New publisher

Robb's leaving :-(

He's going to leave Boone and become publisher of a newspaper out in Texas where his family's from. Jesse, the advertising manager, will be the new publisher after today. At least it's someone I know and not a complete stranger. Still, I'll miss Robb. He's the first publisher I've ever really gotten to know. He's a good man and has done a lot of this newspaper and for me. It'll be strange not having him around to harp on keeping my desk clean and to go, "Megan, Megan, Megan," in a sing-song tune.

::sigh:: Another sign, I think, that it's a good thing I'm keeping my eye on the job market.

::fume::

Okay. I love what I do for a living. But, some aspects of it make me want to tear my hair out!!

We'll give it an overarcing title: COMMUNITY NEWS.

Now, I grew up in Montgomery, Alabama, the capital and second largest city in the state. When you picked up the newspaper, you read news that generally affected the city as a whole. It was not a community newspaper.

Here in Selma, I work for a community newspaper. In this town, people think that if you take a spring trip to Washington D.C., it merits being written about in the paper.

I get this sort of news all of the time. Gobs and gobs of school news sent in by teachers that do not even know basic punctuation and spelling! Now that's scary. I wouldn't want my child in that teacher's class.

Then there are the people who write wedding announcements the length of a novella. And the people who submit jail IDs, driver's licenses, Xeroxed-copy of a printed out picture all for an obituary. And then there's what I term miscellanious. The family that decides just because they went to Washington D.C. for spring break they deserve front page of the Lifestyles section. People who get upset when we can't run pictures because they're either too bad or there's no room. Graduation announcements with extensive quotes from the kid going, "I want to express my thanks in God, etc."

Here's my question: WHO CARES?

The school news I can justify. I like seeing positive things coming out of the schools, but the way they write them, it makes the school sound saintly just for doing their job - turning out good students. I can't justify this one lady harassing me because I haven't run her Washington spring break trip (until now.) I can't justify it. Nowhere in the news hierarchy I was taught in college does "Family run-of-the-mill spring break trip" fall.

The Crimson White, while being a college paper, did not degrade into this. Heck, if we published what every single event every sorority was up to, we wouldn't have a paper. Things like that worked in the 1950s. It doesn't work now.

But, this is the nature of a community newspaper. Things like what I mention above are important to people in smaller cities and towns. I think there should be a line between news and scrapbook. It probably won't be drawn here for a long time.

I think I'll function better at a larger paper....ne?