When Texas started reopening last Friday, the Dallas Morning News adjusted its coverage plan. A week later, Beth Frerking, the News Vertical editor at DMN, shares what they are learning:
- Plan early and be willing to pivot at the last minute. Frerking said the paper deployed numerous reporters to hit the streets and editors looked for themes through reopening day as reporters filed their feeds. “The most interesting one, which we didn’t expect, was people were still being pretty cautious. A lot of places weren’t opening… One of the very basic things we said (to reporters) was, ‘If you notice several shops that aren’t open, even though you are looking to speak to owners and patrons and workers, also make notes about the ones that didn’t open.’ And that was the part of the reporting that informed us being able to say ‘Not everybody did.’”
- Represent all sides of a community. That means “all demographic groups, all races, all ethnicities, all neighborhoods and all types of workers,” Frerking said. “Be willing to throw a lot of boots on the ground, with the added caution of being safe.” Reporters were instructed to keep their distance, wear masks and keep hand sanitizer in their cars. Editors created a Slack channel for reporters to send their feeds and assigned one writer to the story. The result was a front page story that was a veritable tour of Dallas neighborhoods and its suburbs featuring a diverse array of voices, from an out-of-work hairdresser, to a gun range owner, to customers at a wine bar.
- Go beyond the rhetoric and look for nuance. In a politically-charged climate, certain events become flash points and the players become caricatures, as in the case of salon owner Shelley Luther, jailed this week for refusing to close her business. (Under the governor’s gradual return to business, salons weren’t scheduled to open until today). Luther quickly became a hero of conservatives and the judge who ordered her jailed, Eric Moye, the target of their anger. The DMN profiled each separately, assigning two reporters to each story. “We saw a moment where this was heading, we planned for it and we recognized that the rest of the country would be looking at us to find out who is Shelley Luther? Who is Eric Moye?” Frerking said. “By reading these two stories, you realize both of these people are very complex and deep and have their own nuances. We did a really good job of fairly presenting them.”