n an article for “Civic Catalyst,” the newsletter for The Pew Center for Civic Journalism, Sharon Rosenhause, managing editor of news for the San Francisco Examiner, explains how her paper went on a mission to conduct a “dramatic remaking” of the community it serves.

Rosenhause writes that one of the key bases for the yearlong remaking, called “The New City,” was, “Accept that you don’t know your community as well as you want to. Accept that the reason you do a project like this is to learn and learn and learn.”

What the Examiner was admitting to is a disconnect between newspapers and the communities they serve. Citizens complain that their local papers ignore ethnic communities until a story arises that puts them in an unfavorable light. Rosenhause feels compelled to tell reporters to “get out of the office. Once you get into the neighborhoods, you can report more accurately and honestly about what goes on there.”

Bridging that disconnect and creating meaningful lines of communication as well as levels of respect are critical to any newspaper’s efforts to penetrate diverse, underserved communities.

Part of the answer lies in GOLD, the NAA report detailed in this issue, which gives newspapers the monetary incentive to serve ethnic neighborhoods better. Two recent publications provide another part of the answer, but from different sides—one advising reporters and one advising citizens.

In Covering the Community: A Diversity Handbook for Media, Leigh Stephens Aldrich, a professor of journalism and communication studies at California State University, Sacramento, wants to help reporters, especially younger ones, cover diverse communities.

“Today’s reporters need to understand differences,” she writes. “Print and broadcast reporters must be able to confront a story armed with open minds and a willingness to listen. They must be equipped with adequate language and the symbols of our culture to report American diversity and to cover the community.”

Aldrich provides those tools with sections such as “Reflecting Diversity in Word Choice,” “Finding Multicultural Resources,” “Working with an Interpreter” and “Go Where People Live and Work.”

In his new report, “A Guide to Developing a Community-Based Strategy for Influencing Local Neighborhood Coverage,” Byron White, manager of community relations for the Chicago Tribune, uses a different tack. He wants to help the average citizen “discover where the desires of community people and the objectives of journalists intersect.” He gives steps so that citizens can create “a rapport with reporters, editors and news administrators that takes advantage” of everyone’s best interests.

White’s business-side background adds an interesting element to his report, which is actually part of a larger guidebook called Newspapers and Neighborhoods: Strategies for Achieving Responsible Coverage of Local Communities. For instance, White understands that the rise of newspapers’ “community” sections came as a result of the paper trying to tap into readership in the growing suburbs. Yet, he says, these same sections have provided a new vehicle for community voices.

As a model, White presents a “Community Plan for Affecting Coverage of the Main Street Gazette.” Part One tells what a community wants, listing specific events “other than crime,” such as a celebration of a local leader, a proposed community center and a spring arts fair. Part Two presents reasons coverage of these stories would meet the newspaper’s goals, such as sparking more interest, gaining a competitive edge over those media outlets focused solely on crime, and challenging enterprising reporters.

Part Three lists ways the community can assist the paper, such as putting together a community-resource guide and hosting community-information sessions for reporters. Part Four says that citizens must hold the paper accountable.

Aldrich says it took five years to write her book. “Everything kept changing,” she says in a recent interview. “This is such a difficult thing to pin down—getting the essentials right, being concise. I think it is the first book of its kind in this area.”

She masters the art of bullet points and short lists and gets to the heart of difficult issues quickly and efficiently.

A few of her guidelines for reporting diversity include:

• When practical and relevant to the story, ask those involved in the story how they want to be identified in terms of race or ethnicity.

• Identify your own biases. Are they getting in the way of the story?

• Don’t reinforce cultural assumptions and stereotypes. Avoid omission.

• Don’t sensationalize a story using cultural biases (such as highlighting a mixed marriage) unless it is relevant to the story.

• Clean up quotes unless the story is about language. Don’t publicly embarrass innocent interviewees.

Covering the Community can stand alone as a classroom textbook or serve as a good personal tool for any journalist—rookie or veteran—who understands the need to report on diverse communities in a way that creates positive lines of communication between communities and their newspapers.

In “A Guide to Local Neighborhood Coverage,” White presumes that “news would be powerfully useful in informing and motivating community people in their efforts to affect community change.”

He examines the gap between what citizens say they want from the media and what the media actually provide. He also illustrates how a newspaper business section provides the kind of balanced coverage that communities want to achieve.

White urges communities to make their own formal evaluations of their local media, to determine if specific examples of questionable articles, pictures, cartoons, etc. show a pattern or a one-time misstep.

He also counsels community groups to know exactly what they want to have happen when they sit down to discuss coverage with editors and reporters. He breaks down newspaper departments and their roles, and the typical newspaper corporate structure, to provide a detailed understanding of the daily news operation.

Newspapers are going to have to make serious determinations in relatively short order about their approaches to covering diversity and reaching out to expanding diverse markets. It is not, however, and should not be, a one-way process.

Aldrich and White offer valuable insights on how newspapers and the communities they serve can make a difference by getting to know more about one another and communicating so there is positive flow of information that helps to build strong neighborhoods and great newspapers.