1-19 editors blog

January 19, 2012

This week someone said something to me that I have never heard before.
"Hey, I read your blog."
I had never actually heard anyone say that aloud. Now when I log on to the website with my user name and password I can see the number of views that a given entry has received so I knew that people have viewed this blog but to be honest I figured it was just my family trying to run up the actual numbers to make me feel good.
There is an entirely different mentality behind writing this knowing that there is someone out there who is not a close friend or relative that will actually be reading it.
My goodness it's like having a fan! Granted he didn't say he actually liked the blog but I'm going to infer that and run with it. Nothing like a little head swelling to make an editor feel all warm and fuzzy.
Now enough of talking about me, I'll get back to my normal rant.
Late last week I received a phone call from a concerned citizen who I'm going to affectionately nickname Tater. Now old Tater wanted to chat because certain business leaders and others in the community had expressed some concern with regard to the front page of the newspaper. He decided to take it upon himself to call and address the matter with the person responsible for front page content. Even after he learned that person was me he still felt inclined to address it. So, discuss it we did. Bless his poor little pea picking heart, Tater caught me at a particularly bad moment so he probably got a little more information that he bargained for but I can appreciate that he at least took the time to discuss the matter with me rather than simply agreeing with whomever he spoke with running down my paper behind my back.
For those of you who haven't been inside the lobby of the Poteau Daily News offices we have a table just inside the door that holds copies of newspapers for the last week. This morning, just as I did when Tater called me I walked up to the front and pulled a news paper from every slot. I then counted the crime/drug related pictures and stories versus the other news and pictures, on the front page only. The score for the papers that ran from Friday, January 13 until today Thursday January 19 was 7 crime or drug related stories or photos and 23 other types of news or photos. So the stories and photos on the front pages of Poteau Daily News for the last week that were non-crime related was more than triple those that were crime related. In fact, there was only one edition during that period that contained more crime than spot news or feel good.
I will admit that this last week or so has had a significantly lower amount of crime because sometimes that is just the way it goes. It's usually all or nothing. Regardless of what types of stories we have, we do recognize that we have a responsibility not only to report the news but to promote our community and all the good things about it. It is that consciousness that fuels us to try our best every day to create as much of a balance on the front page as possible. So that even when we have weeks when we have a lot of crime stories I can promise you the numbers still reflect that we have at least double that in other news and pictures, on the front page. I know because we pay attention to those numbers. Most people don't realize it because (and this proves my point) the crime stories are more memorable. They remember the crime more because that is what they read first and in some instances that's all they read. There is a reason behind the saying that Crime Sells Papers! Admit it you're guilty too. You read the bad news first.
Since I am up on my proverbial soap box let me go a step further and say if you measure the column inches in the entire paper and compare those column inches devoted on the front page to crime or drug related stories versus the column inches of all the other content it will show you that less than 1/10th of our paper on a daily basis is what Tater referred to as negative. Think about all the pictures of students of the week and photos of the day, ribbon cuttings and anniversary announcements, Howe Music Hall News and Jody Ray Adams' outdoors columns and you have a great picture of the wonderful quirky things that make our area unique and special. We promote those things on a daily basis and to be honest those are the things that make us better than larger publications like (dare I say it) the Southwest Times Record and the Tulsa World. Do you think either of those publications care that Hanna Smith made the superintendent honor roll at PKMS? Do you think they care that Grandma Carrie celebrated her 96th birthday party? Not really. They care when a Monroe couple is accused of child abuse or there is a murder, but that's about it.
I'm just saying that the PDN and more importantly the people who make up her staff cares about the community we live in. We try our best to live up to both our responsibility to report the news and our responsibility to promote the community. And as I tried to explain to Tater when you get down to it the balance we attempt to achieve on a daily basis on our front page is more often than not tipped towards the "Good News" side of things. Come on by and I'll show you as well.