Recent Writing

Covering elections is hard work. Considering the hyper-partisanship of readers, the dozens of interest groups knocking on your door and the demands of new technologies, it’s amazing when a community newspaper can produce any meaningful coverage.

Quiz any group of editors and you’ll find little disagreement. Local news is the franchise of community newspapers. School board actions are more important than congressional deliberations. Prep sports deserve top billing over professional teams. A local fund-raiser merits more prominence than even a dramatic story from across the state.

A discussion of business news inevitably prompts editors to focus on routine Main Street occurrences. A clothing store celebrates its grand opening. A restaurant opens, offering a distinctive cuisine. A flower shop celebrates its 25th anniversary.

A newspaper has a responsibility, say, to identify all stores fined for selling cigarettes to underage youths, especially if the fines are assessed at a city council meeting. Nevertheless, the story will likely draw wrath from the businesses and from their employees.

Mention election coverage in the aftermath of the midterm contests, and most newsrooms will likely turn a collective deaf ear. Yet this is the perfect time ñ before the files are formally closed – for editors and reporters to evaluate how they performed in 2006 and to identify steps for improved coverage in 2008.

Quiz a roomful of editors and reporters on their most memorable editorials. The noteworthy ones invariably deliver messages targeted toward specific decision-makers who are in position to debate and craft public policy. In one community, the focus is a city council deliberating whether to enact an ordinance for barking dogs. In another case, a county board is debating a development which will have a significant impact on tax base. On a state legislative level, editors routinely weigh in on tax, health care, transportation and myriad other public policies.

Coverage of the coming 2008 elections is already building. But it’s vital to consider, at the same time, that editorial endorsements in local elections are becoming increasingly scarce among community newspapers. Newspapers like to tout their role as government watchdogs, so endorsing local candidates should be routine — and free of pressure from “local interests.”

Readers want assurances that stories are accurate, fair and not tainted by ethical lapses. A single error in judgment – Jayson Blair’s fabrications at the New York Times, for example — damages the believability of that newspaper and all the press in general.

Election coverage is demanding and filled with potential pitfalls, especially in community newspapers where resources always are stretched to the limits and where editors face a battery of ongoing decisions and questions.

Should the Minneapolis School Board have to disclose the terms of its separation agreement with Supt. Thandiwe Peebles, who resigned under criticism? Is it proper for the Kandiyohi County Board to select a new county administrator outside of a public meeting? Should residents be excluded from Cannon Falls Township Board meetings where officials discussed property-related issues surrounding a land-use dispute?