Papers public interest watchdogs

State columnist

link Tom McDonald

One of my old journalism school textbooks lays out seven “elements of news” that are worth reviewing from time to time.

They are: timeliness, conflict, human interest, impact, prominence, proximity and unusualness — news elements that help newspaper editors decide what’s news and what’s not, and what should go on the front page or inside.

Timeliness means it happened recently, or is a hot topic in the public conversation. Conflict, human interest and impact give readers what they want to know and what they need to know. And while prominence — VIPs, celebrities and 800-pound gorillas in the room — is important to covering any community, the bread-and-butter element for local media is proximity, since that’s what separates them from the larger news outlets that cover the world.

As for unusualness: Who doesn’t want to read about those strange lights somebody saw in the sky, or an alleged chupacabra sighting? Oddities and mysteries are often newsworthy simply because they’re the stories that people around town are going to talk about.

Then there are the issues that are always in and out of the news. I’ve made a list of them; see if you agree:

•The weather. Temperatures too high or too low, too much or too little precipitation, hellacious hailstorms, strong storms, heavy winds — those are all newsworthy. Right now the news is the snowpack — a promising 100 percent or more in many mountain ranges around the state — but soon it will be something else weather-related. Big weather is always big news.

•Murders. Except for cities too big to provide in-depth coverage of every homicide, most hometown newspapers publish local murders on the front page, and for good reason. Every death hits someone’s home in a tragic and significant way, and violent deaths are the worst. If we ever get to the point in which small-town murders are too frequent to be front-page news — well, that would be a dangerous day indeed.

• Bear visits. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a picture of a bear in one town or another, perhaps up someone’s tree, perhaps already tranquilized and caged for a trip back to the wilds.

• Championships. In a small town, just about any regional or state competition is big news, and if your hometown team wins, it’s even bigger. It’s a matter of community pride.

• Fairs, festivals and parades. Covering these events is also a matter of pride, but for the local newspaper it’s also an opportunity to cover people at play — and that’s both fun and important.

• Public meetings. What’s going on in the local school district or at city hall or in the county courthouse is always worth covering — if nothing else, it’s need-to-know news.

Newspapers need to be the watchdogs for the public interest by attending those meetings and, when necessary, digging deeper into public records to find out what’s really going on.

Tom McDonald is editor of the New Mexico Community News Exchange. Contact him at: [email protected]