As a small town newspaper owner, I am constantly seeking ways to get our weekly publication to more readers. Unfortunately, I learned recently that mirroring another community’s efforts to get newspapers into the hands of our future generations wasn’t an option for The Herald.
The reasoning was simply that there is “negative” news that may be covered in various editions of The Herald and that could bring a negative impact. Although I can see how negative news items could spark a negative domino-type reaction, we don’t create the news. We cover it. Negative things happen every day, whether it be on a local, state, national or even world level. Many choose to not read or listen about those occurrences, and that is their prerogative; however, that doesn’t mean those things didn’t happen.
For years, I have tried to get a focus group together and create a cohesive list of items people want included in the local newspaper. Unfortunately, there was very little interest and the events were cancelled due to lack of involvement.
Regardless of having a large or even small group comprised of a handful of people, it is known that there is no way to please everyone. In this instance, we can’t expand in a way that I felt was a benefit to our future, due to having court news and any negative acts in the newspaper. Unfortunately, by removing court news, I know the potential of losing more readers would be plausible simply due to past communication with a variety of our readers. In recent years we have had MANY call, e-mail and even text saying they would cancel their subscriptions and no longer read the paper if we didn’t include the court news. Please note that at these times, it wasn’t due to a lack of effort on our part, but the portal to gather the information was down (due to a security breach) and there wasn’t a feasible way to gather the information. It took months for the portal to resume and even longer for the data to be entered for the public. We had several articles noting the reasoning, but that didn’t suffice those readers. They wanted their news back.
How do we move forward? It is a double edged sword. I know we will never be able to please even 1/3 of our readers, but there has to be a way to cover the happenings in our community and for our community to understand that both positive and negative happenings continue to exist in our daily lives. In reality, we often learn more in negative experiences than the positive ones. Rose-colored glasses are a must as we always have to find the good in every situation, but that doesn’t mean that we put them on and the bad things simply disappear.
As I conclude this week’s editorial, I want to again reiterate a statement that was made before. We don’t create the news, we cover it.
Robin Wunderlich
Quote of the Week “Journalism can never be silent: that is its greatest virtue and its greatest fault. It must speak, and speak immediately, while the echoes of wonder, the claims of triumph and the signs of horror are still in the air.” ~ Henry Grunwald
