More news, less coverage?

• Author: Boulard, Garry
• Position: Legislative newspaper reporting - Cover Story

A huge study last year showed that despite the shift in power from Washington to the states, newspapers were cutting back on the number of reporters assigned to the statehouse beat.

It seems like an idea whose time has come: a Web site for journalists, constituents and lawmakers devoted in its entirety to state legislative news.

"We've been on line since Jan. 25, and so far we're seeing about 3,000 readers a day," reports Ed Fouhy, editor of Stateline.org, which is being produced by the Pew Center on the States.

"We are not interested in sheer numbers. This is not a mass media site where we are competing with the Associated Press or CNN," continues Fouhy. "But even so, the response we've gotten has far exceeded our expectations."

Just as impressive, the average visitor to the new site, according to Stateline's own detailed in-house readers' surveys, sticks around for nine to 10 minutes - an eternity in Web space.

Fouhy believes such responses indicate a yawning hunger across the country for news coming out of the state capitals, particularly during a time when because of devolution there is more news to report.

"We've seen a great deal of power and money going back to the states in recent years," Fouhy says, "Which naturally means that the states themselves will be creating more news. But even more than that, the states finally have the authority to do things they've been saying for a long time they should be doing for themselves. That in itself makes them newsworthy."

If the birth of Stateline.org reflects the shift of power from Washington to state capitals - perhaps the most important story of the 1990s - it also is indicative of a far less certain, and much more tentative response on the part of the press as to where government news comes from today.

"We're hearing all kinds of things on that question," says Gene Roberts, a professor of journalism at the University of Maryland and a long-time working reporter for such papers as The New York Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer.

"On the one hand, newspapers want to make the claim that they provide their readers with the most comprehensive coverage possible," says Roberts. "But it also is true that there have been cutbacks in much of the state coverage, and this has proved to be a sore point with many of the large papers."

Roberts should know. In 1998 he helped compile a massive study funded by the Pew Center and released by the American Journalism Review that showed clearly that many papers across the country were reducing their state coverage and cutting back on the number of reporters assigned to roam the marble halls of state capitols.

EMPTY DESKS

The study pulled no punches: "Coverage of state government is in steep decline," it said. "In capital" press rooms around the country, there are more and more empty desks and silent phones. Bureaus are shrinking, reporters are younger and less experienced, stories get less space and poorer play, and all too frequently editors just don't care."

The industry's response to the study was overwhelmingly negative. Newspapers across the country denied that they were shortchanging readers, or that reducing their staff presence at the legislatures meant a reduction in the amount or scope of coverage.

Other papers argued that the study shortchanged them by failing to count the many special reporters they send to cover the legislature for singular topics such as science or environmental issues. "But we were not aware of any health care reporters coming to any capital and staying for weeks at a time," explains Roberts. "We counted only the correspondents who stuck with it day in and day out."

Even so, the industry criticism of the study continued, proving at the very least that a nerve had been touched.

"I guess some people got mad," laughs Reese Cleghorn, president of the American...