WHEN IT COMES TO NEWS, FOCUS ON BEING BETTER

It's always interesting when newspaper people get together at meetings and conventions. They tend to fall into two camps.

One group responds to inquiries about the health of their newspapers and the industry in general much the same way most of us reply when asked, in casual conversation, how we're doing. "Fine. Just fine," we are prone to say even if the current bout of arthritis is particularly painful. We've been taught all our lives to be polite, so there's no use trying to tell someone you only see at newspaper meetings how you're really doing.

The other group tends to respond by lamenting the decline in circulation or some other negative aspect of the business while placing the blame on our electronic brethren. Television seems to have a large bull's-eye painted all over it in the minds of many newspaper folks.

Recently, some out-of-town journalists from some of the nation's big newspapers came to Southeast Missouri University for a daylong conference put together by the mass communications department. The conference coincided with the annual meeting of the Southeast Missouri Press Association. So the audience for the visiting journalists included students who may be considering careers in some aspect of news, academics who try to prepare students for such careers and professional journalists who put out newspapers every day or every week.

Elliott Brack from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Jackie Jones from The Washington Post agreed that newspapers have a not-so-good reputation when it comes to things like credibility. The culprit? Why, it's those sensationalizing TV newscasters, they said. Jones added Internet Web sites to the mix, saying Matt Drudge "is not a journalist."

Maybe it's time for newspaper folks to take a deep breath and step back for a moment to evaluate themselves without looking for someone to blame.

First off, newspapers are healthy. The latest figures show a reversal in the circulation losses that many newspapers have reported in recent years. Newspapers that vigorously report the news and are dedicated to high-quality news products aren't being hurt by circulation declines. They are reporting gains. The Southeast Missourian is among those that have increased circulation in recent months. And while some dailies have experienced fewer subscribers, weekly newspapers have had huge increases in recent years. Keep in mind that the number of both weeklies and dailies has eroded dramatically over the past 25 years.

Aside from circulation numbers, newspaper readership appears to be at all-time highs. The industry continues to document more and more multiple readership of a single copy of a newspaper.

What's curious about the observations made by Brack and Jones is that they didn't mention some obvious faults displayed by some newspapers.

While Jones may not consider Matt Drudge to be a journalist, the fact remains that Americans are finding ways to get information they want on the Internet. And Drudge's track record for accuracy and timeliness is far better than many newspapers. Besides, there are literally hundreds of other Internet news sources that have been developed by respected news organizations, both print and broadcast.

Brack's comments about credibility and sensationalism need to be put in the context of the Journal-Constitution's own experiences. It was the Atlanta newspaper, many will recall, that fingered a suspect in the bombing at the Olympics -- a report that later turned out to be unsubstantiated. In short order, the newspaper's embarrassing lapse in reporting became national news.

Instead of blaming other media for whatever woes are perceived by newspapers, it would be far better to concentrate on trying to do this business just a little better every day. The result? More readers.