Ken Sands, Managing Editor of Online and New Media with The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Wash., has broken new ground with his innovative use of e-mail. He is now developing Web-based interactive beats and experimenting with "blogging" as a way to generate innovative content. Here is an introduction to his ideas. If you would like to know more you can reach Ken at kens@spokesman.com or 800-789-0029, x5014 in Spokane

E-mail: the Telephone of the 21st Century?

We love to get story tips from readers. But waiting for that one terrific phone call out of 100 is too tedious. Readers of many newspapers often don't get to talk to a real human being when they call us. This actively discourages readers from interacting with us and giving us their story ideas.

Communicating regularly with large numbers of readers by e-mail is easy, efficient and begins to challenge the deeply held notion that newspapers are unapproachable. Once you have established an on-going e-mail relationship with readers, they are much more likely to tell you about breaking news, feature ideas or enterprise stories.

Experience suggests that simply asking readers to "tell us your story ideas" is not an effective method of interacting with readers. Rather, you need to plant specific suggestions.

For example: The Spokesman-Review is featuring an "Innovator" on the front page of every Monday paper in 2002. In order to jump-start the feature, I sent out e-mail to 300 readers asking them to nominate people who have found creative, practical solutions for dealing with work and life. We received nominations for people who are breaking ground in technology, business and medicine, and for a man who creates authentic stage coaches by hand. After 18 weeks, we're running low on nominees, so I plan to send out more e-mail.

Help with reporting an enterprise story

Most reporters and editors are skeptical and will embrace a new technology only when it's proven to make their jobs easier and more effective. Most of the experiments we've conducted so far with e-mail have been wildly successful, and the reporters have begun to embrace the newest tool in the toolbox. Here are some of the different ways in which e-mail has been used:

Needle in the haystack: A reporter was doing a feature story about the state Capitol dome closing for three years for repairs. That building is 300 miles away, but he wanted to find local people with fun, personal anecdotes about the building. So we sent out e-mail to 100 people, hoping to find one or two good tales. Here's the note I received the next day from the reporter: "Hey, if you ever need an example of why this data base is valuable, here's a great one. I'm writing an otherwise droll story about renovations at the state Capitol, and here's a woman in remote Wilbur, who, 37 years ago, was stuck atop the dome during a honeymoon tour with her (still) husband. It's a great anecdote and she was a fun phone interview. I don't know how we ever would've found her any other way."

Another reporter was trying to find someone in a remote, rural community who had been over-prescribed pain medication by a physician who was under criminal investigation. An e-mail sent to residents of that area led to several good sources.

Tough nut to crack: Sometimes, it's difficult to find people who are affected by a touchy, controversial subject, or to get them to talk on the record. In Spokane, racial profiling by police is accepted as fact in the small minority population, and greeted with much skepticism by the vast white majority. That's why many people in the minority community are reluctant to talk about it. When the issue surfaced in 2001, a reporter spent a great deal of time and energy -- without success -- trying to find someone to go on the record with complaints. Initial public meetings were sparsely attended. So the initial news stories didn't have the RH (real human) factor. I stumbled upon an e-mail list of about 200 members of the minority community and sent them a message asking for their personal experiences with racial profiling. The quantity of response was low, but the quality was outstanding. We published guest columns and a half-page of letters to the editor on the opinion pages, and provided the reporter with enough good RH sources to write a decent advance of a public meeting with the police chief. Partly as a result of our thorough coverage of this issue, the public meeting was packed, and testimony went on for hours.

Needle/haystack: At 9 a.m. on Sept. 11, I sent out e-mail to nearly 1,000 readers, asking for their personal connections to the terrorist attacks. Within minutes, the responses began pouring in: the husband of one reader's cousin had just exited the World Trade Center when the first building collapsed and his cell phone went dead; another reader was panicked because her daughter, an American Airlines flight attendant, was in the air that morning; several other readers had friends or relatives in the air, in the Pentagon or in the World Trade Center. Some of their comments were included in that afternoon's special edition. The Sept. 12 newspaper contained anecdotes from dozens of readers.

Person on the street: I've been giving presentations on this e-mail tool for over a year now, and a handful of other newspapers have begun to use it. Roger Smith, a staff writer at the Vindicator in Youngstown, Ohio, recently won an AP public service award for a series in which half of the people participated via e-mail. Here's his description of how the e-mail tool was used: "Congressman James Traficant was convicted in federal court on all 10 counts of bribery and racketeering against him about 4:30 p.m. A few minutes later I sent a query asking for thoughts on the conviction. We're a p.m. paper so I didn't need to turn it around immediately. If we had been on deadline, we had 30-some comments available to run within two hours. Nonetheless, I was given until about 11 p.m. to produce something and 'keep it under 40 inches.' I went home, ate dinner, walked the dog, watched TV (not a bad for being 'on deadline') and came back to the office about 9 p.m. I got 60 emails between 4:30 p.m. and 11 p.m., edited them based on their focus to the verdict and where they came from, and spun out 32 comments. Three other reporters assigned to 'man on the street' reaction across five counties that evening produced 30 people in their stories COMBINED. And they didn't get to eat dinner at home or walk the dog that night."

Directed letters: The newspaper's opinion pages should be THE community forum for discussion of public policy issues. Our Idaho edition of the newspaper traditionally has not received a large number of unsolicited letters to the editor. So, once a week, the editorial staff sends out an invitation to readers to comment on the "hot topic of the week." Each Wednesday, we publish the letters along with an editor's note indicating that the letters on that topic were solicited.

Letters on breaking news: On Sept. 12, we published a full page of letters to the editor on the terrorist attacks. Those letters were solicited along with the news tips. The opinion staff has recognized the value in reacting immediately to big breaking news stories in this manner.

--Readers tend to be flattered by the e-mail invitation and rarely react negatively, even if they don't have anything to say. People have a much stronger sense of being "part of" the paper. They know what we're working on before it appears. And soliciting their input also demystifies the paper and how news-gathering works.

--It's amazing how much time readers are willing to take, and how open they are, about addresses, phone numbers, occupations, etc. They also tend to be more cooperative in follow-up phone interviews.

--We've had much better luck finding articulate, well-informed, untainted sources with e-mail than with some of the alternatives.

--While the use of mass e-mail is not a true, random sampling, the variety of responses typically crosses the entire spectrum. (Often beyond what you even imagine.)

--The use of e-mail is not a substitute for connecting with your community in more traditional ways. In fact, if you use e-mail, you need to be very diligent about reaching out to communities that are under-represented in the digital age.

--The use of the e-mail tool is not a replacement for traditional reporting, and is not appropriate for many stories. It is simply a cool new tool and should be used judiciously.