Paper adds more areas

DOWNTOWN — The Burbank Leader has debuted new datelines — the uppercase indicator at the beginning of a news article noting where the story occurred — in an effort to localize stories and better distinguish neighborhoods, editors said.

“Burbank has a lot of unique communities, and it didn’t seem that we were serving them as well by just slapping the generic Burbank dateline on it,” said Dan Evans, editor of the Burbank Leader. The 10 dateline areas are: Hillside, Airport District, North San Fernando, West Burbank, Downtown, South San Fernando, Magnolia Park, Toluca Lake, Media District and Rancho District. City Hall and Bob Hope Airport will also appear in live coverage of government meetings there.

By instituting more specific neighborhood datelines, the newspaper is better able to bring readers into the story, Evans said.

“What it really does is show that we know Burbank and we understand Burbank,” Evans said. “Burbank is not a monolith; it is a distinct set of communities within neighborhoods.”

While most of the areas are relatively small compared with the city, they are generally well known to residents who carry a sense of pride, Deputy City Planner Michael Forbes said.

“I think people definitely identify with the neighborhoods, in particular Magnolia Park, Toluca Lake, the Rancho and even the Hillside,” he said.

Areas with very little residential space, such as the Media District and downtown, are recognized because of the number of people who work there, planners said.

Forbes said including one- to two-word datelines will go far to provide readers with a better idea of what part of the city an article is focused in.

Reporters met with various community members and city planners before taking the list of suggested neighborhoods to editors.

The 20 proposed datelines were narrowed down to about half to avoid little-known micro-districts, Evans said.