Hey, Answer Girl:

This is a question that has been bugging us since the beginning of time. Why is there more news in the paper about Natrona County High School than Kelly Walsh High School?

- LeAnna and the KW journalism class

As reporters, it's our duty to cover everything we can in the most truthful and balanced way possible - something you're probably learning a lot about in a journalism class.

We follow a strict code of ethics, and it's important that we try as hard as we can not to let any personal bias we may have show through in what we print. A team of reporters and editors work together to accomplish this.

But sometimes we rely on community input to find out what should be in the newspaper. Without calls from parents, students, and school officials, it can be hard to know what's going on in each school every day.

Our education reporter, Jasa Santos, said that while she wishes she could be totally fair, she does cover NC more often than KW. This stems from a higher volume of calls from NC supporters and attendees than from KW staff and students.

"I'm not going to know what's going on in every school all the time," Santos said.

She needs event information from Kelly Walshers whenever they have information to offer, she said.

Former sports editor David Mayberry, a KW graduate who has worked at the paper for 10 years and now runs the city desk, shared an anecdote about the ever-present who's-covered-more debate:

In the late 1990s, a parent from NC was convinced the sports guys were writing more about KW than about his kid's school. So he cut out every single column inch of print for a year (column inches are the paper's version of 'word counts' - they tell us how long stories are).

At the end of the year, when he measured the column inches, the counts for each school were within an inch of each other, which means they were covered almost exactly evenly.

With more than 12 high school sports covered in the paper each school year, that's a pretty amazing count, Mayberry said. And, he added, "Our priorities haven't changed at all in this newsroom" since then.

"It has to do a lot with cooperation from schools, coaches … If they don't call in scores, game reports, call us for future stories, that's gonna hurt coverage," he said.

Other sports coverage disparity factors include winning seasons, number of home games and conflicting times with other sports.

"You have to be careful in making sure you're fair to the readers in providing them the top news of the day and being fair to both schools at the same time," Mayberry said.

So, want to see your school in the paper more? Let us know what's happening. Give us ideas about interesting events at your school. Call Santos at (307) 266-0593, or e-mail her at jasa.santos@trib.com. You can also try contacting Mayberry, who calls the shots about what gets in the Casper section of the paper, at david.mayberry@trib.com.

For sports, contact high school sports coordinator Patrick Schmiedt at (307) 266-0615 or patrick.schmiedt@trib.com.

Contact reporter Megan Lee at (307) 266-0616 or megan.lee@trib.com

Ask Answer Girl

Answer Girl tackles questions about Casper, the universe and everything else. Submit your questions by email to megan.lee@trib.com, or call Megan Lee at 266-0616. You can also write to Answer Girl, Box 80, 170 Star Lane, Casper, WY, 82602.

Answer Girl tackles questions about Casper, the universe and everything else. Submit your questions by email to megan.lee@trib.com, or call Megan Lee at 266-0616. You can also write to Answer Girl, Box 80, 170 Star Lane, Casper, WY, 82602.]]->