Can you be a catalyst without becoming a part of the story?

HOW INVOLVED should newspapers be in their community? It's a difficult question with no simple answer.

The absolute prohibition against a reporter or line editor becoming part of a story remains unchallenged at virtually all newspapers. Credibility is a newspaper's most precious attribute. If readers even perceive that a reporter has a personal or special interest in a given story, credibility vanishes. Reporters and news editors at most newspapers even guard their personal views on public issues off the job lest someone get the idea that they might carry their beliefs into their work.

For opinion writers and editors, the situation is a bit different. Those of us who are paid to form strong opinions about issues aren't compelled to keep our feelings completely private. But still we must be careful about the organizations we join or publicly support. One never knows what group or issue will find its way into the news columns and require an editorial response.

At the beginning of this year our newspaper, The News Journal, published a series of stories and editorials we called the Delaware Agenda. It was similar to what many newspapers do each year.

We had contracted with the Gallup Organization to conduct an extensive, statewide poll on issues. The results were the stories called the people's agenda. The editorials constituted the agenda established by the editorial board.

In one of the editorials on Delaware's economy, we suggested that our newly elected governor, Thomas B. Carper, call an economic summit. The call was inspired, in part, by the summit President Clinton held in Little Rock. It was our hope that Carper would respond quickly since Delaware, like the rest of the country, was facing difficult economic problems. And in December, General Motors had announced that it would close its auto assembly plant in four years, putting about 4,000 people out of work.

The governor did not respond. He and his aides reasoned that the economic plan the governor had presented during the campaign would constitute his economic agenda.

About two weeks after the Delaware Agenda was published, the executive director of the Delaware Public Policy Institute, a think tank founded by the Delaware State Chamber of Commerce, called. He wanted to know if the governor had responded to the summit idea. When I said no, he immediately suggested that the institute and the newspaper convene a summit.

The idea appealed to me. I met with the institute's staff and prepared a report for my publisher, Sal DeVivo.

Stepping over the line?

Our central concern was whether the newspaper, by helping to convene such a meeting, would step over the involvement line.

We decided to go ahead. The newspaper has a vital interest in the state's economy, we reasoned. Our business lives and dies with the economic life of Delaware.

Most of the staff work was performed by the institute. I was the newspaper's liaison.

The institute had conducted a similar summit the year before focused on the state's water and waste-water problems. The three-day session drafted a lengthy, comprehensive report that represented the consensus views of several constituencies -- farmers, environmentalists, industry, professional water managers. Ultimately, legislation was developed. The key to success, the institute staff contended, was limited participation and strict rules of procedure.

After several discussions we decided to focus our summit on "barriers to economic growth." We wanted the meeting to be held as soon as possible and settled on the last two days of March. During the month of February we conducted four town meetings throughout the state to make sure we were in touch with the people. The newspaper promoted the meetings and also invited people to send in their ideas about barriers to economic growth. More than 200 people attended the meetings and we received about 250 written responses. At the town meetings, citizen input was carefully recorded. All of this information was sent to summit participants before they met, and all became part of the summit's record.

Choosing the summit participants was tricky. The institute had used Harry Hill and Art Tonkinson, two retired IBM management consultants who have formed their own consulting company, as facilitators for its water summit. The institute suggested -- and we agreed -- to hire them for the economic summit. Hill and Tonkinson have devised a special process to identify problems and reach consensus on solutions. They insist that no more than 15 people participate actively in a summit.

Here we disagreed. We could not achieve the racial and gender diversity and geographic distribution necessary for a credible statewide summit with only 15 people. The number of participants was set at 20. And, Hill and Tonkinson had to accomplish their task in two days instead of three.

The participants were all committed to working for two 10-hour days. (On the first day -- when the barriers were identified -- the participants stayed at the table for more than 11 hours.)

The News Journal helped to convene the meeting, but no one from the newspaper was a participant. Our involvement was limited to my work in setting up and conducting the town meetings, promoting those meetings, and helping to defray the cost of the summit. All town meetings and both days of the summit were open to the public. At any given time during the summit itself, between 40 and 50 people were in the audience.

The news department covered the summit as it would any other similar event.

The summit participants represented banking, real estate and development, manufacturing, agri-business, retail sales, housing, tourism, and government.

They identified 31 separate barriers to economic growth and proposed at least that many solutions. Each participant took responsibility for making sure one or more action plans would be carried out.

By June, several committees had been established to work on problems. Legislation had been written and introduced in the General Assembly. Plans are now under way for other, similar summits on health care and revitalizing the deteriorating central core of Wilmington, the state's largest city.

We at the newspaper saw this summit as a natural outgrowth of our Delaware Agenda. While we entered into the cooperative relationship with some trepidation, in the end we believed we had enhanced the newspaper's image in the community. There was almost no negative reaction.

I believe newspapers -- particularly newspaper editorial staffs -- can and should find ways to get involved in their communities. With proper care, we can be of real assistance without becoming "part of the story" in a way that damages credibility.

NCEW member John H. Taylor Jr. is editorial page editor of The News Journal in Wilmington, Del.