(Posted on Feb. 11, 2006)

By MARISA PORTO
The (Del.) News Journal

Late last year, members of the diversity committee for APME held a phone conversation with young people from newsrooms around the country to ask them how to improve Time-Out for Diversity, the yearly event in which newsrooms seek ways to improve diversity in newsrooms and in their community coverage.

The conversation took on a broader scope as participants made a number of suggestions, many of which involved sharing more information with journalists around the country as a way to inject new excitement into the program.

Toward that end, the committee has selected solid examples of diversity coverage over the last few months as a way to spark new ideas for editors — and to ask for some additional help.

We plan on sharing a monthly e-mail with best practices for diversity coverage. If you've got examples to share, please e-mail Marisa Porto at mporto@delawareonline.com, who will share those ideas with you monthly as part of this year's diversity committee effort.

We cannot stress how important it is for you to participate if this feature is to be helpful and successful. It also provides a chance for your newspaper and your staffers to receive some recognition for the outstanding work you give your readers. One suggestion is to choose someone on your diversity committee to collect and send copies of good work so we can share the work with others who can model your work to better serve our growing diverse populations.

Here are some highlights of some outstanding work:

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 As Hurricane Katrina aimed for New Orleans last fall, Houston began filling up with the early evacuees for what everyone thought would be a stay of less than a week. But within days, more than 100,000 Louisiana evacuees, many of them minorities, were living in Houston — crowding the Astrodome, convention center and other shelters. Also, the evacuees had little access to television, radio or online news sources.

Houston Chronicle Editor Jeff Cohen quickly determined that in addition to comprehensive coverage in the daily newspaper, the Chronicle needed to produce a separate product for the evacuees. With a press run of 20,000, the newspaper distributed the free special sections — heavy on information about how to navigate Houston, apply for assistance and deal with insurance companies — to city, county and Red Cross shelters across the region.

The sections grew from six pages to eight and then 10 pages over the course of the week. In all, the Chronicle produced seven sections until officials began shutting down the large shelters.

According to George Haj, the Chronicle's deputy managing editor for news, the response was immediate and profound; evacuees swarmed the delivery people to get their copies of the section and the Chronicle won praise from the mayor and many in the community for providing the evacuees with vital information.

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 The Montgomery Advertiser spent a year working on "Voices of the Boycott," a 44-page special section about the 50th anniversary of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The project included interviews with boycott participants conducted by reporters from every department, according to Executive Editor Wanda Lloyd. The paper created a position for a full-time videographer to capture the interviews for a new Web site to go with the special section. The site, www.montgomeryboycott.com, includes interviews and more than 500 archived stories from 1955-56.

The paper worked with its Newspapers in Education team to produce three teachers' guides for three grade levels. Target, the retail company, contracted to publish almost a million copies for delivery to 30,000 schools across the country for Black History Month. In addition, the paper produced a book, "They Walked to Freedom: The story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott," written by the editorial page editor who used a laptop and portable scanner to gather documents and photographs from sources for use in the book.

According to Lloyd, the key to the project was good communication. The publisher appointed a task force to manage the yearlong project, including staff members from circulation, advertising, news, marketing and other departments. Each was assigned a task, with quarterly updates on progress.

The paper was working on the anniversary coverage when Rosa Parks died. Along with front-page coverage, the newsroom produced an eight-page special section. The paper had third-party sales of thousands of copies of that paper, which were handed out at local memorial services.

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 The Yakima Herald-Republic recently put together a project called "Native Sons — The Men of the Yakama Nation," which used photos and stories to document how traditions, or the failure to follow them, shaped the roles of men in Yakama Indian society. Chief Photographer Brian Fitzgerald conceived this picture-driven project three years ago, a year after he came to the Herald-Republic and became fascinated with the Yakama Nation, 1.2 million acres in the paper's circulation area that was like an island in the middle of the paper's coverage area.

Because it's difficult for the mainstream media to tell stories from Indian Country, Fitzgerald first had to build trust among tribal members, eventually introducing reporters to write the essays to accompany his project. "Native Sons" contains five topics: Providers, Warriors, Lost Men, Women (who step in to raise boys to manhood when their fathers can't) and Traditions. Additionally, there are portraits of 12 military veterans who have become "warriors" in other aspects of their lives. The online component of those warriors included audio of interviews Fitzgerald conducted with them.

Managing Editor Bob Crider said his best advice for similar projects is to be patient with a similar project, because building trust with a community you don't cover well takes time. Also tell more people about the project sooner, so that planning can happen in every department — from the desk to online. Finally, keep coming back to the question — "Does it serve the reader?" That will help guide you in the design and presentation of the project to the reader. Reaction to the project was largely positive. One high school teacher asked for extra copies to use to supplement the limited lessons about the Yakamas.

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 The News-Press in Fort Myers, Fla., anticipated that Hurricane Wilma was likely to hit Southwest Florida in October 2005. Editor Kate Marymont and her team acted promptly to inform the community in English and Spanish. David Plazas, the editor of the paper's Spanish-language publication, Gaceta Tropical, a 20,000 circulation weekly, worked with his staff to update the web site before the hurricane hit, using information it had published earlier in its Spanish-language hurricane preparation guide. It included information on preparing for the storm, local shelters and insurance information.

Before the storm hit, free-lance reporter Mauricio Pallares was embedded in the Lee County Emergency Operations Center and wrote hourly updates on the storm. The News-Press partnered with Radio Manantial, 1350 AM, where Plazas gave minute-long briefings in Spanish each hour. He also appeared on Azteca America, Channel 14, to provide information and respond to questions on the air, such as where people could shelter their pets and how to care for them during the hurricane.

After the storm, a News-Press team was sent to heavily Hispanic Immokalee to document the devastation online and in print in both Spanish and English. A follow-up commentary by Plazas was featured on NPR's "Talk of the Nation" the next day. "We made a concerted effort to prepare ahead of time, publish the information in print and online, and ensure that our readers received the most comprehensive coverage around," said Plazas, who added: "We'll be better prepared next hurricane season."