Roberts & Kay, Inc. -- Lexington Herald-Leader

Lexington Herald-Leader

2001

In April 2001 Rona designed and facilitated a roundtable conversation on credibility for the Lexington Herald-Leader, a regional daily newspaper based in Lexington, Kentucky. The Herald-Leader received a grant from the Associate Press Managing Editors (APME) group, with funding from the Ford Foundation, to participate in a national effort aimed at improving the credibility of news coverage. One newspaper in each of the 50 states participated in this National Credibility Roundtables project.

The APME suggested that the participating newspapers identify one aspect of coverage and concentrate on it as a learning vehicle for improving credibility in general. The Herald-Leader chose its coverage of local school issues. Rona worked with a design team of Herald-Leader editors and writers to identify categories of readers with particular interest in this topic. The eventual participants included these five groups:

Central Office administrators, school board members, and former school board members
Principals and teachers from individual schools
Parents, students, and community-based education advocates
Journalists -- Herald-Leader reporters, editors, copy editor, and photographer
Invited guest observers

All participants sat in a semi-circle. Rona suggested a design that brought each of the active groups to the focal point of the semi-circle for a 20-minute conversation. Members of each group addressed the same or similar questions during their turn as the focal point, while members of all other groups listened carefully. At the close, all groups became one large circle again, and identified the best or most important ideas that had come up during the course of the three-hour session.

View the complete facilitator's guide (20 KB, pdf) for the session.