The News & Observer had a good idea for a back-to-school feature: Invite high school students in to model their fall fashion favorites.

But there was an uh-oh moment when seven teens turned up for the photo shoot: All were white girls. At that point, it was too late in the production schedule to find more models or change the story, editors said, so The N&O's Features Department went ahead Monday with the Life, etc. fashion front called "Students of Style," complete with full-length photos of the stylish but un-diverse students.

The reaction from readers was swift:

* "I was stunned that in 2007 this newspaper would feature seven girls who look exactly the same. Where are the girls of color? There were no Latinas, no African-Americans, and no Asians represented. No girls who don't fit the 'typically pretty' image!" --Neva Bartholomew, Chapel Hill.

* "It's difficult to believe that every respondent to the call for area fashionistas was Caucasian with shoulder-length straight hair and predictably trendy fashion sense. If so, perhaps the editors of Life, etc. should take the hint and write articles that appeal to a more diverse readership." -- Claire McGarry, Raleigh.

And on and on. The reporter and editors involved acknowledge that the feature turned out unfortunately and that they would handle it differently if they had a do-over. "I think perhaps if we had started the process earlier, we could have been prepared to deal with it," said Pop Culture Editor Adrienne Johnson Martin.

There were several factors working against this project, she said. First, school is out for most students, so the paper had difficulty finding teens to model their fashion choices. The solution was to post a "fetch" in the Life, etc. section inviting high school students to participate. The problem with that was that the pool of participants then became self-selecting, and no minorities selected themselves.

Martin said it was too bad that race ended up being readers' focus, because the project otherwise had pretty good diversity, with girls from five schools in three counties wearing styles ranging from discount store to boutique.

"You see the impact that photos have on people, because everyone paid attention to the kids instead of what they were wearing," Martin said. This project was an aberration, she said; her section routinely takes extra steps to include minorities. The Life, etc. "Beauty Panel," which appears once a month, includes women who are black, younger, older, gay, South Asian (and one man).

This incident highlights a problem that any paper has in making sure that it reflects the diversity of its readership. Editors go to some lengths to find a wide sampling of voices and faces in presenting the news, and they're successful more often than not. I looked back over The N&O front pages for the month of July. Of those 31 papers, there were photos of white people on 30 days, of African-Americans on 16 days, Hispanics four days, Asians four days and an Arab one day.

In fact, I get more complaints from people who say The N&O gives disproportionate attention to minorities, because it's the "liberal" newspaper presenting its "politically correct" picture of the world. That's not true; too often, the minorities pictured are people in trouble.

(The race sensitivity isn't confined to news coverage. Readers occasionally question why the Sunday weddings page shows so few nonwhite brides and grooms. Of 64 bridal pictures published in July, two were African-Americans.

(N&O advertising execs explain that the wedding announcements are paid ads, not news, and that not many minority couples buy the ads, despite some outreach efforts by the paper. But I don't think a lot of readers see that news/advertising distinction. The announcements look like news.)

Linda Williams, an N&O assistant managing editor, says there are some subtle reasons behind minorities' unwillingness to participate in a newspaper feature like the back-to-school story. The self-selection for that story, she said, presumably was done not by the students but by their mothers, who are the readers of the paper. In the black community, she said, mothers would be less likely to encourage their daughters to participate. "There's a concern about the exposure of bodies of young black women, because of things going on in popular culture," said Williams, who is African-American. "For them to do it, there has to be a lot of trust."

And trust is a commodity in short supply between newspapers and minorities, she said. That's in large part a function of how they're portrayed in mainstream media -- too often as criminals or athletes, not enough as ordinary people. Think Michael Vick, in last month's gallery of blacks on the front page.

Minorities don't engage with the paper because they don't see themselves represented enough in its pages, at least positively. So they're less likely to be seen in the paper. Not coincidentally, minority readership of the paper is low -- 20 percent of N&O readers, compared with 33 percent of the Raleigh-Durham population. (The N&O's news staff is 22 percent minority.)

All those are reasons why The N&O needs to go to extra lengths to make sure minorities are represented. And why an unfortunate mistake like last week's is damaging.

Adrienne Martin, the editor of the fashion piece, says she recognizes that: "I think it's a step forward that people engaged in the paper say something about it and are concerned about diversity. It just bothers me that people think we're not interested in that, because that's not true."