Answers to Gazette readers hit sports, business, news

We ask this on the form customers use to continue their Gazette subscriptions: Do you have a story idea for The Gazette?

“What local companies are doing in our community, and helping our local economy with job growth and competition, like ImOn Communications,” one customer responded. Whether that was a pitch for writing about local businesses, a dig at ImOn competitor and national media giant Mediacom, or both is left for us to surmise.

However, the note gives me a chance to tell you we are finding ways to get more news and information about local businesses onto our business pages. In the past year Gazette business editor Michael Chevy Castranova has introduced a regular feature called “My Biz” to tell you about these businesses. The feature runs in the centerpiece spot of our Money page each Wednesday. Plus, we have the Sunday Business 380 section in the printed Gazette.

All of this business content can be found at our website, Business380.com.

I've received other notes and comments from readers recently. I wrote about them in my Sunday, March 4, column in The Gazette newspaper.

Cannot believe how you decide publishing stocks in Sunday paper is less important than more Hawk coverage.

This refers to our decision in August to drop a two-page list of the previous week's stocks from the Sunday paper while adding two pages for sports. We still run in the newspaper the previous day's stocks of local interest. We've received requests to add some and a few tweaks have been made because of those requests. Again with the Business380.com plug, the daily stocks are on that website's homepage.

Please cover more of the Cascade Cougars.

This can be paired with:

We were very disappointed this summer by the lack of coverage of Lansing Kee High's runner-up baseball team…”

We try to cover as much prep sports as possible in our 16-county coverage area. Gazette veteran J.R. Ogden is recruiting people in local towns to help cover sports there. He oversees what these community contributors write and displays it at TheGazette.com and on page 2 of the Sunday Gazette sports section.

Have been subscribers for 61 years after Oct. 15, 1950, and never had any problems. Like a home town paper for us. Started at or in Johnson Co. Thanks.

You are welcome, and thanks for reading.

Many of us miss local news in the Gazette. One example – a train derailment between Central City and Coggon that was news and (a) long time repairing back to normal. Not one word or photo in (The) Gazette. I'm a long-time subscriber – like 74 years and my parents' home before that.

This refers to a derailment on Nov. 10. No injuries were reported.

We try to focus more on explanatory reporting in The Gazette and less on spot news events but still want to know about your community. Dave Rasdal has been through Coggon a few times in recent months for columns from there.

We just missed the train derailment. But I felt compelled to respond because anyone who reads us for 74 years deserves an answer.

Finally, here's a bonus for you online readers. I ran out of room in my newspaper column but got this last week after I wrote about our plans for 2012.

Mr. Muller,

I very much appreciate your willingness to communicate with the Gazette's readers, both through your Sunday columns and replying to emails such as this.  I hope that the thoughts that I send along come across as constructive rather than complaining. 

You mentioned "what you tell us about the expectations you have when you encounter the Gazette".  Naturally, this provided me with an opening.  Your later mention of KCRG-TV "which is owned by the same company that owns the Gazette" brought to mind a concern that I have had of late.  That is the fact that many times when I read something in the Gazette, I find myself thinking, "That is the same story that I heard on the news last night, almost verbatim."  In discussing this with a friend this morning, he felt the same way.  I am not referring to the "Here are the stories you will see in tomorrow's Gazette," spots, but the news stories themselves.  While the sharing of resources makes good economic sense, perhaps this is too much of a good thing.  An option we discussed is that perhaps we should view a different channel for news, so that the Gazette content will be a bit "newer" to us.  I dismissed this as no option at all because of my feeling that the people at KCRG are head and shoulders above those at the other stations.  Again, just letting you know how I feel.  Hopefully the input is useful.  As always, thanks for listening...

The newsrooms for The Gazette and KCRG-TV9 are combined, so reporters are gathering information for both news outlets and their websites. A few other newsrooms like this exist in the country and I have talked with the leaders of some of those places about how they handle the different expectations for newspaper and television audiences.

When we rely on journalists who appear on KCRG-TV9 for stories we try to give the stories a new twist for a unique newspaper experience. We rewrite stories for fresher angles, a different reading experience and to add context in the paper if it is needed. We think people watch television news to learn about and see what's happening and that they look to newspapers for more depth, insight and context.

Some time ago we used KCRG-TV9 in the byline of stories written for The Gazette by people you've come to know at television reporters. While recognizing the television station as a source that practice did two things, both of them negative: 1) it contradicted the notion of one newsroom of journalists providing information for multiple media outlets and 2) it gave a sure sign that what you were reading was last night's news.

We have more work to do on this. But we've adapted, dating back to more than a year ago. In the meantime, we have given journalists you see on television a chance to write in a different medium about things they have learned through their reporting.