LETTER FROM THE EDITOR: GOOD NEWS, BAD NEWS: BOTH IMPORTANT

The Wall Street Journal ran a full-page ad last week with this headline: "Good news or bad news." The ad was placed by Dow Jones & Co., the owner of the venerable business daily and publisher of other business-related publications.

The purpose of the ad was to tell readers about the role of a responsible newspaper in presenting all the news, both the good and the bad. Business news, the ad said, "often is a story of success." But the news doesn't stop there.

Business news, the ad said, "is not always good. Economies stagnate, companies fail, markets decline. When they do, our obligation is to report this news with equal thoroughness and accuracy."

There is a story of legendary proportions at the Journal about a hard-hitting story that was about to be published regarding the automotive industry. Top officials of all the Detroit automakers had been interviewed, and one of them wasn't too happy with the prospect of seeing the story in print.

As a matter of fact, the auto company's president called the editor of the Journal and said it would pull all of its advertising if the story ran. This was no small matter. But the editors decided the story should be published. The auto company's ads were canceled.

After a while, though, the auto company called the Journal. The ads would resume, it said. Why the change of heart? Because the Journal's story on the auto industry, while negative in some respects, was positive in others. On balance, the story had been fair. The Journal, the auto company said, had demonstrated integrity.

That may have been the defining moment for the Journal in developing its reputation as a rock-solid source of news, good or bad.

Newspaper editors across America struggle with the same issues and the same criticisms from readers and advertisers. A frequent comment: Why do you print just the bad news? Why don't you ever print good news?

In the early part of this century, a Congregational minister in Topeka, Kan., went to the daily newspaper with an idea. Would the Topeka Capital-Journal permit him to publish the paper for one week, during which only good news and advertising would be published? Yes, he was told. And for that week there were no murders, no assaults, no heated exchanges at city council meetings, no illnesses, no politics and no ads for liquor or pool halls.

What happened? The normal circulation of several thousand swelled to hundreds of thousands as requests came from across the nation for copies of the newspaper that only carried good news. It was quite a public relations coup for the newspaper, and the minister made his point.

So why, if it was so popular, didn't the Capital-Journal stick to its all-good-news format? Readers were willing to go along for a while, but then they wanted to know about crime in their neighborhood and the obituaries of their friends and neighbors and what government was doing to their taxes. In other words, they wanted the "bad news" too.

Around the country you can find reminders of the many Utopian communities that have sought to create a way of life that shunned the real world. Many of them published newspapers that promoted their ideals. Today, none of the communities is left, and the good-news newspapers are gone too, not because publishers decided to stop them, but because readers and advertisers demanded both the good news and the bad -- with integrity.

~R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.