Those gathered at Tuesday's meeting in Oxnard believe The Star must do more to report on key issues of education and housing affordability.

The newspaper must also do a better job of digging deeper into other issues that affect Ventura County residents rather than just providing feel-good, puffy personality profiles.

While the public gathering, organized by The Star, was designed to measure the progress The Star has made in covering the Latino community, the desire for better coverage crosses all ethnic, gender, social, lifestyle, generational and economic boundaries -- a feeling expressed by some who attended the town hall meeting at Heritage Square.

"While I enjoy reading articles and features on Latinos ... I really enjoy reading about the diversity of the community," said Priscilla Herrera, who cited the recent coverage of the new mural in Ventura honoring the history of the Chinese-American community.

"I want to be a well-rounded person and I want to be conversant with" all the issues affecting us, she said.

The second annual town hall meeting was designed to measure The Star's progress since it joined up with the National Association of Hispanic Journalists to launch the Parity Project. Surveys, public meetings and community advisory boards are all part of the Parity Project's aim to ensure The Star accurately and fairly reports on all segments of its local population.

The survey found that 73 percent of those questioned believe the amount of coverage of the Latino community in the newspaper has increased over the past year, with 58 percent saying quality of coverage is also up over a year ago.

However, 90 percent believe The Star's coverage of the Latino community is still not enough.

The Star received the highest "above average" marks for its reporting of Latino crime and criminal justice news (41 percent), covering cultural and artistic events in the Latino community (39 percent) and understanding issues that are important to the community as a whole (35 percent).

The lowest "below average" marks were given in the areas of coverage of Latino youth (39 percent), reflecting Latino perspectives in the commentary section (37 percent) and reporting on communities or areas that historically may have been overlooked (35 percent).

The meeting drew equal parts praise for The Star's efforts to improve its coverage and constructive criticism on how we can more effectively report on the community.

Given that Latinos make up about one-third of the county's population, some wondered why they aren't seeing more Latino faces and hearing more Latino voices in every section of the newspaper on a regular basis -- not just on stories that cover race-specific issues such as immigration and cultural events, but everyday stories about business, education, housing and politics.

"They want to hear about positive things, but they are not afraid of the negative things," said Tim Gallagher, The Star's publisher and president. "They expect the newspaper to dig below the surface and get at the root causes of society's ills."

The participation and comments at the meeting showed that the program is working, said Kevin Olivas, Parity Project director.

"There were educators, business owners, community activists -- all together in one room to let their main source for news in their area know how they felt about its coverage of their community," he said. "They expressed to the Ventura County Star that there is room for improvement, to be sure. But they were also happy to see that The Star is recognizing the importance of contributions by Latinos to the Ventura County community."

The community also had the chance to meet with the about two-dozen Star employees from all departments of the newspaper who attended the town hall meeting.

"It was gratifying to see that Latinos can interact with the paper to make sure that it continues to cover everyone in a fair and balanced manner," Olivas said.

While it wouldn't be fair to say that everyone came away completely satisfied, many agreed that the session provided a healthy outlet for everyone to express their viewpoints. It also gave participants the opportunity to exchange ideas and agree that newspapers in general still provide a valuable role in linking the community, providing everyone the chance to learn about issues big and small.

While the survey and the meeting showed that great strides have been made by The Star, it also shows that more must be done if we are to be truly inclusive of all groups in the community we serve.

-- Frank Moraga is The Star's director of diversity. E-mail him at fmoraga@venturacountystar.com. For more information on the Parity Project, go to http://www.nahj.org/paritynews/index.html.