TIME MAKES LITTLE OF CAPE VISIT

Time magazine "listened to blacks and whites talk about community policing in racially divided Cape Girardeau," but makes no other mention of the city in a 40-page special report on the "Pulse of America."

The issue hits newsstands today. The report is also available online at the magazine's Web site: www.time.com

A crew of Time reporters visited Cape Girardeau April 26 for a panel discussion on community policing. The stop was part of a 21-city visit to Mississippi River towns.

The magazine said it wanted to capture a picture of life along the Mississippi River, so a team of 30 reporters set out for two weeks in the spring to talk to people who lived along the river.

Conversation topics included race, education, health care, religion, family and poverty and how those issues might affect the presidential and congressional races in November.

The stop in Cape Girardeau gave a "very local perspective" to some of the problems our nation faces, the article states.

About 75 people came for the two-hour conversation that centered on policing efforts in South Cape Girardeau and how effective those efforts have been in the past. Of particular interest seemed to be a June 1999 incident on Good Hope Street where a dozen people in a crowd of 150 threw gravel and bricks at police officers. Police had attempted to make an arrest when the fight broke out.

That incident brought Cape Girardeau to the attention of Ron Stodghill, the Midwest bureau chief for Time.

Yet, panelists concluded that the city faces similar challenges to other American cities when it comes to creating a safe community. Time writers say the city is "racially divided."

"One reason for these trips is that those of us in the national media spend a lot of time listening to issues being debated at distant summits and congressional hearings but not enough time listening to discussions that occur at local PTA and school board meetings, at Rotary and Kiwanis clubs, at coffee shops where store owners congregate on slow Tuesday mornings," writes Walter Isaacson, Time's managing editor, in a letter to readers.

But the Time reporters who visited Cape Girardeau spent little of their time among the people of the community. They stayed overnight before heading to Cairo, Ill., and Osceola, Ark., and only spoke with those attending the forum.

Yet writer Nancy Gibbs said the crew was "surprised everywhere we went, the more you explore the communities along the river, the farther south you travel down the Mississippi Delta, the more apparent it becomes that this is still a land unto itself."

It's a place where people "seek a sense of community" and home to "big groups of people -- ministers and teachers and store owners and bureaucrats -- who are prepared to give all their time and muscle to putting things right, making a better place. To the outsider it would seem so much easier just to pick up and move on. Trying to stay, and to change, is an act of faith."