Analysis of post-9/11 news coverage abounds. Meanwhile journalism scholars and practitioners are re-examining the focus of coverage. Some are calling for reporters to focus closer to home, while another argues that what is relevant for news consumers may be farther away than the next county.

Roy Peter Clark, a senior scholar for the Poynter Institute, a training organization for journalists, says "the time has now come...to start paying attention again to the nation's continuing concerns, to questions whether limited news resources are best spent by sending correspondents across the sea as opposed to sending them across the street."

In a companion column, Pam Johnson, a member of the Poynter Leadership and Management Faculty, urges reporters to pay careful attention to the local changes wrought by the September terrorist atrocities. "Your community has changed, regardless of your location," she writes. "It's time (for reporters) to be out on the streets, in neighborhoods and all kinds of establishments to understand that change. Are people remaining as engaged as they exhibited in the early weeks after the attack?"

Johnson urges reporters to consider the tough decisions that local municipalities and state governments will face as money for programs tightens. She also suggests examining "shifting economic realities" for jobs, health care, schools, family and neighborhood stability. And, she recommends that reporters look at whether community attitudes about tolerance of other cultures have changed in the last two months."

If your community is stable," Johnson says, "your readers will appreciate the solid reporting that verifies that stability. If your community faces uncertainties, that's your newsroom's foremost priority."

Yet another Poynter writer argues that news relevance is the real issue and that members of the news media have allowed "our focus and strength - our localness - to limit our ambitions."

Sandra Mims Rowe, editor of the Oregonian, challenges the "conventional wisdom" that "what is relevant is close-to-home information we can act on."

"In a search for relevance as the key to readership, too many editors acted as if relevance demanded a myopic focus on the mundane, the minutia that occupies much of daily life," Rowe says. "So, if a newspaper gave you information you could apply directly to decisions you made in preparing that night's dinner, provided you helpful hints on shopping for pillows or told you how to lose 20 pounds before the end of it week, it was seen as relevant."

"Not many editors, this one included, saw Osama bin Laden as relevant enough to publish even a fraction of (the) hundreds of thousands of words we have published since Sept. 11," Rowe says. "But, if something happened within 20 miles of the newspaper office, we saw its relevance as being off the charts. And Afghanistan, my lord, that was so far away it was our metaphor for total irrelevance to our readers' lives."

That reporters are struggling with the twin issues of localness and reader relevance in the 9/11 aftermath is reason enough for organizational spokesperson to take heed. As you prepare agendas for upcoming news interviews, consider any and all recent changes in your community, your company. Are you likely to encounter a reporter seeking a post-9/11 angle? If so, will you have your messages ready?

Join the Interviewing Instant Poll. Has your organization altered its messages as a result of the 9/11 terrorist attacks? Mark your answer in the polling box in column one.