Zac Echola is muffin but trouble

Do it: Stark contrasts

Published on 17/02/08
by Zac Echola

Last week, while staying with family in the small town of Shirley, Mass. I got into a brief discussion with my brother-in-law about the community paper there, the Shirley Town Profile.

The paper was eight pages, max. A little weekly thing. I love small papers, because oftentimes I think they’re doing things better with what they’ve got than big and medium-sized papers do with their resources. I pulled a couple issues out of a basket near the fireplace and my brother-in-law started telling me about how he loves that paper because it actually has local news. I’ve seen the data. I’ve read countless articles about hyperlocal news. I’ve certainly preached it. But I have never actually heard someone outside the media industry qualify it.

The paper had just a couple of stories in it. Mostly it was about school fundings and how area schools were at a deficit. The opinions section was littered with hearty debate and finger pointing from parents and politicians. The main story was about where the money was going. It felt a lot like a blog. There seemed to be real community happening here.

I’m not entirely sure about the situation, but it seems like parents are given the right to send their kids to any school in Mass. Yet, the people in the school district foot the bill for each school, so there’s a disparity when kids shift to richer districts.

This is the perfect opportunity for database reporting. The Globe and other larger media outlets in the state should have this story nailed in such a way that gives not only an overall picture, but allows members of each of these communities to see how the system affects their lives. It should allow people to communicate with one another the way Town Profile does.

But they don’t. Every night and every morning the space was filled with blood and horror.

Was nice knowing you, but you blew it and when the Town Profile figures out blogs, and all the other little papers around you figure this stuff out, you’re dead in the water. I say good riddance to these media outlets that miss this.

Then, when I got home, back to Fargo, I ended up at a party at my Father-in-law’s house in the small town in the Fargo Moorhead metro area, Dilworth. There were lots of people there and in typical Midwestern fashion, while the women were in the dining room drinking coffee, the men were in the living room talking about things that annoy them.

The conversation started out talking about general sales taxes in the area, something all the media here covers extensively,  but then it got specific. They started talking about special assessments in Dilworth. Special assessments right down to how much the curbs in front of their homes will cost them over the next few years.

Meanwhile, the local TV news was on and nobody was paying attention to whatever bigger picture things (or not) were happening in the region.

The contrast was striking.

Every large issue is built of small components and we tend to leave out all those little details. But it’s those little details that are relevant to small pockets of readers. Add them up and you have a nice audience. You also give them some place to connect and talk about the things that matter to them which gives your news (which could end up buried or ignored) a longer shelf life and more valuable to advertisers.

Think small.

The end. Or is it?

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