Ambitions and expectations
Ihave a confession to make. Despite building a career as a journalist — a goal I first settled on in the seventh grade — I’ve never been quite comfortable writing in first person. I’ll gladly interview anyone and everyone and write from the relative anonymity provided by a byline.
Yes, my name goes on the articles I write, but I am sharing someone’s story. When I write a news story I am simply saying what someone else told me. Writing this column, however, makes me uneasy because I am writing from a personal perspective.
So it should come as no surprise that I am also not the biggest fan of public speaking. Momma always said I had a face for radio and a voice for newspaper. (That’s not true ... my momma will sing my praises like no other. Objectivity goes out the window with your own children, I suppose.)
That said, I have been invited to be the guest speaker at next week’s Calhoun Rotary Club meeting to talk about my goals for the paper and the direction I’d like to take it.
Which makes me wonder, what are my ambitions and expectations?
My immediate goal was to simply get settled in, to get a feel for how things have worked in the past. But settling in has proved difficult because The Calhoun Times has been undergoing a multitude of change over the last month.
Previous editor Spencer Lahr departed last month, opening room for me to take the helm. On my very first day our previous reporter Alexis Draut notified me she would be leaving three weeks later to move to Pittsburgh for graduate school. And just this week we moved our office a couple hundred feet west (you can now find us at 210 S. King St., Suite D).
So, until now, I’ve not given much thought to the future beyond the next edition.
As I was looking for inspiration this week on how to answer the question I’ll be tasked with addressing at the Rotary Club, I found a book called “Saving Community Journalism” by Penelope Muse Abernathy.
In it, Abernathy writes: “What exactly is a community newspaper? According to the traditional definition, it is a newspaper with less than 15,000 circulation. But in the digital age, that definition is rapidly becoming antiquated and useless,
as more and more readers get their news from digital sources . ... What is important is not the size of paper’s print circulation but, rather, the mission of the paper.”
I can tell you, the mission of this newspaper as I see it is to be the voice of the community, the source of public record, the harbinger of things both good and bad that can benefit our readers. But we as journalists in a community such as this also need to work to build relationships with our readers, whether they be community leaders who become a regular source of news or just someone who did something that you might enjoy reading about.
Nowadays you see so much quibbling over “fake news” and national topics that it’s easy to forget about your own neighborhood. But that’s why we’re here — to shine a light on the good things and the not-so-good things that may actually have an impact on your daily life.
I don’t think that anyone has ever printed out and framed a Facebook post or requested multiple copies of a Tweet to share with their family. But I hope that every once and a while our readers will find something in our paper worth hanging on to.
Abernathy also wrote: “It is hard to overstate the vitally important role that a strong newspaper can play in improving the quality of life for residents of the communities they serve. A good editor can see the big picture better than just about anyone else in the community – tying together the reality of the present with the possibility of the future.” No pressure, right?
But, ultimately, that is my goal. As the editor of this community newspaper it is my ambition and my responsibility to become the leading expert on all things Calhoun and Gordon County. Or least to become knowledgeable enough that if I don’t know the answer I know who does.
It is my belief that readers should not only trust their local newspaper but that they should feel comfortable in the knowledge that they can reach out to let us know what’s happening and that we’ll do our best to share that news with the world.
It’s the expectation I have of myself, and I won’t mind at all if you want to level that same expectation at me.