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By: Richard Gilbert, December 24, 2022
I once had a weekly newspaper editor tell me that the secret to producing a good local newspaper is not what you put into its pages but what you keep out. He was referring to what weekly editors called ‘filler’ copy, content that the reader could get anywhere else, such as Associated Press Wire stories or so-called ‘news’ releases from publicity seekers.
The challenge to an editor to keep a paper interesting is that there’s only so much stuff that’s fit to print. It takes a lot of hard work to support local reporting with a short-staffed, small newspaper.
More prominent news outlets with national reach have enough stuff that passes for news serving as the grist for their media mill. Most daily newspapers and broadcasters strive to cover local news stories and struggles during traditional ‘slow news days,’ such as Christmas.
This brings us to a time-honored ritual in community journalism.
‘Tis the season for the ‘year in review” if you still have a local news source. These annual rehashings of what was news nine or ten months ago might be of passing interest, but there’s another reason for it.
The weeks before Christmas and the New Year are even more difficult times for those having to produce a local news diet for you.
First, there is an extra time constraint caused by two back-to-back legal holidays, which compresses work weeks and creates short staffing as some folks take extra vacation days leaving junior staffers to get the paper out or the newscast aired.
Second, and even more to the point, there isn’t as much happening locally, certainly not in Harlan or Eagle Grove, the two Iowa towns where I started the media business.
We kept a line open to the nearest hospital to get the word on the first baby arriving in Shelby (and later Wright) Counties in the New Year. Those Baby New Year events were good for a three-column photo on page one.
Other than that present-day nativity scene, there might be a house fire set off by a short circuit in someone’s Christmas tree lights or a really big smash-up caused by a driver going home drunk from a neighborhood New Year’s Eve party. But, in the years when a home didn’t go up in flames, or all the drunks got home safely, we still had to fill up the paper with the annual regurgitation of the greatest local hits of the last 12 months.
This was served up to our readers unashamedly even though it was no longer breaking news. And to address the shortage of real news and help gather it, I’d get to work on this annual retrospective weeks in advance. That meant long evening hours going through the filed copies of the papers published last year. Yes, you can reasonably assert I was producing a ‘filler copy” for the holiday editions. However, you can’t say it wasn’t local. Whether it still qualified as “local news” might be debatable.
Some form of this goes on today, even with the big guys, generally, in the guise of the list of the Top Ten stories of the year just about to end. This year the big news outlets won’t need to rehash the news any more than they usually do, thanks to the January 6 Committee, the release of the former president’s tax returns, and Volodymyr Zelinsky’s address to Congress.
Talk about a break in the usual holiday news drought. The network folks have enough news fuel to coast into 2023. Witness this past week. We saw Ukraine’s heroic leader address Congress. Most of us had never heard of Volodymyr Zelinsky until the former president got impeached by the House of Representatives for trying to shake him down back in 2019. Last Tuesday night’s address by that shakee capped an especially bad week for the shaker (who shall not be named), now facing one House committee report calling him out for his attempt to overthrow an election and another House committee revealing his major league tax evasion. Will America wake up one day and collectively sigh: “We are so over this guy”?).
Enough about how news outlets cope with times when there is a dearth of news and/or people to report it. Circling back to my former mentor’s advice about how important keeping something out of the paper can be, I have one more holiday season observation this Christmas Eve Day, and I share it with a hopeful prayer.
So far, fingers crossed, I have not heard broadcast on the radio or over restaurant background speakers, even a single refrain of what I believe to be the most irritating, all-time worst Christmas song ever. And my wish for you, dear reader, is that you are spared. I even have to swallow hard to write the song’s title. I refer, of course, to “Alvin And The Chipmunks.”
Richard
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Iowa Writers’ Collaborative Columnists
Laura Belin: Iowa Politics with Laura Belin, Windsor Heights
Doug Burns: The Iowa Mercury, Carroll
Dave Busiek: Dave Busiek on Media, Des Moines
Art Cullen: Art Cullen’s Notebook, Storm Lake
Suzanna de Baca Dispatches from the Heartland, Huxley
Debra Engle: A Whole New World, Madison County
Julie Gammack: Julie Gammack’s Iowa Potluck, Des Moines and Okoboji
Joe Geha: Fern and Joe, Ames
Jody Gifford: Benign Inspiration, West Des Moines
Beth Hoffman: In the Dirt, Lovilla
Dana James: New Black Iowa, Des Moines
Tar Macias: Hola Iowa, Iowa
Kurt Meyer, Showing Up, St. Ansgar
Pat Kinney: View from Cedar Valley, Waterloo
Fern Kupfer: Fern and Joe, Ames
Robert Leonard: Deep Midwest: Politics and Culture, Bussey
Kyle Munson, Kyle Munson’s Main Street, Des Moines
John Naughton: My Life, in Color, Des Moines
Chuck Offenburger: Iowa Boy Chuck Offenburger, Jefferson and Des Moines
Barry Piatt: Piatt on Politic Behind the Curtain, Washington, D.C.
Mary Swander: Mary Swander’s Buggy Land, Kalona
Mary Swander: Mary Swander’s Emerging Voices, Kalona
Cheryl Tevis: Unfinished Business, Boone County
Ed Tibbetts: Along the Mississippi, Davenport
Teresa Zilk: Talking Good, Des Moines
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Enjoyed the article!
Loved this..in radio we kept a drawer full of 🌲 evergreens that could be used on a fallow newsday..especially holidays when we didn't have a full complement of reporters. Yes..little A.M. stations could have a news director and 4 or so full time reporters and several parttime..glory days!