While Riley admits he's uncomfortable with newspapers taking sides on an issue in its news pages, he views Your Voice, Your Vote differently. Some of it is the press's fault because of the way we cover it. Now we're attempting to have the campaign played out on the turf of the voters, not just politicians. I don't know if we would have gone in that direction on our own. Poynter, working with University of North Carolina journalism professor Philip Meyer, plans to study the effect of citizen-based versus traditional campaign coverage in 20 markets to give managers some answers about how these efforts affect readership, Potter says.
Citizens read the paper closely for three weeks and call in responses to questions about stories.
The report card runs daily. Yancey says these readers endorse his paper's changed approach. Copyright 1996, Newspaper Association of America. All rights reserved. This article may be transmitted or redistributed provided that the article and this notice remain intact.