Go inverted, community newspapers!
Posted by Bryan Rothamel on July 6, 2009 · Leave a Comment
Here is the cover of the July 3, 2009 Fluvanna Review
Community newspapers are vital to many neighborhoods across our great land. If it were not for community newspapers, some locales would never be covered. People love reading what is happening not only across the country but also across the street.
Community newspapers are also important for journalists. One of my favorite reporters started at a small community newspaper in Queens. Mitch Albom’s first article was about a parking tickets hearing for the Queen’s Tribune. I once read, which I can’t find currently, he went there looking for the who, what, when, where, and/or how of his story. And he reported it, even if it was just parking tickets.
The reason I bring this up is because my favorite newspaper comes every Thursday. I get my community newspaper, the Fluvanna Review, from my cubbyhole and read it cover to cover. I love reading what is happening “across the street.”
The thing that pains me the most from my community paper, as well as other community newspapers, where did the journalism go? Where was the who, what, when, where, and/or how?
An article this past week violated the same rule I violated the first time I wrote an article. Instead of a parking ticket hearing, this story was covering a school board meeting. The writer took the logical writing style but the illogical reading style. The dreadful style is telling the meeting chronologically instead of by importance.
By reading the article (full disclosure: I did not attend the meeting) I would say the most important issue talked about was the last thing in the article. The district superintendent and two citizens discussed the International Baccalaureate program.
The article’s headline has the IB program listed first in it! This proves one of two possible problems. Either the editor incorrectly identified the most important subject or the writer buried the subject. I think the latter.
The second most important subject, employee salaries, has played itself out for at least a month in the public interest. It led the story because it happened first in the meeting. I only think it should be second because it seemed pushed into the meeting, not planned for. The board has discussed salaries at previous meetings and this was just “beating a dead horse,” for lack of a better term.
It could go either way though. The salaries could go first and the IB program elimination second. Either way, they are the two most important subjects and deserved “top of the fold” treatment. (Unfortunately, the Fluvanna Review doesn’t have a cross fold in it, but you get what I mean.)
The problem of the chronological style is it doesn’t keep interest. Readers don’t want to feel like they were at the meeting. Readers would read the meeting notes and agenda if they wanted to know what transpired or they would just have attended the meeting. You read the article to know what you missed.
The simplest way to think of it is to imagine you run home to tell someone the story. What do you tell them first to make it seem interesting? Are you going to lead with the meeting started promptly at 7 pm, like this article did, or are you going to talk about how eliminating the IB program is welcomed by many? Will you talk about how the school board is defending the salaries of many employees?
There is a reason why the inverted pyramid has survived millions of articles. Use it. You think Mitch Albom went to the parking tickets hearing thinking he would receive more sports writing awards than anyone else? You could become him too.
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