If we take the time to get it right. More often than not, the story you re about to rush into publication today will offer even greater value to the reader tomorrow, if you take the time to make it as good as it can be. Know your community. No reporter or editor ever gained a feel for a community sitting at a desk with a phone in hand. Editors at all levels need to reach out to communities, meeting with leaders and assembling focus groups, to learn how to serve them better.
Diversity makes a better newspaper.
Perhaps even more important, we need to sensitize all of our staff members to diversity issues. If white people are going to be editing stories about people of color, which is the entrenched reality in most newsrooms, they need to be sensitive to the issues involved if the newspaper is to display a similar sensibility in its news columns. Each of us must work every day, in everything we do, to earn our readers trust. There s more at stake than whether we have jobs, or how many papers we sell, although those certainly are not trivial concerns. Nothing less than the very existence of the Fourth Estate, at least in credible form, and its pivotal role in preserving a free society depend upon our earnest efforts to speak with a credible voice.