Behind the Headlines

In response to my column on changes in the newspaper’s look and layout, a reader wrote in with a question about the potential impact on national and international news. He questioned whether combining the A section and City/Region section will dramatically lower the amount of space for Nation/World news.

It’s a good question, and in some ways, the answer may seem counter-intuitive. Combining the sections, at least on some days, could increase the amount of space for Nation/World news. Here’s part of my answer to the reader’s email:

“We are primarily a local newspaper, and our focus has long been on local news about Lexington and Kentucky. That is our franchise, the one thing we can and do provide that our readers can’t get anywhere else. Moving City/Region into the A section further emphasizes that mission. That said, we also understand that readers want national and international coverage. The new design we launched today actually will give us flexibility on many days to increase space for national and international news, based on the actual flow of the news cycle.

“In our old sectioning scheme, space for local news and for Nation/World news was fixed, and the two were in different sections. This made it difficult to adjust space as news warranted. (In other words, if we had a light local news day, as sometimes happens, it was difficult to shift extra space to other kinds of news, and vice versa.) Under the new sectioning scheme, if we have a light local news day, we can adjust our space to make more room available for Nation/World. Of course, the reverse holds true. On a heavy local news day, we can adjust space in the news section to accommodate.

“You can see the practical effect of this in today’s paper. Last Monday, before the changes, we devoted one full page in the A section to Nation/World (page A3). Beyond that, only one other national story could fit in the A section, on page A4. On that day, we did not have room for a “Close-Up,” the longer features we often run on national/international news.

“Today, the first day of the combined News section, we had a relatively light local news day, so we adjusted to make more room available for national/international stories. We devoted one full page (A7) to Nation/World. We also had a national story on page A6, four national stories on page A8, a national obituary (William Safire) on page A5 and enough Nation/World space on page A10 to run a “Close-Up” story about the flu.

“Overall, the amount of Nation/World content was higher after the changes we made today (a total of 10 stories today, versus 5 last Monday, not counting National/World news briefs)…

“Not every day will be exactly like today, but flexibility was a key piece of the format change.

“We have also made more room available for news stories on the Business page (by reducing the amount of stocks listings), and some of this space will be used for national and international stories about business and the economy.”

- Peter Baniak (pbaniak@herald-leader.com)

It’s known by many names: watchdog journalism, investigative journalism, accountability journalism.

It’s the kind of journalism that digs under rocks, that tells you something you don’t already know, that looks beyond press releases and news conferences and scripted news events to find out how public money is being spent, or how public officials are behaving.

It’s the kind of journalism that the Herald-Leader has long been known for in Kentucky.

By the calls and comments I get on an almost-daily basis, many of you have noticed that, over the last year or so, the Herald-Leader has redoubled its attention to this kind of journalism.

You’ve read and commented on stories that delved into the state’s $880 million courthouse building program, and on a series of investigations into spending at public and quasi-public institutions (Blue Grass Airport, Lexington Public Library, the Kentucky League of Cities, the Kentucky Association of Counties).

These stories have had many things in common: They’ve examined areas of spending that normally don’t elicit public scrutiny. They’ve all led to changes, either in personnel, spending habits or policies.

And they have all benefited from feedback and tips from you, the readers of the Herald-Leader and Kentucky.com.

Now we’re adding a new tool in our efforts to hold government, institutions and those in power accountable. It’s a tool that we hope will make it even easier for you to follow our watchdog reporting efforts, and to participate in them as well.

This weekend, the Herald-Leader launches a new “Watchdog” page on the Web. You can find it at www.kentucky.com/watchdog.

This page is an extension of our recent watchdog reporting efforts – the kind of investigative, dig-below-the-surface journalism that you won’t get from other local media or the blogosphere.

On the watchdog page, you can easily track the Herald-Leader’s top investigative reports, as well as follow-up stories that flow out of them.

A “data sleuth” section connects you to many searchable databases of public records, from government salaries to expense reports, nursing home violations to lawsuits. We invite you to look through these records, and to let us know if you find anything interesting, or worth further checking.

A “citizen watchdog” feature connects you to resources and information on ways to do your own investigating — tips for filing public records requests, contact information for public officials, links for other sources of public information.

You can read great examples of watchdog reporting from other journalists around the country.

And you can meet and contact the Herald-Leader’s accountability reporters, a team that we recently expanded to ensure we continue to focus on watchdog stories that really delve deep.

Finally, the page gives you a direct way to send your valuable tips, suggestions and information to the Herald-Leader’s team of watchdogs. You can do this through an email link on the page. You can also follow the watchdog page on Twitter (@kywatchdog) and Facebook (KentuckyWatchdog).

Please take a look, and let us know what you think. Most importantly, keep those tips coming.

- Peter Baniak (pbaniak@herald-leader.com)

Starting today, we are bringing you a story so disturbing that it sometimes will be hard to read. It was even harder to report.

For "A New Dawn? A Kentucky mother’s struggle through drug court," two Herald-Leader journalists spent 3½ years following Dawn Nicole Smith, whose addiction to prescription painkillers landed her in Fayette County Drug Court.

Sobriety requires an individual to act. While getting to the point of change isn’t pretty, the most shocking parts of Dawn’s life are routinely echoed in Kentucky’s drug courts, jails and prisons - and, briefly, in the Herald-Leader and other news media. Most often, they are reported in the sterile context of a few paragraphs about an arrest or, sometimes, a death. That language dulls the true horror of an addict’s life and the effect addiction has on family members. This series goes much deeper, chronicling the despair of a struggling soul.

So how did we get here?

In January 2003, photographer David Stephenson took pictures at one of Fayette County Drug Court’s regular graduation ceremonies. At the ceremony, pictures of participants were flashed on a large screen. The "before" pictures were poorly lit, police mug shots, most of dead-eyed people with despair on their faces. The "after" photos were, mostly, a collection of smiling faces so changed it was sometimes hard to recognize them. Intrigued by the transformations, Stephenson wanted to show you how someone gets from one place in life to the other.

In fall 2003, he and reporter Mary Meehan began talking with Fayette County Drug Court officials and Judge Mary Noble, its founder, explaining their goal and providing samples of their work. After about six months, the Administrative Office of the Courts, which oversees Kentucky’s drug courts, gave its approval for a reporting project. Meehan and Stephenson were to be given unlimited access to one willing drug court participant, including his or her court appearances and records, which usually are closed to the public. No other drug court participants could be photographed or identified without their permission. (Most declined.)

As caseworkers interviewed potential participants for drug court, they also asked whether they would like to be the focus of the Herald-Leader story. Several agreed. Dawn Nicole Smith, 21, was ultimately chosen because she had three children, which the journalists hoped might encourage her to work toward recovery.

The reporter and photographer made it clear to Dawn and the court that they were not there to enforce drug court rules, but just to observe her life. No agreements were made to keep anything off limits, or "off the record."  The paper did agree not to publish anything until Dawn completed drug court. As it turns out, Dawn had a near record-setting tenure in the program, which usually takes about a year and a half.

The journalists spent hundreds of hours with Dawn - both in and out of court. Meehan reviewed hundreds of court documents, interviewed dozens of people and researched dozens of reports on drug court, addiction and substance abuse. Stephenson shot 8,093 photos and recorded more than 10 hours of audio.

In the newspaper, the six-day series - "A New Dawn? A Kentucky mother’s struggle through drug court" — requires 18 inside pages. Online, the six multimedia presentations total 15 minutes and include 130 photos, plus audio from Dawn and original music by a local hip-hop group, the CunninLynguists.

Dawn told the journalists from the beginning that she wanted to share her story if it might help others. Her life has been open to the reporter and photographer since March 2004. All of the highs and lows would eventually be exposed.  Even when some members of her family pressured Dawn to withdraw from the story, she stuck with it. In the beginning, the journalists had no idea of the family dynamics that would complicate Dawn’s journey.

And while many sad and disturbing things ultimately took place, the two never saw Dawn break the law - except for not restraining her children in car seats. Dawn’s extended family was under review by drug court staff, including home visits, most of the time. State social workers were called to investigate the family several times independently but found no reason to take action. Meehan and Stephenson had frequent discussions between themselves and with editors about what to do if they witnessed something that needed to be reported to authorities. If Dawn’s children had appeared to be at risk, they would have been bound, like all citizens, to report it to the state. And they wouldn’t have hesitated to do so.

Casual readers might dismiss Dawn as being apart from the mainstream. But she is somebody’s daughter. Somebody’s mother. Somebody’s wife. And, in a state with educational challenges and a high incidence of substance abuse, she’s closer to mainstream than some readers might like to admit.

That fact was reinforced over the years as the journalists told others what they were working on. Many had loved ones who had been taken by drugs down a dark road much like Dawn’s. Some never came back.

Sharon Walsh
Enterprise Editor

Burma/Myanmar is in the news these days, and the Herald-Leader has grappled with which name to use.

Institutions that use the name “Myanmar” include The Associated Press, The New York Times, The Washington Post and the Washington bureau of The McClatchy Company, owner of the Herald-Leader. These sources use phrases such as “Myanmar, formerly known as Burma” or “Myanmar, also known as Burma.” The United Nations also includes “Myanmar” as a member state, not Burma. The Web site of Myanmar’s embassy in Washington includes this statement: “Anyhow, since the United Nations has recognized Myanmar by her original name, it is the obligation of all the U.N. member countries to accept it, whether they approve it or not.”

On the other hand, “Burma” is the term used by the U.S. government — including President Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the Department of State — and the BBC. It is also used by the protesting Buddhist monks who are the focus of much of the current news.

The European Union recognizes an official name of “Union of Myanmar” but almost always uses “Burma/Myanmar” on Web sites discussing relations with the country.

The Herald-Leader has a traditional principle of calling people by the names they apply to themselves. That’s why we use “African-American” if that is a source’s stated preference, even though our default term is “black” for groups or for individual people whose preference isn’t known, and this is why our default term is “gay,” not “homosexual.” (On the other hand, even though many anti-abortionists call themselves “pro-life,” we do not use that label; our stylebook notes that “it implies the other side is inherently anti-life, which can be debated.”) The Herald-Leader is also leading the way as part of the small minority of newspapers that bother to apply accent marks such as é and ñ, in an effort to correctly spell the names of our increasingly multicultural readership.

It’s hard to apply the principle of “what do the people call themselves” with regard to Burma/Myanmar, since a significant portion of the country’s common populace and exiles are at odds with its military government. Here’s some background from The CIA World Factbook: “Since 1989 the military authorities in Burma have promoted the name Myanmar as a conventional name for their state; this decision was not approved by any sitting legislature in Burma, and the U.S. government did not adopt the name.”

Herald-Leader Editor Linda Austin, Managing Editor Tom Eblen and I conferred and decided to go with Burma as our default. This means a bit of extra work for our copy editors, who must remember to change the wording in wire stories. But in addition to being part of the world of journalism, the Herald-Leader is part of the United States, and it seems strange that so many newspapers are in effect bypassing their own government to establish relations with an unrecognized regime.

Brian Throckmorton
Copy Chief