One of the worst things about working on a Saturday rotation schedule as a small-town journalist -- besides the fact that you're working on Saturdays, naturally -- is those daily, disposable "events" you always have to cover.
Take a look at a small-town Sunday or Monday paper and you'll see what I mean. You'll see those stories about dinky church events, town festivals, police barbecues or something similar that might have some sort of news peg -- the organizers are trying to start an annual event, or it's the town's 45th birthday or something to that effect -- but it's usually not enough to make the event interesting to anyone who didn't have the desire to attend it in the first place.
Ivory tower journalism professors might use these as an excuse to show how every story should count and how a good reporter could use it as an opportunity to find the a compelling story among the chaff. OK, perhaps, and this might work out in some cases, but realistically, the reporter, who in most cases is working the day alone, probably wants to get in and out of the event in about 45 minutes and doesn't have time to get the life story of every attendee to see who wins queen for the day. After all, the reporter doesn't want to miss any real news that's breaking, because trust me: The editor isn't going to care how great the Annual Tree Lighting story came out if the reporter missed a murder that occurred that day.
Still, I don't even blame the editors for assigning them, because the stories serve a few purposes, after all. They're an easy way to get a community that doesn't make news very often in the paper. They're useful filler for the thick Sunday editions or usually news-dry Monday editions. Most importantly, they're a chance to put in cute pictures of kids.
That's also the horrid part for the reporter, however: interviewing those kids. Little is more excruciating than trying to mine a 7-year-old for a quote, because in my experience, kids rarely say the darndest things. In fact, they rarely speak in sentences that are more than four words long when put on the spot by a reporter, so that's why you'll see quotes like: "It's a lot of fun," 6-year-old Paducah resident Caitlyn (they're always named Caitlyn) Williamson said. "I liked the horses." And despite journalism school's best efforts to teach aspiring writers that quotes should be a garnish used sparingly in the story, the mindset in the real world pervades that if a person isn't quoted, they're not really in the story. So Caitlyn's monosyllabic grunts make the cut.
My point in bringing this up is to give a little perspective for the next time you see one of these eyeroll-invoking stories in the paper. I like to defend those usually budding journalists when I can, because I know they get a lot of flack. They probably didn't want to write the story any more than you wanted to read it. So just skip it over and think of how happy Colton's (they're always named Colton) parents are that he's on the front page.
To be fair, I guess I should link to one such story I had to write. It took some digging, but I found one, copied onto Free Republic of all places. Scroll down a bit, and it's there. It was one of those "Rally for America" things that took place at the beginning of the war. You know, when it was actually popular in the South? It's a bit more newsy than the events I was talking about, but keep in mind that one of these things was going on every weekend in those days, so it was a stale story going into it. I did, however, manage to invoke the imagery of red, white and blue vomit rather high up in the story, so I guess that's worth something.
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2 comments:
Wow, what a load of non-news. And yet, it was an event, and had to be reported. That poor Baker fellow.
It would be interesting now though to go back to the named people and see how supportive they are, 3+ years later.
I've covered more than my share of festivals and fishing derbies, so I can definitely relate! This is a very perceptive post indeed. You've hit at the essence of small-town journalism. I was chuckling throughout! At least you made Caitlyn and Colton's parents very, very happy!
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