Because both parties have real contests for their presidential nominations, and because Washington is the only Northwest state with an early primary, Washingtonians who vote in the primary or participate in caucuses here might actually have an impact on the nomination in one or both parties.

We’ll cover the party caucuses and the primary votes with interest, but we’re asking our news staff not to participate in either.

We have no restrictions on staffers voting in general or special elections. We ask them to check their preferences and biases at the door of the newsroom. But they’re citizens, too, and we encourage them to exercise their rights in picking candidates and voting for or against ballot measures in open elections conducted by secret ballot.

But caucuses and party primaries aren’t general elections – they’re activities of political parties. One has to record allegiance to one party to participate. The caucuses and the primaries are set up for party members to decide who will represent the party in elections to follow or for party members to demonstrate who they favor.

We ask our newsroom staff not to participate in any party activities. For anyone covering anything even remotely political or for any supervising editor in the newsroom, participation in caucuses or primaries is prohibited.

For staffers who neither cover nor edit anything political we strongly discourage them from participating. If they do participate, we require them to tell us of their participation so we can make sure they aren’t involved in any political coverage or in any decisions about political coverage.

To be a journalist at The News Tribune, one surrenders some privileges. Political activism is out. Fundraising must be approved by top editors. (If someone rejects your appeal for funds, the person might worry about how he or she will be covered by the newspaper.) Staff members can’t be publicists of civic organizations they belong to. The newspaper reserves the right to prohibit staff members from writing for competing media.

It seems to us a small price to limit the perception of bias by staffers.

WHAT GRADE ARE WE AIMING FOR?

We occasionally get calls or e-mails from readers wondering about what grade level we choose in writing stories for The News Tribune.

Reader Gail Wolvin of Tacoma called last week and asked: “What is the Fog Index of The News Tribune?” (The Gunning-Fog Index is a rough measure of the number of years of school necessary to understand written material).

And Tacoma School Board member Connie Rickman informed her colleagues in a meeting last week about “the general sixth-grade level of newspapers. … I’m sorry, but that’s generally the level you get in a newspaper, usually fourth grade.”

Well, there are lots of reading-level measures out there, most of them algorithms that use the number of words in a sentence and the number of syllables per word or the number of complex words to arrive at a “readability” score.

There’s the Gunning-Fox Index. There’s the Flesch Reading-Ease level, where the higher the score (on a scale of 100), the easier the material is to read. There’s the Flesch-Kincaid Grade-Level measure, which also attempts to measure the grade-level required to understand the material.

A lot of folks think newspapers purposely try to write for a certain grade level. We don’t. We strive for simplicity and ease of understanding. On the Flesch Reading Ease index, it is said, authors are encouraged to write books so that they fall into the 60-to-70 range.

There are Web sites that allow you to get scores for different material. Here’s what I found on one site, juicystudio.com, by plugging in various Web addresses.

For The News Tribune’s home page: Gunning-Fox, 9.42; Flesch Reading Ease, 57.03; Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, 5.93.

For my column: Gunning-Fox, 9.62; Flesch Reading Ease, 61.13; Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, 5.61.

For The New York Times’ home page: Gunning-Fox, 9.63; Flesch Reading Ease, 55.24; Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, 6.23.

The Tacoma School District’s home page: Gunning-Fox, 10.99; Flesch Reading Ease, 48.25; Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, 7.47.

Dave Zeeck: 253-597-8434

david.zeeck@thenewstribune.com

blogs.thenewstribune.com/editors