Readers comment on our recent changes to The Tribune

Q: I hate the new format. I think you have sacrificed the quality of the local news issues by reducing the number of pages and combining the local section with the business section ….
_ Zeke

You have done a good job managing the paper, but with your new format, I am disappointed. There seems to be so much less national and world news. Can’t you bring back what you have cut?
_ From several readers

A: Contrary to perceptions, we have not reduced the amount of space devoted to Local, Business or Nation/World news, with one exception, which is Monday’s edition when Local news runs in the main A section. Most U.S. newspapers have small editions on Mondays and we felt we could cut back on space that day to realize some savings in newsprint.
It is true that Business is no longer a section front Tuesday through Saturday. Business news used to be the front of a section that was combined with Features. When we created the new Central Coast Living features tab, Business had to go into an existing section, and Local was the best fit. But the space allocated to Business news remains unchanged.
_ Tad Weber

Where is news of the big earthquake in Peru?

Where in today's paper is news about the huge earthquake in Peru? Talk about ethnocentricity! If the U.S. had a 7.5 earthquake I'm sure you would write about it.
_ Ruth Alcala

Good question, Ruth. As of deadline, the only story that had moved on our wire services said 15 people had been killed. We have a story today on Page A3 reflecting that, but it is a small story, and could have been easily missed. We were at the mercy of our wire services, and could not really get more than what we published. We will have fuller coverage in tomorrow's edition.
Rest assured, we understand the significance of this earthquake. No ethnocentricity being applied.
_ Tad Weber

Reader comment on our kayak series

FIVE days of FRONT page coverage of an "adventure" your staff members have??? PLUS an editorial telling us how great it is. Enough. What is next? An exclusive three parter on your editor's daughter's wedding? A four part series on the copy boy's hernia operation? If this is a preview of your "NEW" look, go back!!! By the way, when will you be covering MY summer vacation? Ridiculous!!
_ John Carroll

Mr. Carroll: I am sorry you are not enjoying the kayak series. It will conclude on Thursday. We believe that there are many in our readership who are interested in the topic and the adventure our reporter and photographer experienced. As a reader of The Tribune, you understand that we rarely tell first-person accounts. But we did so in this case because the topic is near and dear to many of our readers, who have consistently told us that the county coastline is one of the things they value most about living here.
P.S. A reporter-photographer team for the San Francisco Chronicle told that paper’s readers of a kayaking experience they undertook on the Northern California coastline, and in recent years a Fresno Bee team hiked the John Muir Trail in the Sierra and related that adventure. I wish our project was unique, but actually it is not.
_ Tad Weber

SLO crime map debuts on our Web site

I commend to your Web viewing a new feature on SanLuisObispo.com: Our crime map for the city of San Luis Obispo.
What is the crime map?
It is a daily listing of the calls that officers responded to in the previous day, shown as points on a map of the city. The information is shown three ways -- on the basic city map, on a satellite image of the city, and as a hybrid, which puts the map onto the satellite image.
Each call is shown as a pin on the map, and each is color-coded based on the call. For example, vandalism calls are purple.
When you click on a particular pin, a window pops open to give the address and the time of the call. There is also a master list under the map of all the calls. Today's map and list contain nearly 30 calls from Sunday.
We think this kind of useful feature will be valuable to our Web viewers who are eager to find out what kind of crime may occur near their home. Those of you who live in other cities of our county will wonder when we will have a map for your hometown. The short answer is we are in the process of working with the other cities on their crime maps; there are some software issues that must be solved.
Drop me a comment here to let me know what you think about this feature. Or you can e-mail Online Editor Sally Buffalo at sbuffalo@thetribunenews.com.
_ Tad Weber

Covering Hollywood scandals

A new national survey by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press found that nine in 10 Americans think scandals involving celebrities receive too much media coverage. Only 2 percent of the respondents think the scandals get too little attention. Eight percent said current coverage is about right.
Of those who think coverage of celebrities behaving badly is overdone, 54 percent of them blamed the media.
We strive to keep celebrity coverage in its proper place. On the one hand, many readers love to find out the latest gossip about their favorite stars. But there is an equally large number of readers who think such news has no place in our paper. To provide Hollywood news without going overboard, we anchor such items on Page 2 of our main news section under the Espresso heading. That is where we ran the recent news of Paris Hilton's jail experience, for example.
Some readers have asked why celebrity news has to be on Page 2 and not farther back in the paper. The answer is that often such news breaks late, so we cannot push it deeper into the issue. We need to put it on one of the pages that we can move late in the evening.
_ Tad Weber

Caller criticizes our coverage of Iraq war

Our City Desk editors took a call yesterday from a reader in Cambria who was critical of our coverage of the war in Iraq. Specifically, she said we had a pro-war bias, and she pointed to a story we published Tuesday in the Local section as an example. The story profiled the wife of a National Guard commander who was recently deployed to Kuwait. The wife shared how she are her two young daughters are dealing with her husband's yearlong deployment.
The caller said the story reflected favorable coverage we have given to the war effort, and she said we have not done enough to publicize critical views.
Here is my response to our caller: Throughout the course of the war, we have used our wire services (McClatchy Tribune, AP, New York Times among them) to report events in Iraq and Washington, D.C., with both sides of the politics being well covered. Locally, we have reported on efforts by county residents to help the troops, as well as anti-war vigils and marches. In short, we have carefully sought to ensure balance in our coverage since the war. And I think we have done a good job. I am interested in others' thoughts on this.
_ Tad Weber

When we identify suspects arrested for misdemeanors

Q: I see a Police Blotter item today about three men who were arrested near Pirate's Cove on sex and indecent exposure charges. Why were they not named?
_ Anonymous

A: The allegations for the suspects you read about relate to misdemeanor crimes. As a rule, we don't identify people arrested on suspicion of misdemeanors because we do not follow such cases to their conclusion in the courts. There are so misdemeanor arrests that we simply do not have the staff time to follow each case. If we named each person arrested on that level of crime, out of fairness we would need to report the case's outcome.
That said, sometimes new information comes to light that makes a misdemeanor more newsworthy, and leads us to identify a suspect.
In fact, we have this morning found out new information about one of the men who was arrested on Thursday, and we will be posting a news update on SanLuisObispo.com shortly.
_ Tad Weber

Reader did not like our photo of President Bush

Q: I thought your picture of President Bush in the paper Tuesday [on Page A3] was unnecessarily grim. If you had a picture of Sen. Harry Reid [the Senate's Democratic leader], would you have used one as grim as that?
_ Mary Nelson, San Luis Obispo
A: The photo Mrs. Nelson refers to went with a story about the president seeking support for a Middle East peace conference. It was a serious topic, and the president definitely looks serious. I differ from Mrs. Nelson in that I did not view him as grim, but such can be the subjective nature of looking at pictures.
In general, we try to match our photos appropriately for the event being written about. We rely on our wire services -- McClatchy Tribune, Associated Press, New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times being the main ones -- for our national and world coverage. While most of those services will move stories on key events, often AP is the only one taking photos. In this case, we published an AP image.
_ Tad Weber

Why the big type for the Michael Vick story

Goodness gracious, Sandy, has your computer gone haywire or is your sports editor that anxious to fill his front page. The Michael Vick dog story is worthy of comment, but not with headlines of the size usually reserved for a declaration of war.
_ Carroll McKibbin

Executive Editor Sandy Duerr passed this my way, Carroll. First, I'm glad to see the headline caught your eye -- in that sense, it worked, as a key aim we have is to get a reader's attention.
But more to your point that the design overplayed the story: Surveys of sports fans consistently show that the NFL is the most popular sport by far in America today. Within the game itself, Michael Vick is a superstar and franchise player for the Atlanta Falcons. So for him to be indicted on allegations of conducting dog fighting is big news. Also, the NFL this year has raised the bar for conduct of its players. Criminal behavior is not being tolerated under the lead of the NFL's new commissioner. So the story gains an extra bit of newsworthiness for that reason. Fans will be watching closely to see how the league reacts to this case.
Finally, this point of the summer is a slow time for sports. Baseball is continuing, but not much else is going on. This story is helping fill sports sections across the nation today, and it was a big story for most newspapers.
Should war be imminent, as was the case when our troops entered Iraq, you can be certain we will announce that news in big type. On the front page. This story was on the sports front, where the rules can be more relaxed.
_ Tad Weber

Headline questioned by a couple of readers

Mr. Tad Weber: As residents of Los Osos, hoping for a successful 218 assessment vote [re: a sewer project for the town], we were instantly put off by the Tribune's choice of words for the headline: "Osos sewer vote aims for fall," Page B1 of the LOCAL section, July 16. The six words arranged in this manner suggest either a deliberate prediction of failure for the vote we are all anticipating, or simply a failed attempt at the composition of an unbiased headline ..."
_ Stephani and Stuart Denker

Dear Denkers: Thank you very much for taking the time to write to express your disappointment with our headline. I can assure you, we did not try to infer any failure on part of the assessment vote. We are simply trying to say the mail balloting will occur largely in the fall season. Headline writing is a discipline requiring a lot of information to be conveyed in a few words.
_ Tad Weber

Explaining our recent pot-bust coverage

Q: Regarding your story last Wednesday about the big marijuana bust, why did you take it so lightly as to put it on your Local section and not the front page? … It is surprising to me that such a serious problem is not taken seriously by The Tribune.
_ Anonymous caller

A: The marijuana bust story was given prominent display as our lead story on the Local section front. Over the past several years that is where we have put stories about busts of marijuana-growing operations. Being a rural county, illegal growing operations are not uncommon here.
We take seriously our coverage of the drug problems in our region. That is why we devoted six months of reporting and editing time to produce the four-day series that was published in March called “In Meth’s Grip.” It offered in-depth coverage of the methamphetamine problem in San Luis Obispo County.
_ Tad Weber

Trying out new comics

A caller this morning registered a complaint about changes we have made to our comics lineup. We've stopped publishing several longtime strips, such as "B.C." and "Wizard of ID" and have launched several news ones in a pilot project to test them out.
The caller wondered why we were making the changes. The key reason is that we want to refresh our lineup to offer readers the best strips that currently exist. The creators of "B.C." and "Wizard of ID" recently died, and there won't be any new strips. Charles Schultz, the creator of "Peanuts," died several years ago, but we continue to run already published "Peanuts" because of its broad-based appeal. Charlie Brown, Linus and Lucy and even Snoopy remain icons that surpass any other newspaper comic.
To let us know your reaction to all of our test comics, e-mail
comics@thetribunenews.com or write to Ticket Editor Justin Hoeger c/o The Tribune, P.O. Box 112, San Luis Obispo, CA 93401. We expect to conclude our test phase later this month and make final choices, taking into account the feedback we get from readers.
_ Tad Weber

How to get your letter published in The Tribune

You might be a reader who enjoys the community debate in our daily letters to the editor. But you don't know how to get published in that section.
Here is some advice, courtesy of Opinion Page Editor Stephanie Finucane:

Q: How do I submit a letter?
A: E-mailed letters are preferred. Send them to letters@thetribunenews.com.
Q: I don’t have e-mail. Can I still submit a letter?
A: Of course! It can be mailed to The Tribune, P.O. Box 112, San Luis Obispo, CA 93406; or faxed to 781-7905. Typed letters are preferred. Mailed letters require more processing than e-mailed letters, so it typically takes longer for those to appear in the paper. If you mail a letter, be sure to include your contact information — name, address and phone number — on the letter itself, not just on the envelope.
Q: I’m ready to write. What are your requirements?
A: Letters should be limited to 200 words, and if you can say it in 100, so much the better. Follow conventional capitalization and punctuation rules, and avoid using multiple exclamation marks or capital letters to emphasize a point. If you are referencing a previous letter or article, please include the date that it appeared in the paper. Avoid using acronyms; rather than using LOCSD, for example, say Los Osos Community Services District. After that first reference, you can simply refer to it as the district. If you are citing factual information from another source, please include a reference, such as a Web site or a book title.
If you want to read more of Stephanie's Q and A, see Page B4 in today's Tribune, or click this link: http://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/editorial/story/87754.html
_ Tad Weber

A strong mix of news in Sunday's issue

A quick post today to highlight what we have coming in Sunday's edition:
First, staff writer Ermina Karim and senior designer Beth Anderson have produced the annual Tribune Top 20 -- our yearly look at the top firms doing business in SLO County. If you want to get a good understanding about the key firms moving our local economy, this is a must-read. Ermina gathered the information and Beth updated our Top 20 graphic that lists key facts about each firm.
On the lighter side of news, our Central Coast Living section leads with a feature by staff writer Pat Pemberton about locals who love playing Frisbee golf and a game known as Ultimate Frisbee. The CCL back page has another story by Pat, this one about a Cal Poly grad who specializes in aerial fabric dancing. Find out more about that and how she practices on Bishop Peak.
Finally, staff writer Sona Patel will have a front-page story about Franco DeCicco, who wants to build a commercial development in Cayucos and has faced strong opposition from residents of the town. Find out why he is now scaling the project down.
_ Tad Weber

Refreshing our comics lineup

Are you changing your comics for financial reasons? Why are you still publishing Peanuts since its creator, Charles Schulz, died and you’re considering dropping B.C. and Wizard of Id for that very reason?
_ Anonymous reader
You had asked readers to rate the new comics. I wrote and said F-Minus deserved that grade. I wonder how it fared with all other responders. How did the other new comics fare?
_ Richard Tibben, Nipomo

No, we're not changing our comics to save money or space, but rather to refresh our lineup to offer readers the best strips that currently exist, given the deaths of several creators. We aren't currently planning to drop "Peanuts" because of its broad-based appeal. We are now in the third phase of our comics test, said Justin Hoeger, Ticket editor. We expect to consider all the reaction we've received from readers - so far nearly 500- and make a final decision on all the strips by the end of this month. In the meantime, loyal "Rex Morgan, M.D." fans will notice that we've restored his strip, and all those who told us that "F-Minus" deserved that grade will be delighted that it’s biting the dust. To let us know your reaction to all of our test comics, e-mail comics@thetribunenews.com, or write Hoeger c/o The Tribune at P.O. Box 112, San Luis Obispo, 93401.
_ Sandy Duerr

Why we want you to now register to post a comment

Regular users of our site, especially those who post comments on our stories, have likely noticed that we are asking you now to register yourself to continue being able to comment.
There are several reasons we are taking this step, but here is a key one.
Online Editor Sally Buffalo notes that we have seen a big jump in comments since we started adding the comment feature to every story we put up on SanLuisObispo.com. "While we appreciate and value opening up our pages to your voices, the job of policing comments for profanity, racism, sexism and libel became overwhelming," Sally says.
"We hope that by asking people to register as site users, we will cut down on those comment spammers and improve the quality of the conversation for all involved."
It should go without saying that the discourse in our comments should be respectful. It hasn't always been so, unfortunately.
There is another reason we are asking you to register: We want to know more about you. That is not unusual. Newspaper companies have long asked subscribers for demographic information. We are just applying that function now to online users.
Once a viewer hits 200 page views, you will be asked to register. If you choose not to, you will not be able to access our stories (though classified content still will be available) or add comments to any stories.
Additionally, you will not receive our morning or afternoon e-mail newsletters that highlight key stories we have on SanLuisObispo.com.
Take a moment to register -- you only need to do it once -- and happy reading and commenting.
_ Tad Weber

Why we're writing about the family who had quadruplets

Q. How did you hear about the family expecting quadruplets, and why did you decide to write about it?

A. We learned of the family through a work friend of Carmen Leyva. We wanted to write about their experience, partly because multiple births are becoming increasingly common as more couples turn to fertility treatments to conceive. In the words of reporter Annmarie Cornejo,
“The high risk nature of such pregnancies adds a unique element to the process. Families walk a fine line between joy and the fear of all the ‘what ifs.’ How does a family prepare to double in size in less than one year? Emotionally cope to the adjustment? Financially cope? It is difficult enough in the county to find child care for one child – but finding it for three is another story.”
In addition, because multiple births are typically premature, telling this family’s story gives us a chance to chronicle the experiences of families with premature babies. Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center has the only neonatal intensive care unit from Salinas to Santa Barbara.
Looking ahead, it is our hope to share Carmen and Isaac Leyva’s journey through their triumphs and tribulations, Cornejo said. “We’ll try to celebrate ‘firsts’ with them,’’ she said, “such as the first day home from the hospital, their first birthdays, their first steps and words – and maybe, their first day of school.

-- Sandy Duerr

Check out our blogs from Baghdad and Jerusalem

Our Washington bureau has launched a new national and international news Web site to showcase special reporting from our reporters in the bureau, as well as throughout McClatchy newspapers nationwide. Also being added are four new reporters’ blogs -- Dion Nissenbaum in Jerusalem, Leila Fadel in Baghdad, Shashank Bengali in Africa and Hannah Allam in Cairo. That's in addition to the existing blogs from Tim Johnson in Beijing and our Iraqi staff in Baghdad. As our Washington editor David Westphal has said, “Our correspondents are doing a nice job of bringing alive the faraway places that have become so important to us at home.’’ I encourage you to check them out: http://news.mcclatchy.com
-- Sandy Duerr

Do we stage photos? Generally no.

At least once a week, our photographers are asked questions like these: Can you make me look 10 pounds lighter? Can you erase my wrinkles? Can I pretend to be doing something while you’re taking my photo?
In other words, would we please “stage” their picture?
The answer: Generally no.
Our photographers deftly try to handle such questions weekly from people who are eager to please.
“They typically ask me something along the lines of ‘What would you like me to do?’ or ‘I can pretend to be doing such and such,’’’ said Joe Johnston, who has worked at The Tribune for seven years.
“My response is always, ‘Just do what you were going to do and pretend I’m not here,’’’ he said. “We are not movie directors,’’ he added. “We document what people actually do.”
To be sure, there are occasions when we set up a photo – whether it’s a business executive in her office or food for Dining Out reviews or fitness experts demonstrating various exercise routines for our weekly Get Fit story.
“But it is clear in these images that the subject is aware of the camera, and readers are sophisticated enough to understand that this is not a found moment,’’ said David Middlecamp, who has been a Tribune photographer for 21 years. “Lights may have been set up,’’ he said, “or I may ask for the subject to sit in a chair that does not have a loading dock behind it.” Tribune photojournalists adhere to the code of ethics established by the National Press Photographers Association, which says they “have the responsibility to document society and to preserve its images as a matter of historical record.”
Clearly, electronic technologies provide new challenges to the integrity of photos. Yet “accurate representation is the benchmark of our profession,’’ the association says. “We believe photojournalistic guidelines for fair and accurate reporting should be the criteria for judging what may be done electronically to a photograph. Altering the editorial content ... is a breach of the ethical standards recognized by the NPPA.” To give you a better understanding of how ethical judgment guides our photography, consider these recent examples:

Snakes on the Plains (pls use female snake picture)
When Johnston met with a Cal Poly biologist conducting research on rattlers at Carissa Plains, she was seeking a female rattlesnake to surgically implant devices that would allow her to locate the snake and track its body temperature over time.
She wasn’t seeking male snakes because she had already tagged enough of them to observe their natural behavior. But if she couldn’t find a female snake, she offered to grab a male snake so that Johnston could photograph her holding a snake.
“I told her to just do what they would normally do,’’ Johnston said. “Fortunately, we found a snake hidden under a rock and they had to grab it and bring it out in order to identify it as male or female and I was able to get a photo of them handling a snake.
“And as luck would have it, we later found a female and I was also able to get additional photos of them handling that snake as well.
“However, if on that day we did not find the female or did not need to handle a snake at all, then my photos would have had to reflect that. I would have just gotten photos of a male snake on the ground undisturbed with the researchers observing it.”

In Meth’s Grip
Often we have to invest time to allow the person we’re photographing to relax and just be themselves, Middlecamp said. “Ordinary moments are far more telling than anything I could imagine.’’
As the photographer who worked on our four-part series on local methamphetamine use, Middlecamp said it was impossible to get all the images he needed in one visit. For example, he spent about 25 hours over six months with a woman recovering from meth addiction to show how she was trying to rebuild her shattered life.
“The routines in her life changed from week to week as she was able to find a job, buy a car and move to a new apartment. The reporter and I had to spend enough time with her to find real moments, but not smother her efforts at recovery,” Middlecamp recalled.
“The more you learn about your subject, when they laugh, what makes them stop and think, the better your images can be.”
None of the images he took during his first meeting with the woman were published. He obtained a leading front-page photo on his last visit.
Should we hide the clutter?
A reader recently complained that photography in our weekly Home section – which takes readers inside local homes and gardens -- didn’t portray local houses to best advantage and suggested that we “stage’’ more photos.
Here’s how Rochelle Reed, features editor of The Tribune, responded:
“Staging is a term used when a home is accessorized in order to sell it. ‘Styling’ is the term that interior-decorating magazines and now television shows use when they temporarily supplement or completely replace a homeowner’s furnishings and accessories with more fashionable items.
“During the decade that I styled homes for decorating magazines, I straightened shelves, hid televisions, replaced dead plants and frequently brought in entirely new furniture. After a time, I realized how unfair we were to readers, who imagined that other homeowners lived in perfect environs totally without clutter. So in Home, we show homes just as they are, often well-lived or … maintained in pristine formality.
“What you see is what really exists.’’

-- Sandy Duerr

Tech column: Yes, we'll keep publishing one!

Several people have written or called to ask that we try persuading tech columnist Jim Coates from retiring … but if that’s not possible, to please find a good replacement. Indeed, we too are dismayed that the Chicago Tribune columnist is moving on to other adventures in life. But rest assured, there are about four similar Q&A tech columns that we receive through our wire services, so we will be selecting the best one each week. If we find that one particular columnist is head and shoulders above the rest, we’ll stick with that one! We appreciate hearing from all of you!
-- Sandy Duerr