Newscoma

Have you ever had so much going on that your mind becomes like the bits of tofu you find at the bottom of a bowl of miso soup?

Yeah, that’s me.

I keep rattling on about rural newspapers this week. I’ve been busy in the non-virtual world and I’m thinking that folks might not understand a few issues of what we do and how we do it.

We have two writers which doesn’t include sports. And we end up running around like chickens when a lot of immediate breaking news is going on so we have to multi-task. We also build our own pages although we finally, after much crying and wailing with the extra goodness of me holding a razor blade to my throat, finally got a pagination technician. I build Front, Editorial and Public Record and then anything else that might need to be done last minute. Then it goes to the other writer, Batesville, who copyedits and puts the final touches on it. Our tech builds the pages that focus on community news and special advertising supplements/sections. Our office manager is also the community editor who also builds society, obit and “people” pages. Our circulation director is also the classified manager. Yep, she does the classified pages. Those two women also handle billing and work the reception desk.

We do not have a typesetter.

We are a small newspaper so we take on different roles. Why am I telling you this?

I sometimes don’t think people understand that we don’t have a newswire. Everything we do is local. We have to generate all the copy in the paper. Now, mind you, the community submits columns and the like but usually it’s up to us.

Jerry Reese, the GM of the New York Giants, is from our area and coached for awhile at the college. When they won the SuperBowl, needless to say, we couldn’t send Squirrel Queen to take photos so we had to ask permission to use an AP picture. He has a lot of local ties and it was big news. “Local Sports Hero REPRESENTS” kind of thing.

Another person we follow is Chad Clifton, who is from the paper’s hometown, and now plays for Green Bay. We are more fortunate in finding pics of him because we know his mom and dad. He’s going to his first Pro-Bowl. Once again, SQ won’t be headed to Hawaii.

Get where I’m going here?

One buzz word on the web and in the news biz right now is hyperlocal.

We sorta get that concept.