Our publisher, David Cohen, poked his head inside my office that morning and said, "This is our anniversary." I said I was aware of it, and we quietly congratulated each other.

The truth is that, unlike some first anniversaries, this one was not accompanied by a collective sigh of relief at having survived our first year. In our minds, there was never any question that separating from our parent company, Metro Publishing Inc., was the right thing to do. It just made sense for us to become an independent company and concentrate exclusively on publishing our community newspapers. We knew it was time to make our move in the same way a young man knows it's time to leave his parents' home and strike out on his own.

For me personally it was a year when, free from weekly deadlines, I finally had time to sit back and think about journalism in general and in particular, the role of SVCN's weekly newspapers in the communities they serve. I started the year by attending a workshop on civic journalism, and no matter what else I did this year, this new way of thinking about journalism was never far from my thoughts.

Civic journalism, sometimes called public journalism, is a way of approaching news coverage that attempts to engage readers in the process of solving problems in the community. It's not exactly a new concept—it's been around for about 10 years—and many newspapers across the country have at least dabbled in it.

Not everyone in the world of journalism is enthusiastic about this approach, but when I first began to learn about civic journalism, it seemed to me that it was simply community journalism the way it should be practiced. I've been preaching civic journalism to my staff all year, and now, as the new year begins, we are implementing some techniques for news gathering and reporting that I believe will make our coverage of community news even stronger and more relevant to our readers.

The changes will be subtle; many readers won't even be aware that we are going about our job a little differently. Much of how we're going to change is simply in the way our reporters and editors approach their stories. When we caution our reporters not to be overly negative in reporting on meetings, for instance, we're not suggesting they paint what happened in Pollyanna hues; we're simply asking them to be sure they are reporting accurately. That's because we know how much reporters love to pounce on the lone voice of dissent at a meeting and put the lively quote at the top of the story, downplaying all the supportive voices as if they were insignificant.

We're going to make a greater effort in the coming year to learn how issues in the community affect the people who live and do business there. Our approach in the past has been to assume that if people cared about an issue on the city council or planning commission agenda, they'd show up, take the microphone and express themselves. Our reporters would simply sit back and record the dialogue. While we completely support this kind of interaction between officials and their constituents, we also know that just because people don't show up for a meeting doesn't mean they don't care or that they won't be affected by decisions made there.

Our goal is to report on the bigger picture—not just what happened at the meeting. That means our reporters are going to have to work harder; they're going to have to track down the news, not just wait for it to play out on the civic stage.

We are committed to exploring the various layers of the community to help us better understand breaking news stories as well as to discover emerging issues.

We are also committed to telling stories in context because to do otherwise is a distortion. Recognizing that the ethnic makeup of our schools, our neighborhoods and our workplaces is changing dramatically, we are committed to making sure our newspapers reflect the entire population in each of our communities.

I wouldn't want to suggest that we aren't proud of our newspapers. We are. We know they provide a strong voice in each of our communities, but there's always room for improvement, and we believe that making a greater effort to engage people, to make them part of the solution to community problems, is the direction community journalism ought to be heading.

We hope you agree and that you'll let us know how we're doing. Our editors are always happy to hear from readers, and I welcome phone calls and emails about any of our papers and the role they play in their communities.

Dale Bryant is the executive editor of Silicon Valley Community Newspapers, which publishes the Saratoga News. She can be reached at 408.200.1021 or dbryant@svcn.com.