events, trends and issues.

Credibility and Context–The newsroom consistently provides a credible range of viewpoints in its coverage of growth, development and the environment. The newsroom also incorporates sufficient context in its coverage, thus helping audiences to increase their awareness and to reach responsible conclusions.

Applying these criteria, our team made an independent assessment of all 285 dailies in the North American West. We counted stories and words. We sampled volumes of output, week to week and month to month throughout 2002. Occasionally, we compared this coverage to its counterparts in 2001 and 2000. We also monitored the performance of about 70 newspapers during the first half of 2003. We made the comparisons mainly to satisfy ourselves that efforts during 2002 hadn’t been aberrations.

Most of our assessing was not quantitative, however. It was qualitative. And that means it was inherently subjective. Making qualitative comparisons requires the exercise of judgment. We applied time-honored news values in making these judgments, but even the best-informed and most-experienced journalists can disagree when applying news values to news coverage.

We had to determine, for example, which environment issues were most important and most relevant to the audiences being served. To do that, we conducted our own research on issues and their geographies. We had to judge the extent to which the coverage “stayed on top” of these issues as they unfolded and evolved. We had to decide what constituted responsible, sensational or trivial treatment of news. And we had to gauge the range and usefulness of views presented as well as the adequacy of the context these stories provided.

After synthesizing all this information, we devised a simple rating system to categorize overall performance, using dominant characteristics to separate the excellent newspapers and the good newspapers from all others.

Excellent newspapers were consistent in accuracy of reporting and clarity of writing. Our review of their coverage found no serious omissions of pertinent facts or analysis. Treatment of event-driven news was timely and thorough. Story placement and story length were consistently commensurate to story significance. Efforts to connect and compare individual events and to identify and examine related trends and issues were persistent. Overall, the coverage by excellent newspapers was distinguished because of the consistent quality of explanations. Strong passages devoted to relevance and broader significance were the norms of this coverage. So were clear explanations of context (historical, economic, scientific, legal and cultural) and informative ranges of credible, differing viewpoints.

Good newspapers were also consistent in accuracy. The writing in these newspapers was often clear, but not always. Our review of their coverage found only occasional omissions of pertinent facts or analysis. Treatment of event-driven news was timely and, for the most part, thorough. In most instances, but not all, placement and length were proportionate to significance. Overall, good newspapers were somewhat less persistent than excellent newspapers in connecting and comparing individual events and in examining trends and issues. Their explanations of significance and relevance were generally solid and understandable, although these explanations were less consistent in quality than those of excellent newspapers. Most of the time, good newspapers provided useful contexts and a sufficient range of differing, credible views.

All other newspapers were weaker to varying degrees, in our estimation, in most or all of these aspects. But our purpose was not to assign a specific letter grade (such as C-plus or C-minus or D-plus) to each of these newspapers that were clearly less than “good.” Nor do we mean to suggest or imply that all of these other newspapers in the West deserved to be labeled as “bad” or “poor.” To the contrary, our review of their coverage found that the range of overall quality was quite wide. Some of these newspapers did examine broader trends and issues, but only rarely. Many did an adequate job much of the time in covering routine, event-driven news that was strictly local, but that was the extent of their effort. Some others did this routine work consistently and, once in a while (typically in response to a local wildfire, a toxic exposure or some other short-lived calamity), did quite a bit more.

Accordingly, they deserved to be described as occasionally good. Many others would best be described as mostly or consistently mediocre. The very weakest were consistently negligent–either because they made no meaningful attempt to cover growth, development and the environment or because their infrequent attempts only sensationalized or trivialized the issues.

Based on this rating system, we concluded that only about 20% of the North American West’s 285 dailies consistently did a good or excellent job of covering the complex and related subjects of growth, development and the environment. Within this group, only a small minority consistently did an excellent job. The term “consistently” deserves to be emphasized and explained.

While we found about 60 newspapers (about 20% of the total in the West) that did a good or excellent job consistently (week after week and month after month), we also found some others that did a good job occasionally or inconsistently. For example, some did so only once or a few times a year, others did so only in covering one of two major topics among a total of six or more that warranted steady attention for their communities. The rest of the time, we found, the coverage typically being produced by these newspapers fell short of the rating of “good.”

We also made an important distinction between “good” and “excellent.” In our subjective judgment, only about 3% of Western dailies produced an excellent caliber of coverage on these topics with year-round persistence. Taking into account the size of circulation, the available newsgathering resources and the extent of newsroom effort, we found these nine newspapers to be exemplary. They offered their readers a rich, reliable diet of explanatory and insightful coverage–a diet produced regularly by several people rather than mostly or entirely by one person. In our collective opinion, this exemplary coverage matched in depth, courage and vision what is needed to fulfill journalism’s public-service obligation in the West.

Boiling down to its essence what we heard and saw and read has been a lengthy process. It was challenging, exhilarating and, at times, contentious. The result is this series of four central conclusions:

Journalism has a duty to serve the North American West.

The freedom and vitality of the West and its communities depend on informed and engaged citizens. To stay informed, the West’s citizens rely heavily on the independence, competence and vigilance of the Western press. The First Amendment protects the press in ways that it protects no other U.S. business. Canadian and Mexican newspapers also have special rights. With such protection comes a unique responsibility for the press to serve the public. Journalism is a public trust.

Most Western newspapers are neglecting to cover the “big story.”

In the West, dailies have a fundamental obligation to examine, explain and evaluate the large-scale demographic, economic, and environmental changes that are transforming the entire region. These changes and their consequences are the “big story” of the West. Yet a large majority of Western daily newspapers don’t cover this story often or well.
Westerners and their communities suffer from this neglect.

Because coverage of the “big story” issues by most Western dailies is inadequate, most communities and citizens in the West are being deprived of information and insight they need to carry on productive conversations and to make responsible decisions about the region’s future.

Western dailies should invest more to expand newsgathering capacities.

The owners, managers and news staffs of Western daily newspapers have an obligation to maintain public-service priorities and high journalistic standards. Fulfilling this mission requires newsgathering resources that are sufficient to keep the West’s citizens and communities alerted and informed. To the extent that these resources are not developed and nurtured, the communities of the North American West–and their society as a whole–will remain disadvantaged.
In framing these conclusions, we recognize that the issues facing the West continue to grow more complex. That reality makes covering these issues comprehensively and persistently all the more challenging. Even so, these factors don’t excuse the mediocre performance of the majority. In far too many Western communities, journalism seems to be losing its way, suffering an erosion of will, capacity and competence.

What will it take to improve these conditions?

In our view, no single course of action applies universally. Each newspaper, like each community, is distinct.
In general, though, we believe most dailies in the West can and should invest more heavily and more creatively in their newsroom resources. We also believe that most Western dailies can and should utilize their existing newsroom resources more effectively.

In the final chapter of this report, we discuss six specific recommendations for newsroom improvement:

Assign and encourage more reporters to cover growth, development and the environment. For many newsrooms, we believe this recommendation will require hiring at least one more journalist. For many others, a deliberate realigning of assignments and priorities may suffice.

Become more selective about coverage of growth, development and the environment. Sheer volume of stories doesn’t necessarily equate with good coverage. We recommend giving reporters more time to work on stories that are important, ambitious and complicated.

Give more space and more prominent placement in the newspaper to these important, ambitious and complicated stories. We recommend establishing an expectation for these stories to explore causes as well as broader and longer-term implications or potential consequences.

Provide more training opportunities for reporters and editors. We recommend making a sustained effort to increase and share knowledge and competence.

Cultivate and retain valuable veterans. We recommend creating workplace conditions that enable these accomplished elders to nurture less-experienced journalists.

Take more risks by exploring and testing other formats and approaches to gathering and telling complicated stories about growth, development and the environment.

The rest of this report cites an abundance of comments, examples, statistics and analysis to support and expand on our four main conclusions. We also offer opinions, but these are not just our own. They reflect the candid judgments and hopes gathered from hundreds of people, not only journalists and news executives, but also people who represent many other kinds of constituencies and communities across the West. We make no apology for being indignant about mediocrity. Dynamic places have dynamic problems, yes. But dynamic problems can’t be resolved responsibly without the aid of dynamic, healthy conversations.

Hardly anyone would deny that the West has plenty of dynamic problems. Yet the thousands of dispute-based news stories we reviewed in the course of our research indicate that the shortage of dynamic, healthy conversations in many Western communities is rather severe. Regrettably, most of the West’s daily newspapers are contributing too little to address this shortage.

Our purpose is not to antagonize or alienate the reporters, editors and news executives who can make Western journalism better. Rather, we aim to stimulate and encourage more thoughtful debate and professional discourse.
Unless newspaper owners, editors and reporters engage each other in constructive conversations about these issues, we fear that most of the West’s dailies will not improve.

This report is our side of the conversation.