By: Forrest R. Church, Publisher
THE VILLAGE REPORTER
I will be honest with you: newspaper competition has been on my mind this past month. A big part of that is because I recently returned from the National Newspaper Association convention, held this time in Detroit.
I always appreciate these conventions, because they really are a time for me to self-reflect on our newspaper (and on the balding guy in the mirror who runs it), compare it to what’s going on in the rest of the industry and come back home encouraged.
The same goes for our Ohio News Media Association gathering in Columbus every late winter or early spring, where I get to brush shoulders with publishers even closer to us here in the Buckeye State.
This year in Detroit was no different. The struggles in our industry are real, but I came home inspired by other newspapers that are reinventing the wheel in certain areas and doing well, and I’m definitely going to keep looking at this business with a glass-half-full attitude.
Those struggles are no secret. As I’ve talked about in previous columns, community newspapers are closing left and right, and many daily papers are being bought up by corporate, out-of-state mega corporations that leave a skeleton crew behind in the local communities where the news actually happens.
There are still community newspapers throughout America, but it’s a hurting industry, and I won’t recap here how many have closed locally in the tri-state area since I started.
That’s a big reason I’m proud of how our newspaper does in contests, whether that’s here in Ohio or nationally. We do very well across the board, and when a small, locally owned paper like ours holds its own like that, the credit goes to our local team from right here in Northwest Ohio who put this paper together week after week.
The folks doing our reporting and photography are from our own communities, and it shows. Frankly, it’s more than a paycheck to them. It’s about making a difference in our communities, and that’s exactly how I feel about it too.
Having said all of that, there’s one contest category where we usually come up short, and I figured it was time I explained why.
The Category We Struggle With
That category is editorials. We rarely write them, so when it’s time to enter, there usually isn’t much for us to submit.
For anybody not sure what that means, an editorial is an opinion piece, usually written by someone in a newspaper’s leadership like an editor or publisher, that takes a stand on an issue and tries to bring readers around to that point of view.
Pretty much all we run on the opinion side are columns, starting with this one, which I type out when I have the time, along with a handful of others from local folks in our communities whom we give an opportunity to share their own thoughts.
I’ll admit it stings a little when the results come in — I’m as competitive as the next guy — but I’d rather explain it to you than apologize for it.
So why not just write a few editorials, enter them and pick up a few more awards? On paper it would be easy enough to do.
Some of my colleagues in this business who have reviewed our newspaper with us, and who have been very impressed with our efforts, have suggested exactly that, whether it’s taking a position on how our water gets used, on the local school levy or on one sheriff candidate over another.
I don’t go down that path. Don’t get me wrong, I have opinions like everybody else, and if you ask my wife and family, they’ll tell you I have very strong ones (they’d probably tell you more than you ever wanted to hear, LOL). But I fight within the pages of The Village Reporter to allow an open voice for the community.
I could disagree with you 99 percent of the way, from your lifestyle to your choices, but I will fight side by side with you for your right to have a voice. That’s a fight I will not lose.
That’s why I purposely stay out of writing editorials on local issues that may sway things one way or another. Could I come out for or against a school levy and have a great explanation for it? I’m sure I could, and pretty easily, but I don’t feel that it’s my place.
Our school board coverage, letters to the editor from the community and levy campaigns placing their marketing with us are the direction to go. The facts are placed in front of you, and it’s up to you to come up with your own opinion, not to listen to mine.
Why We Stay Out Of The Argument
If you want a picture of what I’m trying to avoid, just check your mailbox.
Ah, it must be political season. The mailboxes are full of Every Door Direct Mail pieces and oversized postcards (somebody get our mail carriers a raise), and every time I turn the TV on, one party is calling the other party’s candidate Satan while that party calls the other one something worse. Gotta love the hatred, minus the love.
We live in a very divided world. I’ve said before that I believe most of America sits closer to the middle than the loudest voices would have you think. Some of us lean 60-40 one way and some lean 40-60 the other, but we agree on a whole lot more than my colleagues at bigger media outlets would ever want you to know.
I bet if most of us sat down over coffee with the neighbor whose yard sign drives us a little crazy, we’d find out pretty quickly that we want a lot of the same things for our kids and our towns.
I’ve always felt the political system purposely tries to divide us. Conflict and stirring the pot get people’s emotions worked up, and the next thing you know, you hate your neighbor because they differ from you on a handful of things.
I don’t enjoy that personally, and I don’t want The Village Reporter to play that game either.
Let me be perfectly clear: I believe editorials are important, and a good one can bring out information people need to hear. I’m not knocking anybody who writes them. I have chosen to take the mindset that it’s just not my job to try to change your opinion.
I can’t tell you how many times, as the guy who pays the bills around here, I’ve had articles turned in from our local news coverage where I was screaming in my head that what somebody said or did in the story wasn’t correct or didn’t line up to my beliefs. It conflicted with every bone in my body. I still paid the bill and published it exactly as the writer turned it in.
Would the big conservative or liberal media outlets in this country do something like that? I have my doubts.
Now, I’m just a little guy, and I don’t pretend to know more than the folks running much larger organizations. It’s simply the angle we’ve chosen to go with here.
When a newspaper starts picking sides, I think it just adds one more voice to the pile. In a small community, the person you disagree with is the same person who sits a few rows over at church on Sunday, and I’m not sure picking sides does anybody much good.
So we report what happened and who said what, and we trust you to sort it out. You’re more than capable of doing that without us telling you what to think.
What I’d Rather See
On the flip side, I’m much more appreciative when a debate stays civil, when people stop throwing darts at one another and are willing to agree to disagree while still showing some respect.
It’s even better when two people who are miles apart politically turn around and do a fundraiser together for a charitable cause. That’s the kind of thing I love to see.
Take Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush. They ran against each other for president in 1992, and Clinton took the White House from Bush, yet years later the two of them teamed up to lead fundraising for victims of the 2004 tsunami in South Asia, and again for the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Clinton later did the same with George W. Bush, the son of the man he beat, when the two of them launched the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund after the 2010 earthquake there, with President Obama standing alongside them for the announcement. Say what you will about any of those men, but that kind of thing does my heart good.
A Legacy Worth Protecting
I’ve also watched some very respected folks in this business retire. These were people older than me who I thought did an excellent job, and who stayed professional and neutral on the issues the whole time they were working. Then they retire, and I think they miss the business, so they go on social media and really show their true colors by constantly beating on a political party or a president.
It’s hard to watch. Those were people I respected, and I’d guess a lot of their readers respected them too, right up until the posts started piling up. I honestly think it does real damage to their legacy.
Think back to Walter Cronkite, who was once called the most trusted man in America. While he sat in that anchor chair at CBS, most folks watching couldn’t have told you where he stood politically. These days you can usually figure out where a TV host stands before he’s finished saying good evening. Cronkite’s way is the way I believe it should be.
I’m not saying anybody doesn’t have every right to their opinions, because freedom of speech matters to me as much as it does to anybody. But there’s a difference between having the right to say something and it being the wise thing to say over and over again in front of the very people you served for years.
For the record, I’d rather be remembered as the guy who gave this community the facts and trusted you to make up your own mind than as one more voice in the shouting match. If that means we keep coming up short in the editorial category, I can live with that.
So as we head down the home stretch of this political season, I’ll ask one thing. Whether your name is on a ballot or you’re just a neighbor with strong opinions, keep it civil and be willing to agree to disagree. In return, we’ll keep putting the facts in front of you, even on the weeks when they rub me the wrong way.
The next time you see a list of contest results and notice that editorials aren’t a category we fill, you’ll know it isn’t an accident or an oversight on our part. It’s a choice we made on purpose, and it’s one I’d make again.
In closing, as we approach the midterms, I have a sense that the country is more divided and in more turmoil than ever. I suppose it’s just that way during election season, when everybody is at each other’s throats, being disrespectful and turning into social media keyboard warriors who post nasty stuff online, but of course never say it in person when they’re brushing shoulders with you at a football game.
I’m looking forward to the midterms being over. May we accept the results and move on in a positive direction, remembering that we live in one of the most blessed countries that have ever been on the face of this earth, and that we have it better than just about everybody else in the world.
America is not perfect, but the experiment that started 250 years ago is a blessing to live within, and I remain optimistic that there are plenty of good days ahead for our community newspaper and for our country.
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That’s it for this week. I’d love to hear from you. As always, feel free to reach out to me at publisher@thevillagereporter.com or via mail at 115 Broad Street, Montpelier, Ohio 43543.
