A starting sports reporter at the Logan-based The Herald Journal would probably earn $9 per hour. That same reporter would likely go to sleep every night on a mattress directly on the floor because beds are too expensive for such a salary.

But people still accuse The Herald Journal reporters of being "in it" for the money, managing editor Charles McCollum said.

"I guess they think that we're getting rich off of it. They say we're just trying to sell papers," McCollum said in a recent interview. "Well, our reporter is not in it just to sell papers. He's in it for some other reason. I don't know what the reason is, but he's not just selling papers."

McCollum is the managing editor of the smallest daily newspaper in Utah. With a daily circulation of 15,012, according to the 2000 Editor & Publisher International Year Book, The Herald Journal serves a population of approximately 100,000 residents in Cache County, Utah, and Franklin County, Idaho. The paper is owned by the Pioneer Newspapers Group.

This article in a seven-part series analyzing daily newspapers in Utah focuses on the strengths and weaknesses of this small-town paper. In a study conducted by six BYU students in an advanced reporting class analyzing Utah's daily newspapers, The Herald Journal had the lowest proportion of staff-written articles and the most unique selection of wire-service articles. The Herald Journal was also the only daily newspaper in the state to have a higher percentage of hard news on Sunday than it did on the other days in the study.

The study analyzed the content of the six Utah daily papers for comparison purposes. In the study, every article in three separate editions of each paper was classified on a 10-point scale. The 10-point "Milquetoast" scale was meant to rate the level of reporting the article represented. From highest to lowest:

* A "10" signifies original in-depth muckraking work. To be classified as a "10", a story had to expose a secret topic of significance. Very few articles in the very best papers would be expected to attain this classification. In our study, no articles were found at this advanced level of reporting.

* A "9" signifies precision reporting. Articles in this classification use original data, studies and/or census data. Only one article in our study reached this level.

* An "8" signifies investigative reporting. Reporting in this classification should use government documents. A few articles in our study a few articles reached this level, including one from The Herald Journal.

* A "7" signifies advanced reporting. This should be in-depth reporting dealing with public affairs. A few more articles in our study were classified as "7"s, including a couple from The Herald Journal.

* A "6" signifies reporting with interpretation. Articles in this category report general news, but provide some background or analysis. Many articles written by staff attained this classification.

* A "5" signifies general news. Almost all stories that came across the wire (AP, New York Times or other wire services) were classified as a "5", unless given a lower classification. General information written by staff with no context was also labeled a "5". The majority of articles in our study classified as a "5" or a "4".

* A "4" signifies soft news. Most feature stories and sports stories fell in this category, unless the story identified issues of a more socially important nature.

* A "3" signifies canned or syndicated news. Dear Abby, Anne Landers and horoscopes all fell in this classification. These stories were provided by outside institutions and served mostly as entertainment.

* A "2" signifies stories originated by public relations or other special interests. Stories that were written as a "public service announcement" or were written by a local PR agency were typically classified as a "2".

* A "1" signifies that the story was advertising based. These stories highlighted a product or commercial entity and were frequently accompanied by a graphic promoting the product or service. Some newspapers write these stories in exchange for a purchased advertisement.

In addition to these "Milquetoast" scores, the byline of each article was also recorded as "wire service", "staff", "local PR" or "other".

As the student coordinating evaluation of the papers concluded, the data on the "Milquetoast" scores was highly subjective. Since each newspaper was graded by a different student, comparisons of data between separate papers must be taken cautiously. The reporter writing this article entered all of the data into a database, and saw each of the 1,500+ articles. It was his observation that what some students classified as a "4" other students classified as "6" or "7."

It must also be admitted that a survey of only three editions of each newspaper is not statistically significant.

That being said, using the data to analyze sections or editions of a paper provides fairly accurate information, since the students were fairly consistent with their own ratings. In addition, the analysis of bylines (what was written by wire services, what was written by staff, etc.) is accurate as far as the data goes. Certain trends did reveal themselves and were strong enough to lend credence to the hypothesis that there is a general lack of "hard news" in all of Utah's newspapers.

The three issues of The Herald Journal analyzed in the study were Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday, May 19, 21 and 23. The Sunday paper received an average Milquetoast score of 4.26. Seven of the 65 articles (or 11%) were classified with a "6" or higher. That same day 22 of the 65 articles (or 34%) were written by the newspaper's staff.

That was the best day for the paper as far as the Milquetoast goes. That day also contained the highest percentage of articles written by staff.

Tuesday the paper ran three articles of its total 67 (5%) classified as a "6" on the Milquetoast scale. No articles received a higher classification. Only 13 of the 67 articles (19%) had staff bylines. These numbers include a 16-page special section geared towards local travel, all of which was classified as having public relations bylines.

Thursday the paper ran a total of 92 articles. Of these articles, only four (4%) had a classification of "6" or above, and only 13 (14%) were written by staff.

The average Milquetoast score for the paper over the three days (counting all articles, not by adding the averages) was 4.1. Only 6% of the articles appearing in the paper on those three days classified as a "6" or above on the Milquetoast scale. In contrast, 66% of the articles were written by wire services, 13% by local public relations, and only 21% of the articles were written by staff writers.

For comparison purposes, our study found The Salt Lake Tribune had the highest percentage of staff written articles of any paper in the state at 42%. The Deseret News had 39%, while the Standard-Examiner and The Daily Herald seemed to be around 30% written by staff. Only 24% of the stories in The Spectrum were written by staff, which was still higher than The Herald Journal.

While the percentage of staff-written articles is low, the paper has also received a number of awards for its reporting in recent years. Saleem Syed-Ali, the wire editor, listed four first-place awards since 2000, including first prize for business reporting from the Utah Society of Professional Journalists and a general excellence award in the under-50,000 circulation category from the Utah-Idaho-Spokane Newspaper Association.

Still, the fact that a newspaper will spend so much effort providing copy to its local agencies and so little effort on providing news for its readers is revealing.

For example, an article appeared in the paper detailing certain changes in the budget made by the state legislature. The article had an AP byline. Meetings of the state legislature are scheduled before hand, and it should not be difficult to have staff cover this meeting.

Those who defend this practice argue that the same thing happened regardless of who wrote it, so it is not necessary to have a limited staff cover such story when only other papers with a larger, more experienced staff will post their own analysis to the wire. But a great deal of value is lost when this occurs. The article did not have a local angle. How are the budget changes going to affect Northern Utah? How will it affect the agricultural community? These angles were not well covered because the reporter who wrote the article had a city community in mind.

But the paper aims to be a local, and not a state-wide paper, said Darrell Ehrlick, city editor for The Herald Journal.

"We're not a state-wide paper. We're not pretending to do a state-wide paper," Ehrlick said. "Our role is providing our audience with local news that they can't get anywhere else."

Ehrlick said the paper services a population of 100,000 with only eight full-time staff writers on the city desk. He said his staff generally does a good job of localizing in-state stories, but the focus is on what is happening in the area.

"We rely on the wire to pick up state events," Ehrlick said in an email. "Obviously we are a small staff, less than eight full-time news reporters. We have two counties and 26 towns that we cover with those writers, making it hard to cover much outside of our valley. ... Again, we realize that if someone wants complete statewide or even regional coverage, they will not pick up The Herald Journal, most likely. But if they want comprehensive Cache County or even Franklin County, there is only one place that provides daily, consistent bylines from those areas."

Syed-Ali agrees with Ehrlick, pointing out that no other paper in the state gives the same local coverage that The Herald Journal does.

"We have six local reporters and a student intern from USU; we would be stretched thin if we ventured outside too often," Syed-Ali said in an email. "One of the bigger papers from the Salt Lake Valley tried to muscle into our territory but couldn't because the cost of keeping even two reporters here full-time was not justified by the revenue the paper could generate locally."

Similarly, Syed-Ali said the cost would be too much for The Herald Journal to consistently cover events in other parts of the state.

"The cost of maintaining a couple of reporters at the Capitol or in SLC is just not worth it for a paper our size; the same money can more wisely be invested locally in better reportage," Syed-ali said.

McCollum said he would like to see more hard news, but feels his staff is doing a very good job right now.

"Right now we've been blessed with a really aggressive staff. I hope that we can ride this out for a while," McCollum said. "Last time I looked at the Provo paper, I'd have to say we're kicking their ass."

The Web version of The Herald Journal multiplies the lack of outside coverage. There is a link to national news on the Web site, but it leads viewers directly to msnbc.com. In addition, Ehrlick said a management decision limits the number of stories uploaded to the Web site to three per day, although he said the archives on the Web do contain all the stories written by staff.

Syed-Ali defends the decision for limited Web reporting.

"Newspapers across the United States are weighing on - and agonizing over - how much of their coverage they should put up on the Web; most readers have become used to getting the news for free on the Web, and few are willing to pay," Syed-Ali said. "To offer the news for free makes no sense - who will pay salaries for the Web staff, and for putting up the site? Web-based news sites have been subsidized by their print parents, and there is a limit on how far the free ride can and should go... We do not have the resources to match what bigger sites with huge resources can offer, and there is no sense in duplicating what someone else is doing."

The staff at The Herald Journal is limited. McCollum said the entire staff at the paper is equivalent to 21 full-time employees, including reporters, editors, and copy and layout staff. Even so, in a fragile economy and during a time of drought, matters of national concern are vital to the agricultural community. The wire stories published for this type of community served by this paper are often versions intended for the metropolitan businessman. The ability of the newspaper to provide interpretation to its readers is severely curtailed when the paper is incapable of covering stories of interest through its own reporters.

Having mentioned some serious problems with the paper that undermine its low readership, two positive aspects of the paper were revealed through the study - its selection of wire stories and its Sunday edition.

Perhaps it is because the wire desk has to carry such a heavy load, but the selection of stories from the wire in The Herald Journal was unique and pleasantly surprising. The May 23 (Thursday) edition of every paper in the study included a wire service story about a 10-year-old boy who won the national geography bee. The 10-year-old boy was not from Utah, and there was no local connection in the story. However, each paper accompanied the story with a photo, and some also carried an additional graphic of sample questions from the geography bee. The importance of this story to the Utah audience is not completely clear, but every paper chose to run that story, as did The Herald Journal.

That same day it also covered every major wire story that the other papers did, including updates on the continuing Chandra Levy saga after her remains were found in a park in Washington, D.C. But it also had selections that were refreshing. One article in particular stands out about the tiniest baby on record being in good condition in a hospital in Asia. Only one other paper in the state carried that story.

The majority of wire service stories in other newspapers focused on wars and politics. Very little about the positive or human side of life was included in their stories. The Herald Journal, however, had a variety of wire stories without neglecting those items of national and international interest.

Syed-Ali holds a graduate degree in journalism and has worked in India, the Middle East and Canada. He says his experience and obsession with news has helped him choose a good selection of wire stories.

"I wake up to NPR in the morning have a TV news channel running in the background at work, and spend a couple of hours at the start of the day reading stories that are moving on the wire before deciding on what I am going to use that day," he said.

He also said in-state wire stories are typically covered by staff only if they are likely to affect the area his paper covers.

"For issues that involve Cache Valley, we do send our reporters to the SLC/Ogden area if government/public hearings or meetings are held there," Syed-Ali wrote in an email.

"For news originating outside our circulation area that does not affect it immediately - for instance, a home invasion in the SLC/Ogden area - we would rather use wire stories when we can."

The lack of a local angle and the inability to serve the community through wire stories has already been discussed. But if a large selection of wire stories is going to be included, it might as well be good. The Herald Journal's selection was perhaps the best in the state.

In addition, The Herald Journal's Sunday addition was markedly better than the other issues analyzed in the study. Most papers tout their Sunday edition as the biggest and best paper of the week. Across the state, circulation numbers are higher on Sundays as well. But The Herald Journal was the only paper that had a significantly better Sunday than its other editions, at least for the purposes of this study.

The Sunday edition of The Herald Journal had a higher Milquetoast score than the other two days in the study. The Sunday edition had more than double the percentage of stories classifying as a "6" or above, when compared with the other two days studied. The percent of articles written by staff appearing on Sunday (34%) was also decidedly higher than the other two days (19% and 14%). In fact, it was the only day of the week that The Herald Journal did not have the lowest percentage of staff-written articles in the state, beating out the Standard Examiner and The Spectrum (both at 32%).

Compared to its other editions, this limited study suggests that The Herald Journal is the only paper in the state that provides a better paper on Sunday than it does on other days of the week.

Darrell Ehrlick agreed that the Sunday paper does fare better than the other daily editions.

"We kind of pull the stops out for Sunday," Ehrlick said. "It's when your copy sales usually peak, and you've got a higher ad-content and so a higher white-space to fill."

Most other papers would have to agree with Ehrlick. The number of ads in a Sunday paper demands a large news-hole. But only The Herald Journal seemed to have a better paper that day than it did on other days.

Even so, the enhanced Sunday paper still did not provide the same coverage that larger newspapers in the state provided for their readers.

All in all, this study suggests that the smallest daily newspaper could do a better job reporting hard-hitting stories. As a small local paper, its editors maintain a constant local focus, it has a good selection of wire service stories and the Sunday edition provides better copy than the weekday editions. Still, the number and quality of locally-written stories can improve, as can in-state coverage on important issues likely to affect the valley.

Copyright Brigham Young University 10 Jul 2002