There was a time, recalls Peter Clavelle, mayor of Burlington, Vermont, when he saw a reporter from The Burlington Free Press almost every day. Now, he says, "There are times when I go a full week without seeing a reporter.

"I probably shouldn't complain," he adds.

Anyway, complaining wouldn't change things. The Free Press's city hall reporter has been instructed to spend more time talking to citizens and less to government officials. "We want to make sure readers have a voice," says editor Ron Thornburg, "and not just officials."

A Gannett newspaper, the Free Press is revamping its priorities, design, and reporting methods as part of the parent company's News 2000 initiative, a major effort to reshape all of Gannett's eighty-one papers. The plan was announced in June 1991. Nearly twenty months into it, the Free Press, at least, is a very different newspaper.

The first order of business was to solicit input from readers. Last summer the Free press organized focus groups, handed out surveys at the local agricultural fair, and held "call-the-editor" and "meet-the-editor" nights. From some 2,500 responses, the paper culled a dozen "top community interests," and in a report to readers promised to refocus news coverage on them. The number-one reader priority was Taxes/Value in Government. Readers, Thornburg wrote, "want us to answer this question in every government story: What value am I getting for my tax money?" The Recession was the second priority, followed by Changing Vermont -- how growth and economic change are reshaping the state -- and The Environment.

What the readers put in the fifth and sixth spots, interestingly, was Positive News -- "everyday heroes who are making a contribution" -- and Micro News -- weddings, church bazaars, court actions, and the like. After that came The Health Care Crisis; The Schools; Politics; Parenting and The Family; Arts and Entertainment; and Sports/Recreation/Fitness. Editors say they take these priorities seriously as they assign and play stories.

One of the most dramatic changes at the Free Press is the effort to add the "reader's voice" to stories. A regular new feature is the "News Line Poll," in which readers call in their opinions to questions ranging from serious national issues to "Is the new phone book format easier or harder to use?" Readers also have been asked to submit questions for candidate debates, and to address Vermont's economic malaise in a ten-week series on the Sunday editorial page.

To stay in touch, the paper has formed a reader advisory council and from time to time runs surveys. A heavily promoted twenty-four-hour telephone hot line invites readers to call in story tips or questions.

Mark Silverman, Gannett's director of News 2000, says that while all eight-one papers in the chain are going through the News 2000 process, "it's handled differently and executed differently at each newspaper, and presumably the results are different." The Free Press has been some circulation gains since News 2000 began -- a 3.8 percent increase in Sunday circulation, to 68,162 -- but Silverman says it is too early to determine if it is a business success in Burlington.

In the journalistic community, the reviews are mixed. Former Free Press reporter Kevin Ellis worries that the paper is crossing over into pandering. "They're trying to be popular, they're trying to be loved," he says. Some Free Press reporters, on the other hand, like the way the paper has been personalized. Sam Hemingway, a columnist and one of the paper's best reporters, isn't happy about the way the Free Press is using Gannett's "News 2000 Pyramid," (shown left), which the company calls a "management model of journalism." At the Free Press, the system is used to evaluate stories based on criteria such as "evokes emotions" and "anticipates change." "It takes what should be gut instincts in the news business and sort of creates a systematic scoreboard," Hemingway says.

The basic problem, say a number of Free Press critics, is the lack of resources -- a small reporting staff with a big turnover rate. Although a full page is devoted to "The Edge," a News 2000 innovation featuring articles by local high school journalists, the critics say that the education beat is all but ignored.

"I do applaud that it is trying to understand what readers want. They are doing what newspapers rarely do," says Stephen C. Terry, former managing editor of the nearby Rutland, Vermont, Herald. "But on the basic and very important task -- how they cover their local community -- they have a lot of work to do."

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