We often have visitors in the Herald-Leader newsroom, and this week we had two interesting groups.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, 10 Russian-speaking newspaper journalists from former Soviet republics spent time with us during a week-long stay at the University of Kentucky as part of the Edward R. Murrow Program. This program, sponsored by the State Department, brings foreign journalists to this country to learn about the U.S. news media. (Another seven broadcast journalists also were part of the group at UK, and they spent time at Lexington television stations.)
On Thursday, about 40 members of the 2006 Leadership Lexington class spent the morning with us as part of the program’s annual Media Day. Leadership Lexington, sponsored by Commerce Lexington, is a year-long program that exposes emerging and newly relocated leaders of business and non-profit organizations to the many aspects of our community.
The Russian-speaking journalists, who talked with us mostly through interpreters, had a lot of nuts-and-bolts questions. What are we doing to attract young readers? How do we decide what stories to cover? What is our planning process? But they were also curious about our freedom from government censorship, and how we cover government and politics. We realized we shared many common issues, problems and goals. Except the leaders of some of their governments could still put them in jail for what they publish.
The Leadership Lexington class members represented a good cross-section of our city readership. They met with Publisher Tim Kelly, Editor Marilyn Thompson and me, Editorial Page Editor Vanessa Gallman, editorial columnist Larry Dale Keeling, editorial cartoonist Joel Pett, pop culture writer Jamie Gumbrecht and sports columnist Mark Story. They asked a lot of great questions.
As journalists, we love to discuss what we do and why we do it, debate issues and hear what readers think. Many people have questions and strong opinions — plus a few misconceptions — about how the Herald-Leader covers news, and especially about how the editorial board and Opinion pages work.
If you would like to ask your own questions, please contact us. We also welcome visitors, by appointment, to attend our morning news meeting, where we talk about story ideas and what’s coming for the next day’s paper.
Tom Eblen
Managing Editor
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