Instant feedback feature makes livelier pages.

For several months, The Record's opinion section has been conducting something of an experiment in public journalism. We have asked the readers to respond by telephone or fax to one of our editorials each day. Whenever possible, we publish a sampling of the responses in the next day's paper.

The result has been fascinating. On a few topics - one was a health insurance requirement that maternity patients leave the hospital after 24 hours - we've gotten more than 100 responses. Generally, we get about a dozen. Never have we received no response at all.

We have also been impressed with the caliber of many of the responses. They have been brief, focused, and sometimes insightful. Occasionally, they have been angry. When we criticized the Republican Contract with America, one caller said, "The editorial was a simplistic response to the changes that have been brought forward by the Republicans." On average, the responses seem evenly divided between support for our editorial position, which is moderately liberal, and opposing views.

The impact on the editorial staff has been surprising. At the start, the idea met with skepticism, if not outright opposition. Editorial writers feared we were selling out to the latest trend in journalism and compromising our responsibility to express our viewpoint without pulling punches.

But now, I think there's unanimous support among our seven-member staff for what we're doing. We find we look forward to hearing our readers' reaction. We feel less isolated. We also think we're producing a livelier editorial page that often produces more of a dialogue between our staff and our readers.

There is also an unexpected benefit. Somehow, the response from readers - we call this feature "Instant Feedback" - gives us greater confidence to take unpopular stands. After all, we're encouraging dissent from our readers, and we're printing their opinions the next day.

The idea of opening up our editorial pages developed over almost a year. Glenn Ritt, our editor, was convinced the editorial pages, while good, were also stolid and unexciting. The reaction to the pages at an NCEW critique group last year had a similar ring. People liked our editorials but thought we were weak in presenting reader viewpoints. Our layout suggested that we ran letters to the editor only because we felt we had to.

We talked a lot among ourselves. Then we had a couple of focus groups - one with people who described themselves as regular readers of editorial pages and one with people who rarely read them. Almost unanimously, they said our editorial pages - and others they had seen - did a poor job of presenting the views of readers who disagreed with our editorial.

Oh, yes, they agreed, newspapers print letters to the editor. But usually those letters run several days or even weeks after the editorial was printed. By that time, they said, they had forgotten the editorial and the issue was out of date.

Several indicated they simply had no time to write letters to the editor. Maybe if they could call in their views, they would be more interested. Why can't you be more like talk radio?

It got us thinking. Could we ask readers to give us their opinions each day on one of our editorials? More important, could we act quickly enough to publish those responses the next day? And if so, how much additional personnel would we need?

The answer was that we could do all this, and we are, except for the weekend. We publish the reaction to our Friday editorial on Sunday since we do not have an editorial page on Saturdays. For the Sunday editorial, we give readers 48 hours to respond. We have found that many of those responses do, in fact, come in on Monday. For all other days, we run the reaction the next day.

We handle the project with one parttime clerk - a college student. He comes in about 3 p.m., takes the responses off the phone recording, and checks for e-mail and faxed responses. (We give readers those options as well.) Although he works in close conjunction with an editorial writer, he does much of the work and makes many of the decisions himself.

We run about a half dozen responses a day. If we get more - and we usually do - we ask the clerk to run a sampling that is representative of the total response. We have him avoid over-use of our regulars - people who call in almost daily. We also do not run a tally of responses for and against our editorial position, since Instant Feedback is not a poll. Interestingly, many of the responses are sophisticated enough to point out our merits in both sides of argument.

By 6 p.m., the clerk sends his copy to the editorial writer for review and editing. He handles the pasteup in the shop and the proofing, and he's out by 7 p.m. We adhere to this schedule by giving readers a 5 p.m. deadline for responses. Nobody has complained about the early cutoff, and on many days we have enough comments by early afternoon. In the interest of fairness, we always take at least one or two of the late afternoon responses.

Other innovations

In addition to Instant Feedback, we've added a few other innovations. On a panel across the top of the editorial page each day, we ask readers to tell us what they think on any subject, and give them phone and fax numbers and e-mail and postal addresses for their responses. Either I or another editor listens and reads these responses each day. Most come by phone. Callers suggest editorials, criticize the play of news stories, blast our editorial position, and leave news tips.

We have also increased the number of letters from readers. And we've become more aggressive in soliciting op-ed pieces from readers and others in our area.

Does all of this interactivity have a downside? Certainly - and it's the demand on staff time. Our days have gotten longer. While the clerk handles Instant Feedback, someone has to look over his shoulder. And someone has to listen to the reader responses generated as a result of the panel at the top of the page.

If you embark on such a project, ask your editor for an extra editorial writer in addition to a part-time clerk. I did, but didn't get the writer. As a result, we work longer days. We also run two or three fewer editorials each week.

Obviously, nobody is happy with that. But we think the trade-off is worthwhile and has resulted in livelier, more thought-provoking editorial and op-ed pages. We also think our jobs have become more interesting and challenging.

If any one would like to talk with me about what we've done, please call at 201/646-4449.