Sources matter

The Morning Call is keeping an eye on who it’s talking to

Like any organization, we’re always looking for ways to improve. How we write, report and edit stories, the photographs we take, the graphics we use. We can always get better at things we do.

One of the areas we have been looking to improve or enhance is in the sources we use to write stories. We’ve been tracking our sources on a relatively informal basis for the last year or so, but we’re upping our game now.

We’ve contracted with the American Press Institute to use a program called Source Matters. Even the name conjures how important sources are — especially making sure we talk to everyone in our community — in balanced, rich news coverage.

Sources matter. It’s as simple as that.

So what is Source Matters and how will it help us?

Source Matters is a source auditing program that uses natural language processing to help easily pick out named sources in any story. The idea is that we will be able to clearly see who we’ve talked to for stories and whether we are covering all aspects and demographics of a community.

When we did our informal tracking, we found that the majority of our sources were overwhelmingly white, upper class men. The Lehigh Valley is a deep blend of races and ethnicities, and if our sources are mostly white, upper class men, we’re not covering the community as a whole.

That’s the purpose of Source Matters. We are going to be tracking the sources that we use in our stories for race/ ethnicity, gender, age, role, background, where they live and how they came to be a source. It will let us see if we’re inadvertently leaving out some people — women, minorities, those in rural areas or inner cities.

Reporters will ask sources in their stories for some demographic information about themselves. We’re not trying to be intrusive. We’re just trying to better understand where our sources are coming from and if we need to branch out for a better slice of the Lehigh Valley. Besides, the more sources we have, the better our understanding of what our readers want, which should lead to more and better stories.

We have a lot of work to do and we acknowledge that. We invite you to tell us when you think we’re falling down in coverage, what we’re missing in our stories. That’s the best way to improve in all aspects of our coverage