Medicine came to the realization some years ago: Being a good doctor requires more than knowing science. The best doctors also understand their patients. As a result, admissions tests for medical schools for several years have included questions about psychology and human behavior, not just biology and anatomy.

And the benefits, it turns out, work both ways. Patients are more satisfied when doctors are empathetic, according to satisfaction scores. And doctors who care about the emotional lives of their patients are also less likely to burn out. Empathy can help doctors counter implicit bias, and research shows that doctors who receive this training provide better care.

Journalism isn’t typically a matter of life and death, but it’s as much a listening profession as medicine. In telling stories, we care for our communities, just as doctors help ensure the health of our bodies.

Can journalists use similar techniques to provide more representative coverage of communities that are unlike them?

Keith Woods knows how empathy can change how we do journalism.

As a young reporter in New Orleans, Woods worked the sports beat for The Times-Picayune. He realized he could cover three historically black colleges and their basketball teams better than anyone else because he approached them differently. He didn’t just write about how the athletes did on the court; he told their personal stories, giving readers a window into their lives and dreams.

“The stories that got me to the front page,” he said, “were coincidentally the stories … that rounded these folks out, that gave you a look at these folks and the stories behind their stories.”

Woods said he was trying to help other journalists at the paper understand the value of paying attention to undercovered people. He isn’t sure he changed the paper as a whole. But he did change the relationship between the sports page and those three universities. After he moved on, he said, the sports section continued to tell the stories of the players not just as athletes but as people.

“I think they looked for something more,” he said. “They were open to more than they would have been before.”

That began his listening career. He’s now vice president for newsroom training and diversity at NPR. He coaches reporters and editors on how to listen and report with care.

For years, news organizations have talked about the need to diversify their coverage and their audiences. They have identified problems, tracked the racial and ethnic makeup of their staff and recruited more thoughtfully.

But the first step to covering a neglected community, Woods said, is understanding the perspectives of the people in that community and letting them tell their own stories.

This is the art of empathy.

In this study, part of the American Press Institute’s series of Strategy Studies, I’ll explore how empathy is an essential skill in accurately portraying any community you cover, as important as hiring journalists from different backgrounds. I’ll discuss how reporters can employ empathetic techniques in the field, such as spending more time face-to-face with their subjects and putting down their pens and listening. And I’ll offer ways that newsroom leaders can foster a culture that encourages these approaches.