media maven / By Marcy Burstiner

Nuts and bolts

(March 1, 2007)  The problem with a daily newspaper format is the reporters feel compelled to report news daily, and readers get the impression that they need a daily news feed.

In a rural area, where for 50 years people from Cloverdale to Trinidad have talked about the anticipated start of the Willits Bypass, how important is it to learn every new fact about Humboldt County the second it happens?

Reporters at dailies tend to work so hard producing daily news that they don’t have time to live life the same way as their readers. Most of us don’t sit in courtrooms or city council meetings. We’re at jobs where not much changes on a daily basis, and back home we watch our children and plants grow. The result is a daily disconnect between what’s important and relevant to readers - such as the opening of the House of Omelets in Arcata, potholes in front of our homes and new programs for our young people and seniors - and the crime and court stories the newspapers feed us.

Consider a few of the big stories here locally this past month.

First the Eureka Reporter covered daily a misdemeanor trial in Ferndale. Then the Times-Standard did a series of stories on grand jury charges against the Blue Lake police chief over a suspended driver’s license. Meanwhile, the weekly North Coast Journal spent 2,400 words on a tiff between Sacred Grounds and Bayside Roasters that led to a libel suit over a hijacked website and a $37,000 libel verdict.

Now, I know that even as I harp on relevancy, many readers came to this column only after satisfying their appetite for the latest tidbit about Anna Nicole Smith’s baby.

It’s not that the papers should self-censor news when a police chief in Ferndale tosses the dad of a wayward infant in jail overnight for body language that he felt translated into an unspoken obscenity. Or that it’s not serious if a Blue Lake police chief improperly wields power.

But a reader often doesn’t need more than the initial story and a clear definitive wrap-up when it is over. In the meantime, it’s nice to know about street repairs, new houses going up, stores opening and closing and what’s going on in the schools. If it weren’t that the Arcata Eye‘s layout is so hard on the Arcata eye, I’d argue that Kevin Hoover’s little rag is the most relevant read in the county.

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