"Just the facts" is an old, but not tired, saying in the news business.

Readers want to be able to trust that we're delivering the news in a factual and objective manner. You want to know there's no big boss telling reporters what political angle to take with their stories.

You want columns, editorials and other types of opinion, as long as they're clearly labeled and not presented as fact.

You don't want to be stereotyped based on your identity, whether it be race, gender or your political affiliation. You trust your local news outlets more than bigger media companies, but you wonder about our use of wire stories from those outlets and want us to provide unbiased wire stories on national issues.

We hear you.

At The Day, we formed a Trust Committee earlier this year to examine our work, listen to our audience and make our content more transparent. The committee is new but we've been working on trust forever. Nobody talks to a reporter they don't trust, and we depend on you to talk to us.

We encourage you to call, email, leave comments at the bottom of our stories and talk to us when you see us in person. Since this is the digital age, we also encourage interaction on social media. Read on for an upcoming opportunity.

Media outlets across the country are making similar efforts to build trust, having heard from segments of their audiences, particularly people of color and right-leaning conservatives, that they didn't feel we were adequately portraying their communities and viewpoints.

The Day is one of 27 local newsrooms around the country working with Center for Media Engagement and Trusting News on a project they're calling #RoadToPlurality. With distrust of the media becoming particularly problematic following the 2020 election, the goal is "to help journalists strengthen trust across the political spectrum to bridge divides, foster productive conversations and fuel open-mindedness." 

The participants surveyed 3,467 people from throughout the country who identified themselves as right-leaning or conservative and interviewed 91 of them.

The Day's multimedia director, Peter Huoppi, chairman of our internal Trust Committee, conducted hour-long interviews with five volunteers from our area who identified themselves as conservatives. He spoke with four men and one woman. Among them were one Hispanic, one Black/Native American and three whites. Two said they were Republican, one Libertarian, one a conservative Democrat and one independent.

What Huoppi found was largely in line with the findings of the larger group.

The readers told him, in part, that they want less focus on national news, more depth and nuance in stories, more transparency in making corrections, more "different" voices in stories and more positive stories.

Issues that caused mistrust included the use of anonymous sources, inability to tell the difference between news and opinion, treating Republican officials differently than Democrats, candidate endorsements, feeling 'lumped' into a group and too much focus on political extremes.

The participants told Huoppi they wonder how we choose wire stories, how we decide which topics to write about and who makes decisions at The Day.

These are all good issues, and we're tackling them one by one, starting with how stories are labeled.

We've been working on labeling our content so that it's clear when something is an opinion or analysis. Many of your complaints center around wire stories, which we use to supplement our local reporting and keep you informed about the nation and world.

One of our main wire story providers is the Associated Press. We had a meeting scheduled this past Wednesday with senior news leaders at AP, but they asked us to reschedule for this coming week because they were scrambling to evacuate staff from Kabul, Afghanistan.

Be patient with us as we work on our trust issues while trying to keep up with the news. And keep the conversation going.

Next Wednesday, Aug. 25, from 9 a.m. to noon, you'll be able to chat with us on Facebook about the research project we're participating in and about general issues of trust. At noon, we'll go live on Facebook to say hello and continue the conversation. Hope to see you there.

Karen Florin is The Day's engagement editor. She can be reached at k.florin@theday.com or (860) 701-4217.