The New Statesman has a long track of investigative journalism. Stephen Gray wrote about CIA rendition flights, Martin Bright exposed the link between the Foreign Office’s and radical Islamists or Chris Ames worked on the government’s notorious dossier on weapons of mass destruction.

The editors believe there are five areas that they believe need investigating, but before they assigned these topics to any journalis in the newsroom, they had asked readers to vote and tell what the Statesman’s priorities should be.

The poll was announced online. Readers could vote and make comments with other story ideas.

Readers could choose following topics:

• Who funds the UK Conservative Party?
• What is the influence of giant multinational PR and lobbying companies?
• What Prinve Charles is really doing and will he stop his meddling in the areas of agriculture, architecture and education when he becomes king?
• What is the state of British Childhood? Why is it that British children always end up near the bottom of international “happiness” comparisons?
• Asylum Crisis – why one of the richest countries in the world leaves asylum seekers on the streets with no access to benefits?

Finally, on Friday evening 84 % of votes went to the Asylum Crisis. The Statesman has not disclosed how many users voted.

The magazine’s political editor Martin Bright promised on his blog that the results of the investigation will be published by the end of the year. ”An investigation into such a controversial and complex issue will take some time,” he explained.

Even if this experiment is not as unique as the UK news magazine claims, it shows that something changes at the respected newsrooms – editors try to engage readers in new ways.

Interaction is no longer just a selection of letters to the editor published on page number 87.

How a new daily involved… every household

Probably the most fascinating example of a similar poll that I know about is the case of Divya Bhaskar, a daily newspaper in Gujarat, India.

Before it was launched in 2001, the newspaper’s representatives had visited personally (sic!) all (sic!) 800,000 (sic!) households in Gujarat three times (sic!).

Firstly they asked what kind of newspaper people would like to have, secondly to find what they did or didn’t like in their old paper, and thirdly to show people a dummy and an order form for a three-month subscription.

The launch of Divya Bhaskar was accompanied with a an advertising campaign with a simple slogan: “Now your wish will prevail.”

No wonder the new daily was number one on the market from day one.

I have learnt this story at the IFRA International Newsroom Summit in 2007 in Paris.

Asking questions is not enough

Asking readers for tips and votes is only a beginning. From my own experience, it is much harder to listen to what they really say.

Many newspapers ask questions, but they don’t really care about answers. Many newspapers invite readers to join the debate, but want to control this debate on every stage.

People in the newsroom interacting with readers often face problems like these:

• How to explain to a journalist that a reader complaining about a story or sending a correction is not a foe?
• How to convince a journalist that maybe the story idea submitted by a reader should have a higher priority that a story this journalist is working on?
• How to convince an editor that reader’s question or view may not be less important than traditional sources of opinion – like scientists, analysts, lobbyists, politicians, spokesmen etc.?

These are common problems in many newspapers and we don’t even touch issues like usage of user-generated content, crowd-sourcing etc.

Where are the limits of readers’ involvement

I asked Sue Matthias, an acting editor of the New Statesman, the following questions:

1. The Statesman has limited the readers involvement to vote on the topics and to share people’s views of what media have missed when covering the issue. Have the magazine ever considered any deeper involvement of readers?
   Just as an example I mean: collaboration in data gathering, analysis of documents, or any other activity assigned usually to proffesional journalists.
2. Can they imagine that a news organisation like the Statesman goes deeper into a collaboration like this in the future? And what would be the troubles, or challenges one would have to face?
3. In the Statesman’s poll Asylum Crisis story was a winner. What will happen to other story ideas like party funding or lobbying? I understand the editors have found them important enough to put them on the list. Will they investigate these issues even if they don’t get readers’ appreciation in the voting?

I will publish Sue’s answers here as soon as I get them.

Join the debate

What do you think: are there any limits of readers’ involvment in editorial work? Should editors of respected newspapers and news magazines go deeper in collaborations like this? What would be the troubles, or challenges they would have to face?

“Welcome to Europe” is a new weekly feature section to Gazeta introduced in July. It is inspired by a successful daily section “Welcome to Poland” focused on home issues and debates.

The new section features only original and exclusive narrative stories and interviews accompanied by the photos taken mainly by Gazeta’s staff photo reporters.

What’s also unusual: articles to this section are not submitted only by Gazeta’s foreign correspondent or foreign news desk journalists. Editors launched an internal competition and everybody, including local reporters from the smallest bureaus in the homeland, can enter with a story idea and get a budget to make it. This is both a way to promote talents in the newsroom and train people.

“Welcome to Europe” opened with a story about the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center operated by the US Army in Germany, probably the largest military hospital in the world. It serves as the nearest treatment center for wounded soldiers coming from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Gazeta’s correspondent Bartosz Wielinski was the first Polish journalist who entered the LRMC and told the story about what he had seen there and what the US Army tried to hide.

The photo above shows the command center at the Landstuhl hospital. Miguel Cubano who coordinates the transport of wounded soldiers stands at the board with flight schedules. On this day there were 8 new patients expected from Aghanistan and 10 from Iraq.

And here is the full two-page spread:

Mission

Gazeta’s foreign news desk editor Bartosz Weglarczyk wrote in his column:

“Europe does not end on the Union, its Parliament and Commision. We send our reporters to Germany, Sweden, Italy, Spain and other countries to discover the world not-covered by other Polish media…

We send our reporters to Europe because we want to check how it really is different from Poland. And how it is similar. What is better there than here? What is worse? What do we like in this Europe and what would we like to bring back home? And what do we see as unacceptable? Today, or maybe never? …

We send our reporters to Europe because we want to let this Europe to astonish us and to understand it.”

Stories

Just to give a taste of this new section, here is a glimpse on recent stories that have been published in print and online:

• Landstuhl. Hospital on the periphery: Finally, a chaplain reaches the ambulance. He stands by the head of a wounded soldier, on the left side – as the procedure demands. He whispers directly to the soldier’s ear: “Welcome to Germany. You are in good hands.” The soldier does not answer, he is unconscious. Sometimes there is so many wounded soldiers on the board of American transporter air craft C 17, that Landstuhl runs out of beds. (Written by Bartosz T. Wielinski)
• To smell Naples and die: Piles of dusts at the Garibaldi monument in the very heart of old Naples smell like rotten fish. Nearby, at the Pasquale Mancini street one feels putrid tomatos. Behind the corner, at the Umberto I Avenue, a passerby is hit by a fetor of rotten meat. Holding our noses we are walking around one of the most beautiful cities of Italy and Europe. (Written by Tomasz Bielecki)
• They took away our kids for a smack: The social worker said that for the children’s protection she would not disclose where the children were. And added that Polish migrants should find a good lawyer. “It must have been a mistake,” thought Eve. “Maybe again I got something wrongly in Swedish”. (Written by Agnieszka Czajkowska)
• Barcelona. A fight with tongues: Spanish nationalists are on a war with Catalonian ones. If one would leave them alone on a battlefield, they would certainly kill each other. (Written by Maciej Stasinski)

Invitation for readers’ tips and stories

Gazeta’s editors invited readers to discover Europe together. The paper asked simply:

“Are you traveling around European countries? Are your friends working or studying there? Tell us about Europe that makes you astonished. What irritates you? What excites? What makes you proud?”

There is a good reason for this approach. Since 2004 when Poland joined the European Union, up to two million Poles migrated to the Western countries to find better jobs. Gazeta has a good relationship with them – it runs several websites for its readers abroad and publishes foreign supplements in cooperation with the Daily Telegraph in UK and the Irish Independent.

In June 2008 two historians claimed in a new book that Mr. Walesa, a legendary leader of Solidarity, informed to the SB, the communist secret service, in the 70s, and after becoming president destroyed the evidence.

Mr. Walesa (now 65-years-old) co-founded and led Solidarity in 1980, the Soviet bloc’s first independent trade union, and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983. After the collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1989 he served as the President of Poland (1990-1995).

The book has been published by the state-financed custodian of Poland’s surviving communist-era archives – the National Remembrance Institute - and is based on the Communist secret service’s file.

The Institute’s director and the two historians are allied with Poland’s conservative President Lech Kaczynski and his identical twin Jaroslaw Kaczynski, an ex-prime minister, both of whom fell out with Mr. Walesa in the 90s.

Mr. Walesa replied to historians’ claims: ”That’s a lie. The documents suggesting my collaboration are all fakes!”.

Polish intellectuals and former Solidarity activists have launched vocal protests over the book’s “smear campaign” against Mr. Walesa.

Jan Litynski, opposition activist in 70-80s, said:

[Historians] have set out to destroy the Lech Walesa legend. They want to prove that independent Poland couldn’t be an authentic creation. But they won’t succeed in proving to millions of Poles and billions of people in the world that the Polish independence movement wasn’t authentic and that the III Republic was created by the SB [the Communist secret service].

Andrzej Milczanowski, who as an interior minister in 90s read the Communist secret service’s file on Walesa, added:

The file contained no originals. Nor did it contain any document handwritten or signed by Mr Walesa. There is no evidence to suggest that Mr Walesa was an SB agent at any time in his life.

Gazeta Wyborcza’s editors felt that it was their mission to tell their story about Walesa. Gazeta was founded in 1989 by a group of journalists and activists of the underground press as the platform for the first democratic parliamentary elections. The first issue of Gazeta held Solidarity logo on the front page and featured Walesa’s greetings to readers.

1. Commentary: We defend Lech Walesa

”We defend Lech Walesa,” was a headline of the front page commentary written by the first deputy editor-in-chief Jaroslaw Kurski. “So, we learn that Walesa talked to the SB. But does this mean he crossed the red line?

That’s far from certain,” wrote Kurski. “Walesa is like one of Shakespeare’s characters. He’s a tragic character but also a great one. That’s how he’s always been, a combination of pettiness and greatness. That’s the Walesa we know and love.”

Mr. Kurski was Lech Walesa’s spokesman during Poland’s transition from communism to democracy in 1989/90. He wrote the first critical biography of Walesa ”Wodz” (”The leader”).

Additionaly, Mr. Kurski and Adam Michnik, Gazeta’s editor-in-chief, both wrote long opinion articles about Walesa in Gazeta’s weekly literary supplement Gazeta Swiateczna.

Mr. Michnik was a prominent member of democratic opposition in the 60-80s and an advisor to Walesa during 80s. So he wrote very emotionally: “Hands off Lech Walesa!”

Although he, too, has criticised Walesa for his presidency, he cannot accept that the Polish Transformation should be dragged through the mud:

I cannot write about this from a purely political point of view. I am simply appalled, I feel bitterness and resentment. I would never have thought that Poland would do such a thing on the 25th anniversary of the Nobel Peace Prize for its national hero. Don’t say that you are uncovering things and want to reveal the truth that others (the establishment?) want to hide. You are lying.

2. Series: Seven choices of Lech Walesa

Gazeta decided to tell the full story of Mr. Walesa’s life in a series of features about his seven most dramatic choices from 1970 to today.

These stories were accompanied by archive photos, excerpts from Mr. Wales’s speeches, interviews and writings, articles of the official and underground press, and a historical column telling younger readers the background about living in the Communist Poland.

Gazeta published their work for seven consecutive days (one choice per day) in a special 4-page section in the newspaper. Look at the first section and the collection of all seven section’s front pages:

This editorial project involved a team of 26 people from editorial and marketing departments of Gazeta.
There were 9 reporters working on stories and backgrounds, 1 video reporter, 6 editors (1 responsible only for letters from readers), 3 photo editors, 4 designers and graphicians, 1 webmaster, 2 promoters.

They all produced a new biography about Mr. Walesa in less than five days! We made a ”go” decision on Wednesday evening, the first ads appeared in the newspaper on Friday and the first part of the series run in the Monday issue.

3. Letters: My Lech Walesa

Gazeta invited readers to collect their memories on Mr. Walesa and write essays for Gazeta: about their meetings, his role in their lives, their opinion on him and how these opinions changed over time.

We got hundreds of such letters and we managed to publish only small selection in print. We could put much more letters online.

4. Online features

Gazeta’s online edition – Wyborcza.pl – created a special section on the net with all the stories about Walesa and readers’ letters.

It was used as a promotional tool for the printed newspaper: the website’s layout familiarised readers with an idea of the series and introduced the next parts before they were published.

A video reporter added interviews with Mr. Walesa who commented on all the choices that Gazeta’s editors were describing in their features.

Asked who offered them greater support in childhood, 61 percent pointed to the mother and only 20 to the father. In only one respect did the fathers beat the mothers – they were far more likely to mete out corporal punishment.

Female respondents were only half as likely as male ones to complain about the father’s ”strict attitude”. They talked to their father more often, confided in him, told him they love him, took offence at him far less often.

Adult Poles did not have it easier with their father either. When they had a ”personal problem”, they would go to some other family member, or to a friend, for help. Even if the problem was of a financial nature, they were more likely to turn to their spouse, mother, or sibling than to their father.

The poll proved that there were no differences between any demographics: age, education, wealth, being conservative or liberal etc.

It was therefore something of a consolation that as many as 73 percent of male respondents with children believed they had a better relationship with their kids than they themselves had had with their own father.

1. Letter to the Father

Piotr Pacewicz, a deputy editor-in-chief, asked in his editorial on the front page:

Can the fathers return? Can we ourselves return to our families, our kids? Is it possible in a society that is running in a civilisational race, but is immersed in a tradition where the family is fundamental and other ties are almost nonexistent?

How to launch such a debate? How to talk to somebody who is absent? Maybe it would be an idea to write a letter?

Three Gazeta writers decided to examine their own lives in stories that were like master plans of conversations with their fathers, conversations that had been missing until today. These three journalists wrote in fact letters to their fathers: personal, honest and anonymous so as not to harm their relatives.
They started:

There are words that we have been afraid to say for the last 10, 15, 20 and 40 years. And questions that we are afraid to ask until today.

Readers followed the journalists and wrote their own letters. They described their fears, hopes, anger, gratitude, sadness, compassion, joy, jealousness, nostalgia, hatred and of course love.

We got over 1400 letters in total. In May 2008 we published a selection of these letters in a book ”Letter to the Father”. Read more about this book.

2. Features, interviews and opinion articles

In both November 2007 and May 2008 for three weeks in total Gazeta launched a dedicated section in the newspaper: ”Dad’s come back”.

There were features about good and bad fathers, ie. diaries of fathers who try to come back and a series on family small businesses like Kowalski & Son, Nowak & Daughter.

The features were accompanied by interviews and opinion articles written by leading psychologists who disputed models for traditional and modern families.

Gazeta’s photo reporters told the story from their perspective – we published photo essays documenting daily lives of families titled ”Father’s day”.

Readers joined the debate: published tens of letters in the printed newspaper and many more on the net. Gazeta’s online edition launched a dedicated blog to cover the discussion among readers and experts.

All the articles and photos were posted in a separate section on Gazeta’s website.

3. Online diaries

Gazeta launched a dedicated blogging platform for fathers’ diaries: www.powrottaty.pl.

200 readers blog there about their families, share views and advice on fatherhood.

In May 2008 Poland’s Gazeta Wyborcza published ”Letter to the Father”, a book inspired by a social campaign ”Dad’s come back” launched in November 2007. We were examining roots of Polish fathers’ retreat from family duties and showing men who had tried to get back to their roles of the fathers.

The book is based on 140 real life stories of our readers. We invited them to write personal letters to their fathers and to try to express things they had never told. Readers in fact faced their whole lives and evaluated it. They wrote about their fears, hopes, happiness, anger, compassion, hatred and love.

We got letters from youngsters: “Do not think that I do not love my father at all. I love him, but this feeling is limited as much as it is possible”.
We got letters from young adult women: “I am 26 years old and my life has tumbled down on my head. I blame you, father, for this”.

We got letters from 35-years-old men: “I am coming back from my mother’s funeral. I know that you have been calling me, but I don’t want to talk to you. It is too late, father, too late for 30 years.”

We got letters from mature women: “When I was 45, my son and your grandson asked me to give you the last chance. I do not regret it! You are now, for the first time in my life, the best and beloved father!”
We got letters from old men: “I am 69. And when I am standing at my father’s grave, I can’t stop thinking that his whole simple, decent life is a heroism”.

Those people really faced their lives. They decribed their fears, hopes, sadness, compassion, joy, anger, emptiness, jealousness, gratitude, nostalgia, hatred and of course love. There was a lot of love in those letters. One woman wrote: “I am writting about my dad, because I have never told him that I loved him so much”.

What’s positive is that in majority of these letters we found the faith that there was no too late for the come back.

These all were heart-breaking stories that showed the whole complexity of the term “a father”.
Jerzy Wojcik and Grzegorz Piechota, special projects editors at Gazeta, compiled and edited the letters and wrote the introduction:

We learned from these letters that sometimes it was easier to shout one’s pain or to confess one’s love in hundreds of thousands copies than to do the same in a private letter to a single recipient.

We hope this book will help many people to change their relationships with fathers, or if they are fathers themselves – to get better.

If you have never dared to talk honestly with your father, maybe it is a high time. If have never written such a letter to your father, please do write – even if you do it just for yourself. There are empty pages for you at the end of this book. And if you are a father, please consider which letter you would like to get one day from your children.

Wojcik and Piechota edit daily features’ section ”Welcome to Poland” and run awarded multimedia editorial projects like ”Migration to the EU”, ”Save the River”, ”Polish for Poles” and ”Humane Dying”.

Their book has been featured in German leading daily newspaper Die Welt, Polish most popular TV channels like TVP and TVN and nation-wide radio stations like RMF FM. It has reached the Top 50 list of bestselling titles at the Polish online bookstore Merlin.pl.