GirlTalk

A friend of mine asked me how stories got into the newspaper. Seems he had been the sounding board to many gripes about less-than-desirable coverage. I explained the process as best I could because in news, hard-and-fast rules are few, if any.

I’m lucky enough that I’ve been able to work with two kinds of news stories in my career: breaking (or hard news) and community news.

Breaking news stories are the kind many people might consider news they don’t like to read: crime stories, major accidents, high-profile events, politics and more. These stories can induce feelings of sadness, grieving, anger or disgust. Hard news gets top billing in most newspapers, occupying the front page and continuing inside.

Community news, on the other hand, is considered the feel-good variety. Soft news takes a back seat to its sibling because of the content, which includes school awards or recognitions, shows or concerts, church bazaars or a club’s guest speaker.

Some news stories cross both lines and are covered by a reporter from either category. Those stories sometimes fall between the cracks in a newsroom because if a hard-news reporter is to write about the topic, it might have to wait due to a higher priority story popping up unexpectedly – as they often do. It’s put on the back burner until a time comes that it can be done. In the course of sitting on the back burner, sometimes so much time goes by as to cause the relevancy of the topic to dwindle to non-existent.

In bigger news agencies, larger staffs handle inquiries as they arise. There are even reporters at large papers who handle singular topics, dispersing the work load. But at small, community papers, a minimal amount of reporters handle three to four times the amount of subject matter, leaving stories to be totally uncovered or only given a surface treatment to include as many stories as possible.

Community news gets the smallest amount of staff coverage because of the huge amount of freely submitted content by publicity representatives that newspapers receive daily. Because of the availability of news from PR firms – even locally – the onus to inform a newspaper is on each individual group wishing to promote its events, agenda and information.

The task of the community news staff is to wade through the hundreds of solicitations, requests and inquiries to best determine what is most important to the community at large. Then, if room and time permit, other submissions might be included.

After my explanation, my friend suggested that newspapers converse with their readers. The TNV community news section has attempted to do that, but possibly not loudly enough. So my challenge to the community is to let me know of what sections it wants more.

E-mail your suggestions to . I look forward to your input.