Ask The Editors

This question is often prefaced by the statement, "You must have graduated from ..."

The Bee's coverage tends to skew toward what interests fans/readers most. Thus, big headlines tend to be about winning teams.

But The Bee takes great pride in diverse, comprehensive coverage of the Valley's schools. And we are always looking for compelling stories, the kind that transcend winning and losing. For example, Nick Giannandrea's story about the return of football to Alpaugh High School made the front page of the paper.

Oh, and while everyone in Bee Sports takes great pride in graduating from somewhere, we take even more pride in telling the story at hand -- no matter the winner.

Posted by Jennifer at 10:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Recently Bee editors and designers looked at what we could do to maximize the use of the Business cover space to allow for larger and more art elements, items proven to draw readers into stories, more so than a simple headline and text.

One of the answers was to remove the stock indicators -- the red and green arrows -- to allow for a less stilted, or pre-planned, layout. We reasoned that since the same information is listed daily at the top of Page C4, it wouldn't be missed on Page C1.

We were wrong about our readers' reaction.

In hindsight, we could have better prepared our readers for the change and better informed them where to find the information they have come to appreciate.

At the same time, we could have done a better job of letting our readers know what they will be getting in exchange: Better organized and more visually compelling pages that we hope will continue to appeal to long-time readers, as well as draw new readers to the interesting and relevant stories we have in the Business section.

Posted by Jennifer at 10:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's not our role to be public relations agents for Fresno or anything else. We are responsible for reporting the truth as we see it. I like what City Council President Jerry Duncan said recently when he voted against contracting with a marketing firm to polish Fresno's image: "Do good things and people will think good things of you."

The fact is, problems usually need to be aired out before things get better. The Bee's reporting on the Valley's poor air quality has prodded people in power to start doing something about it. We have a new juvenile hall in place of the old dungeon-like "Hall of Shame" because The Bee made it impossible to ignore the conditions children were incarcerated in.

On a holiday note, when we reported that turkeys were scarce at agencies that feed the poor, donations poured in just in time for thousands to enjoy Thanksgiving dinner.

Ignoring problems doesn't give us a better image. Addressing them does.

At the same time, to truly be a mirror of our community, we also need to tell about the hard work, achievements and celebrations of its residents. That's why in recent editions we've written about the firefighters of Fresno's Station 3, a young woman from Fresno who was named a Rhodes scholar and Fresnans who provide wheat seeds to Armenia, just to name a few.

Posted by Jennifer at 10:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)