'Sausage making' stories can have a higher purpose

When it comes to government reporting, the Daily Herald is very selective about approaching "process" stories.

Our goal on a particular issue is to make sure you know what happened and why, but we've found that delving too far into the details of how can distract readers from the point, not to mention turn many away. Blogs like "Animal Farm" on www.dailyherald.com by Senior State Government Editor John Patterson and Politics and Projects Editor Joseph Ryan can fill in the details for those readers who, as the saying goes, want to see how the sausage is made.

Sometimes, though, the process can be as telling about an issue as the outcome, and one such instance played out in the past week on both the opinion and front pages.

It began with a letter to the editor submitted by Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan's top aide, Steve Brown. Brown was upset about what he believed to be a reference to him in a section of the book "Challenging the Culture of Corruption: Game-Changing Reform for Illinois" by former Illinois Reform Commission Chairman Patrick Collins. Like so many other readers with something burning inside to share with the public at large (note my column of last week), he took to his word processor and dashed off a letter, aiming in his eyes, to set the record straight.

But Brown had much more to say than could be squeezed into the 300-word limit of our letters columns. Because of the significance of the issue and because of Brown's prominent role in it, we offered an alternative we reserve for special circumstances - a "Guest View," providing him about as much space as one of our regular columnists. At that, he still had to refine his missive by as much as a third, but he had his say and, in so doing, provided readers interested in Illinois government a direct, unfiltered look into the thinking of the top lawmakers in the state. Not surprisingly, Collins took issue with some of that thinking, so he responded and we provided him the same space we'd given Brown.

In all of this, we saw evidence of a portion of the reform story that hadn't been told, most notably the low esteem in which the legislative leadership held the work and approach of Collins' commission. That surely played a role in limiting the success of the commission, we reasoned, and Patterson set out to examine how a clash of cultures between legislative insiders and would-be reformers resulted in the legislation that eventually passed.

Patterson's story ran on the front page Monday. It was a "process" story, yes. It concentrated on the sausage-making of government, including interviews with various key players and a historical framework for similar past efforts and the degree to which they succeeded or failed. We hoped it was the kind of analysis that would enable voters and, especially, future reformers, both inside and outside of the entrenched system, to better understand what it takes to change state government in Illinois.

Where you stand on the fundamental issues depends largely on your own circumstances. Brown says the overwhelming number of decent politicians gets distorted by the few bad apples, and the process doesn't really need to be changed all that much. Collins says the process breeds too many bad apples. Patterson's analysis showed how the one point of view maintains its hold on power and demonstrated the challenges the other faces.

It wasn't just a simple "process" story. Hopefully, by considering all the elements together, you got more than a look at how the system works but more important, insights into what you must do to work the system.

• Jim Slusher, jslusher@dailyherald.com, is an assistant managing editor at the Daily Herald.