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"If we fail to celebrate the good in all
people, and the good in every community, we risk losing
what we've gained a a society." — Jim Sutton |
What a Newspaper Talks About
Covering the Weather & More
If you publish weekly or every other
week, or once a month, you will not be trying to cover the same
kinds of daily news and information as the local daily. For
example, you won't gain much from trying to devote a lot of space to
forecasting the weather. At least where I live, the forecast
is never very accurate beyond the next day or so (and sometimes not
worth much for the day at hand). On the other hand, you may
want to include weather information (or at least helpful links) on
the web version of your
paper.
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DOG FACES CHAIR |
And its up to you to decide whether you
want to list every police call, every warrant, every court case,
etc. Some publishers hope to thrive on scandal and such.
But most small papers do well to focus on the good things often
overlooked by the rest of the media.
TV news, for example, tries to alarm
people every evening, in the hope that more viewers will tune in
more often if they're terrified of what's going on in the land.
And some dailies churn out a lot of coverage on murders and rapes
and robberies, with the same kind of hope. Smaller, more local
papers, however, do better when they show all the great things
happening around them, leaving the bad news for truly important
issue.
What to Print
A newspaper is about information.
Some of that information is news, public notices, interesting
stories of achievements and updates on the progress or setbacks of
the community itself. Not all the information needs to be
serious.
Some things that you'll want to
consider as content in each paper:
Headline & Hard News Stories (the
serious stuff)
Weekly (or as often as you publish)
Columns
An Editorial Section and/or Letters from
Readers
Special Interest Features
Comics, Mazes, Puzzles
Fillers & Mini Bits
Classified Ad Sections
A good newspaper allows the community to
speak to itself. As a newspaper publisher, you're not trying
to tell the community what it should be, so much as you should aim
at allowing the community to speak for itself. The people of
the community should all have an equal voice in your paper.
That means that some of the people who disagree with you should also
be allowed to have their say in a fair exchange of ideas and
opinions.
This does not mean the newspaper can't
be used to encourage the best things while downplaying the
discouraging. Honesty in the press is essential to a growing
and healthy population. But no paper is required to abuse and
insult the readership, or to beat known facts into the ground.
Scandal and murder and the practice of yellow journalism ("exposing"
every fault you can find) is not useful news. Nor does it help
to encourage your community in the great things already being
accomplished all around you.
Find good things to say about the people of
your town.
Find good stories of teachers who are
doing a good job. Praise the local heroes. Interview the
parents and the children who accomplish some good in the community.
Give an inside story on what it's like to work at the local plant,
or the local school, or the local fast-food restaurant.
While you should print the photos and
names of high achievers, you should also find reasons to praise the
ones who seem completely ordinary. If we fail to celebrate the
good in all people, and the good in every community, we may end up
losing what we already have.
Good kids don't always get the
highest marks in school or win the math awards for excellence.
Good parents don't always become firemen or community leaders.
Sometimes they just do a good job at work and buy milk for the
family instead of a case of beer. And sometimes even the guy
who buys a 6-pack every Friday night is a really good guy to have as
a neighbor, co-worker and friend.
Take the time to understand your community.
If you've not been very involved in the
local workings of your community before, you must become involved
now that you run a newspaper. But don't try to judge what you
don't understand. Every story has at least two sides, and most
have several. In order to be fair in reporting the facts, you
must be able to listen and learn from all sides — especially when
there is conflict. Your reporting should be a source of
genuine information. If you are overly biased, then your paper
will accomplish very little. Even when you are perfectly
balanced you will be accused of bias.
Opinions are like noses. Everyone has
one.
It's okay to print your own opinion, but
remember not to print it as news. Place it in an editorial column.
And then be sure to give equal space to someone who thinks your opinion
stinks. A free community must make choices about many things.
And, like it or not, the very best decisions and choices are never
based on ignorance. So never try to keep your community in the
dark. Give them your opinions, and then actively encourage
those who oppose you to voice their own opinions. Both the
paper and the community will benefit from such practices.
A Means of Community Communication
The best thing you can provide, as a
newspaper publisher, is a bulletin board where the people of your
community can post their ideas, their accomplishments, their worries
and their dreams. Be careful not to try and stifle the voice
of your community. You are free to fill the pages of the paper
with news and feature articles and tidbits of information as you
like (after all, you are the editor, the publisher, the boss!).
But be careful to keep the doors and windows of the paper open to
other ideas, as well.
If you're the only one encouraging the
community in good directions, then the readers can easily ignore
you. But if you, and the voices from the other side of the
spectrum, and those who oppose you both, and still others who think
you're all nuts — if all of you can agree on some very important things,
and all of you are urging the community to go forward in good ways,
then you have many voices cheering the community on as it runs the
race of life.
Maybe I sound like an idealist.
But I've seen it work. And I've seen what happens when no one
bothers to try and make it work.
Our children need the
attention. The families and individuals in our community need the encouragement.
The struggling artist, the honest businessman, the generous
neighbor, the local Bible-teaching pastor, the liberal-minded high
school teacher — they all need to be encouraged to carry on their
work of serving others with their gifts. Community
leaders need some help, and occasionally some opposition. The
community needs the participation of its people. As a local
newspaper, you can be a central part of getting everyone to play a
more active role in what happens. I believe its worth all
the effort you can give it.
In the Long Run, It's All About Success
Ultimately, you want to succeed as a
business, and as a good neighbor in the community. You also
want to see your neighbors succeed. History
shows that good neighbors are sometimes misunderstood. And
businesses with even the most sincere ethics and intentions can fail
if other important factors are ignored (like good bookkeeping).
But as a good general rule, what truly benefits and inspires your readers will work
for your business.
Work hard to build a reputation as a
fair reporter, and your paper will be respected. As your
readers grow in their respect for you, public goodwill can enhance
sales. Don't get me wrong. Public goodwill is not the
same thing as sales or income. You still have to sell ads,
work deals, and keep an eye on competition. But if you're
accepted as one of the good guys, you have some points in your
favor.
No matter how remote or how specialized
you think your market is, someone will always be looking to take
your advertisers away from you. And if they can compete with
you on pricing, you'll feel the heat. But never allow those
guys to rattle you. Do your job as a publisher, reporter,
editor, photographer (janitor, etc.) and hang in there.
Seasons come and go. If you have taken care from the beginning
to put down good roots, you will last any storm.
If you provide the local or regional
service no one else is (really) willing to provide, and you keep
your nose clean, when it comes to unbiased news reporting, you'll
have some pretty good roots going down. There are always
imitators, but no one can beat the real thing in any industry or
profession. Be the real thing in the newspaper business.
Be the newspaper that truly serves the community. Don't look
for charity or sympathy, just be there, doing what needs to be done.
And you will be around a long time.
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