Bruce Lightner wrote to Executive Editor Melanie Sill to complain that the paper was not covering events, especially positive stories that reflect favorably on the black community. He cited four events in Raleigh during November and December, including a mayor's Unity Breakfast to discuss diversity and race relations. "For The N&O not to cover the mayor's breakfast is absolutely inexcusable," he told me later. "I just can't fathom why The N&O didn't have somebody there."

Lightner also complained that the paper seemed to no longer have a reporter assigned to cover Southeast Raleigh, which is predominantly black.

Another reader pointed out the extensive coverage, before Christmas, of two young men from Raleigh who were convicted in Florida in a multi-state crime spree. "There was a huge front cover story on two African-American young men who found their way to trouble....lots of coverage on that in the Sunday paper....does only bad news sell?" asked Jeanne Tedrow, head of Passage Home, a community development group in Southeast Raleigh.

Lightner, president of Lightner Funeral Home, is a longtime community leader who chairs Raleigh's annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day banquet. He communicates regularly and frequently with The N&O, and if the paper were to cover all the events he brings to our attention, our reporters would be fully booked and, I daresay, he would be shocked. Editors have to weigh the interest of any given story not just to a specific group but to The N&O's readership at large. That's the case with any of the dozens of coverage requests that come each week to the N&O newsroom.

But that's not to say the complaints are not valid. Linda Williams, deputy managing editor, said some of the events cited by Lightner were newsworthy and should have been covered. "I don't disagree with him," she said. "There should be a place for us to get news like that in the paper."

She said the newsroom is reassessing its news coverage strategy to be able to provide more "news of the ordinary" that would focus on real people navigating their daily lives. That would include individuals' achievements, awards, community events and more of what I think Lightner would call "positive news" -- black, white and other.

Williams did say that a reporting position assigned to Southeast Raleigh has not been filled since a reporter left that job several months ago. The beat, which also included Shaw University and St. Augustine's College, is one of about a dozen positions that the newsroom has not been filled because of an adverse economic climate affecting The N&O and the newspaper industry at large. (Why? It's a serious issue and that's another column)

Williams said the newsroom reassessment also would address how to make up for the loss of a position dedicated to Southeast Raleigh. "That doesn't mean we can't cover it," she said. "It's still a part of covering the city of Raleigh."

Coverage of Southeast Raleigh, she added, doesn't equate to coverage of the African-American community. And the coverage isn't confined to the news pages. The day we were talking, she noted a Sunday feature on renowned dance company director Chuck Davis of Durham, and the next day there was a prominently displayed story about Willie Otey Kay, a legendary dressmaker from Raleigh.

Lucille Webb of Raleigh said she understood the reason for running the front-page account of how the two black college students managed to go bad despite a good upbringing by their parents. "It was a disturbing piece, but I thought it was fair coverage," she said. "Sometimes we don't like to hear that news."

But Webb said African-American readers see newspapers as playing up the negative about their community. Part of the "baggage" of the black experience, she said, "is that we don't think we will get a fair shake in the newspaper about coverage, that you highlight something very negative, put it on the front page." When positive stories happen, as at a recent diabetes event she attended, Webb said, "they ask, 'where is the newspaper now?'"

That sentiment is not confined to African-American readers. I hear complaints regularly from people of all backgrounds that we play up the negative over the positive. To some extent it's true -- news is the unusual, the departure from the norm, which often is not positive. My usual answer is that if you added up all the inches in all the sections of the paper every day, you'd find plenty of upbeat news about people's accomplishments in Sports, Business, lifestyle and, yes, news.

Still, I hope that as the paper retools its coverage to cope with fewer resources, it doesn't overlook an African-American community that perceives, at least, that it is overlooked

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