How do you fill a paper twice a week?
That’s a question I’ve been asked on numerous occasions by those on the outside looking into the news gathering process.
In journalism school I remember doing exercises specifically designed to build this muscle. In some communities, particularly tiny ones, it can be tough to dig out the news to fill the pages that stare at you in the repetitive cycle of news production. In the Cowichan Valley we are lucky; there’s almost always more going on then we can possibly get to.
So where do the ideas come from? Some come from our readers. We love to hear your stories and tips about ongoing issues, new issues, and interesting people in the Valley and what they’re doing.
News releases let us know what various governments, businesses and organizations are up to, and public local government meetings yield meat and potatoes for the local newspaper like no other. This is the stuff that’s usually not covered by anybody else (the Globe and Mail doesn’t generally care about the proposed tree protection bylaw), but these are often the things that have the most immediate impact on people’s lives.
Then there’s the “what do you see” news. That’s the stuff you find driving down a street and observing that a new building is going up, or there’s a giant hole in one lane. This is some of my favourite content and gets right back to the basics of what news organizations are built to do: let people know what is going on around them. If I want to know why somebody is knocking down a row of houses, chances are readers of the Citizen will want to know that as well. If I see a pile of used needles in a public park, I want to know what’s going on. Journalists can generally count on the fact that if something they see inspires a question for them, there’s a story there the wider public will be interested in.
These stories may not have massive, long-term impact on Canada as a whole, but they are often some of our most well-read and talked about items.
Journalism is about being curious, and we count ourselves lucky that we get to answer all those questions for a living.