In the Line of Fire

Take it from a former Angeleno. Of all the periodic disasters visited upon Southern California -- earthquakes, landslides, plagues of locusts, smog alerts, sigalerts (just to test your SoCal bona fides; answer later) -- nothing is quite as frightening as when the wildfires break out.

If you are downwind of one, there aren't really many options but to get out of the way. Once a blaze has become major, it's going to consume almost everything in its path -- at least until the firefighters can get it under control.

Californians like to justify their brushes with disaster -- natural and man-made -- as the price of living in paradise. Santa Ana winds are a frequent condition during the fall and winter months, and usually the only havoc they wreak is with your sinuses. But the winds that blew up last weekend over three large and heavily populated counties of Southern California were something else, and for too many people, they signaled paradise lost.

In a first-person account of what became one of the largest mass evacuations in American history, San Diego Union-Tribune columnist Ruben Navarrette Jr., whose work is syndicated by The Writers Group, told what it is like to suddenly become a refugee:

"As a journalist, your instinct is to grab a notebook and head for the fire, even if your editors would never give such an order. When the fire is bearing down on your family, things are different. Daddy instincts take over. You still grab your notebook and laptop – but you also pack baby formula, diapers and bottled water. You grab a few family photos. And you worry about one thing – getting your family the heck out of there."

Fortunately, Navarrette's neighborhood was spared and his family was able to return home two days later. Yet the experience left him wondering:

"What else do you call it when your fate and that of your home and family depend entirely on which way the wind is blowing? And, this week, the Santa Anas were blowing every which way."

And as Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson reminded his readers, you didn't need a weatherman to know the winds were blowing crazily. Looking at the fires in Southern California, along with drought conditions in the Southeast and other weather oddities such as 80-plus degree weather in Washington during late October, Robinson wondered: "Can all this be blamed on that 'inconvenient truth' that Nobel laureate Al Gore keeps warning us about?"

No doubt, the debate will be long and contentious as to what part global warming had to play with the Southern California wildfires, or if they were just a perfect storm that occurred when you have a confluence of Santa Ana, or devil, winds and -- suspected in some cases, at least -- arsonists with devilish intent.

But serious readers, already well informed by the tremendous amount of news coverage that accompanies these mega-disasters, have a right to challenge these questions of cause and effect -- and to draw their own conclusions.

(Sigalert answer: Named for Loyd Sigmon, a Los Angeles radio executive who came up with a system of notifying radio stations of dangerous traffic conditions on Southern California freeways.)

Campaign 2008

Hey, do you realize that next month will mark one year before we vote for a new president? Naw, didn't think you did. Seems we should be voting next month, given the lengths this campaign already has traveled.

Truth is though, we'll most likely know the nominees sometime in late winter. If you haven't read already, be sure to follow the links to David S. Broder's column on "Trying Times for the Obama Faithful" and E.J. Dionne's "Clinton Builds Her Firewall." Since it's World Series time, it's not too off base to metaphorically start thinking of a sweep in the Democratic race.

Meanwhile, Charles Krauthammer looks at the GOP race and pronounces it "A Fine Field of 4 1/2."

James Hill is managing editor of The Washington Post Writers Group.

Stuff Happens

I'm not sure what Charles Darwin would think of the Internet, but its evolution absolutely amazes me. Just when you think you have the World Wide Web figured out, something pops up that, to borrow from Bachman-Turner Overdrive, makes you realize "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet."

This epiphany comes not from some flash of lightning, but from scrolling through the Politics section of washingtonpost.com the other day, looking for verification that Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas might be dropping out of the Republican presidential race. And there I found it, by hitting the icon that took me to The Wall Street Journal's popular Washington Wire column.

Links are nothing new to the Internet, but the degree that Web editors are willing to go to link to competing publications on their electronic editions is still, shall we say, evolving. Some redirection of Internet traffic doesn't seem to have been thought through very well -- we're aware of one newspaper that dropped some comic strips and actually advised readers to go to another newspaper's Web site to find them. I doubt if one would call this value-added.

But if you want to create a true marketplace where readers can get information easier and faster than shoe shoppers can troll the mall, then it makes sense to provide them with so many options -- in this case, political news coverage -- that they'll keep returning to your bazaar, knowing that it is a good place to shop around. Stuff happens.

So on washingtonpost.com's Politics section, one can find not only political news from the latest edition of The Washington Post, but also breaking news from several sources, including Post reporters in the field, CBS News, the aforementioned Wall Street Journal and The Associated Press. Then there are the chats, news columns, blogs, videos, surveys and special reports. And a Best of the Web feature that directs readers to the Real Clear Politics site, which tracks the top op-ed columns, including several from The Washington Post Writers Group, and other political features from English-language newspapers around the world.

Granted, The Washington Post has dug deep into its considerable resources in developing its Web presence over the years, and so have many other of the world's great newspapers. And just as every newspaper is not able to match the depth or quantity of news and opinion coverage of the Post or The New York Times (see my posting of last week on shared content), not every Web site is going to be able to build the marketplace that these bigger publications are developing.

But a lack of similar resources doesn't mean you ignore or decimate coverage of the world of ideas -- which some newspapers are doing as part of their obsession with "local." I know, national and international opinion is my business, and you should consider that, but I've been around long enough to be keenly aware that people always gravitate to the major leagues -- from top athletes to top writers. If you sacrifice the very best in column-writing to publish something because it's simply local, you lose a part of your readership.

As to the resource question, ask yourself this question: Who has the potential to draw more readers? I think the answer is an editor providing a range of ideas and new thinking from the best writers in the business. Jerry Ceppos, formerly of the San Jose Mercury News, once said that if he were still leading the newspaper, he would take 100 people for a year and build the best Web site in the business. Jerry had the right idea, only he should drop the phrase "for a year."

It seems particularly shortsighted to ignore worldwide events when so much information is only a click away. I'm all in favor of the coverage of local news, but newspapers who are committing themselves to becoming hyper-local risk the danger of making their print editions about as relevant as a TV station's local news coverage ("if it bleeds, it leads"). Worse, hyper-localism threatens a publication's ability to attract readers to its Web site.

At the Writers Group, we give our client publications a big advantage: strict Web embargoes. That's right, the only people to see a column ahead of time are paying customers who are required to observe Web and print embargoes. If you publish on schedule, your readers will never have to go elsewhere to search for David Broder, George Will, Kathleen Parker, Charles Krauthammer and all their favorite writers.

If the Internet has taught us anything, it's that there's a lot of information out there, and it can be shared literally around the world. Publications need not fear this information explosion if they see it as a way to build a better bazaar that will exploit their strengths -- and limit their weaknesses.

Plenty of newspapers have demonstrated that advertising dollars will come if you have the page views. Time to go after this income in a big way.

James Hill is managing editor of The Washington Post Writers Group.

Closing the Gap

Columnist Michael Gerson hit upon the topic that none of the presidential candidates are discussing -- the wealth gap between white Americans and certain minority groups.

Certainly the income gap has been narrowing, but the wealth gap is another matter. The Washington Post weighed in Sunday with a story headlined "Employers Discover A Troubling Racial Split in 401(k) plans."

In our mission to serve the public, this is one area in which too many of us have failed. For far too long, minority groups found little on our business pages that speak to them. You can argue whether that's a fair claim, but the wealth gap is real and remains a serious economic problem for this country.

Someone trying mightily to close that gap is The Washington Post's Michelle Singletary, whose column appears in 125 newspapers across the country. Countless readers have contacted Michelle and The Writers Group to say that, at long last, someone seems to be speaking to them, even on stories that had been covered previously on business pages.

Newspapers have the reach and offer the depth to be uniquely positioned to close the wealth gap. Michelle Singletary -- through her column, television and radio appearances, Web chats and speaking engagements -- is a shining example for the rest of us.

I, for one, can't wait to read her next installment, to see who she has enlightened next -- including me.

Alan Shearer is editorial director of The Washington Post Writers Group.

Crystal-Ball Gazing, Part II

Last year about this time, following the annual convention of the National Conference of Editorial Writers, I blogged about the future of newspapers and of the attempts of journalists to come to grips with it.

Permit me an update. This year's NCEW gathering in Kansas City took a step in trying to define and shape that future, at least as far as editorial pages go. I'm still not sure we've got a grip, but at least this organization has a plan.

It is embarking on a pilot project (so far, three newspapers have signed up) that will, in the words of Dayton Daily News editorial writer Eddie Roth (read his Groupblog contribution here), "would be to build a model online template that delivers high-quality, interactive opinion journalism -- much of it local -- and helps cultivate a new generation of citizen contributors empowered to use the new media to promote civic dialogue and community problem-solving."

Writing in NCEW's quarterly publication, The Masthead, Roth continues: "Pilot participants would work not just to nail down the right technologies, but also to create practical strategies and workflows for sharing content and simultaneously publishing print opinion pages and managing an online opinion forum. They also would develop systems to ensure the emerging interactive community journalism adheres to professional journalism's standard of fairness and accuracy.

"The pilot process would be transparent and its products open source -- available to any news organization with a commitment to professional opinion journalism."

Like any project, the devil is always in the details, and some of what Roth details I find pretty devilish. For instance, I think it's a pipe dream to believe you can develop interactive forums that meet professional standards of fairness and accuracy. (See my previous posting on comment sections that already are a regular feature on many an online publication.) Second, I'm dubious about the shared content idea. Newspapers already include a lot of shared content -- The Associated Press, the supplemental wires such as The Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service, and syndicates such as The Writers Group. Since Roth has already laid down the marker -- "much of it local" -- I question how content produced, say, in Walla Walla, Wash., would have much relevance to a reader in Apalachicola, Fla. Finally, newspapering has always been a hotly competitive business. I wonder how many publishers would be keen on such collaboration.

One publisher, Mac Tully of The Kansas City Star, certainly is. He told NCEW convention-goers how enthusiastic he is that his McClatchy-owned newspaper has already committed to the project. Yet I'd feel more comfortable if the Newspaper Association of America (publishers) and the American Society of Newspaper Editors were also on board. Editorial page editors usually report either to the publisher, the editor, or both. And both NAA and ASNE, along with the American Press Institute, have been grappling with similar issues for several years now.

But enough of the cold water. When you get right down to it, journalism has always been a work in progress. And no more so than since the convergence of the personal computer with the Internet. So any group that wants to peer into the crystal ball is fine with me.

At The Writers Group, we have already had discussions about ways we can be supportive of this project, and I have conveyed our interest to past NCEW President Neil Heinen (the pilot project initiative developed on his watch) and other members of the NCEW board. As content providers, The Writers Group is just as interested as anyone else in the business as to what the future might hold.

James Hill is managing editor of The Washington Post Writers Group.