A year has passed since Mel Reiter started publishing the Valley Voice, a monthly newspaper he started to fill the void left by the larger dailies not covering local issues in the north central area of the San Fernando Valley. Reiter is pleased with how things have gone since the first issue. The paper’s volunteer staff has grown and stories are now available online. The paper’s early issues leaned heavily on editorial cartoons and film reviews. While those elements are still included, the Valley Voice upped the amount of stories and columns from local contributors. In the November issue, front page stories included a wildfire in Porter Ranch and the start of construction on the new cancer treatment center at Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank. The feedback from readers of the 25,000 copies distributed for free has been encouraging, said Reiter, a former newspaperman back in Michigan before he settled into a career in investing. The readers appreciate the local news about the northwest Valley and how the paper doesn’t back off from making its views known about how the Northridge/Porter Ranch/Chatsworth area doesn’t get a fair return in police protection and street improvement for the taxes property owners pay, Reiter said. The Valley Voice also got involved with the District 3 Los Angeles Unified School District election in the spring although it backed the wrong candidate in Jon Lauritzen, Reiter said. “We are not afraid of how we stand on those issues and make that public,” Reiter said. The weakness appearing in the paper’s operation was on the advertising side. Reiter admitted that even though he and wife Rachel spend much time contacting businesses to buy space, he could be more aggressive about it and expects a better 2008. To make that happen, Reiter brought on board a friend who for 30 years sold advertising in the Yellow Pages. Like many print publications, the Valley Voice was hit by the downturn in the real estate market. The paper had realtors and mortgage companies buying ad space but that has dropped off as the sub-prime mortgage market imploded. That in turn bit into Reiter’s plan of publishing the paper more than once a month. In an interview for a story published in January in the business journal, Reiter said he looked to come out weekly by summer 2008. Those plans have been put on hold. Publishing more frequently remains in the Valley Voice’s future but now Reiter has stepped back from making any timeline when that will happen. Appearing at the same time as Reiter’s paper was the monthly SFV News put out by real estate agent Charles Beris and covering the same north Valley communities. In that year, however, the SFV News made a format change from a newspaper to a glossy magazine coming out every other month. In the same business journal article from January, Beris told of plans to expand his publication first into the south Valley and then into the mid Valley. Attempts to reach Beris, the CEO and co-founder of The Synergy Media Co., a Northridge-based publisher, were not successful. Green Reporting A study by the Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism found the number of “green” business stories in newspapers will double this year from last year and is nearly seven times greater than the number published in 2005. Companies promoting their environmentally friendly products or practices have become in the study’s words “a reliable story element on the nation’s business pages, websites and financial news channels.” Hand in hand with that is “a thriving public relations specialty” to get press releases to business journalists, the study said. But within the body of the 10-page study is a caution that its results are approximate at best because newspaper archive search engines vary from paper to paper; and search terms used “green,” “environmental” and “sustainability” show up in business stories having nothing to do with environmental sustainability or being eco-friendly. So what follows in looking at the number of “green” stories in three Los Angeles newspapers is probably even less than approximate. Although for the Business Journal I can say the number of these stories has gone up this year. Since February, there have been about a dozen stories with some environmental angle to them. Compare that to the 17 stories in the Los Angeles Times and two in the Daily News that came up in a search of the Factiva database for the past year using the same terms used in the Reynolds study. Frankly, the numbers seem low. The search of the Times does not include the entries in the eco-oriented Emerald City blog started in September by contributor Siel, who also writes at greenlagirl.com. Expect to see more in the Business Journal with a “green” column by reporter Linda Coburn. For all these stories in national and local newspapers, very few of them have a business reporter whose beat is corporate sustainability. The Reynolds study included a survey sent to over 100 editors of which 17 responded saying that environmental stories tended to be handled as general assignment. This same group of editors was quick not to credit public relations departments and their press releases for driving their coverage. (After all, if you credit the PR people that will only mean more releases and who wants those?) While a press release can be helpful, it is only one way to get a story idea. Simply asking a tech guy based in Westlake Village about what was going on in the industry resulted in my contribution to the “How Green is the Valley” special report published in February. On the other hand, it was a press release that clued me in to the green aspects of a new fixed base operator building at Van Nuys Airport. While not the focus of the story it did get mentioned within the first three paragraphs. The Reynolds survey also showed that newsroom cynicism is alive and well. Almost all the editors responding agreed with the statement, “Companies publicize sustainability efforts mostly to enhance their public image.” Staff Reporter Mark Madler can be reached at (818) 316-3126 or by e-mail at [email protected] .