Even at the busiest common council meeting, there are only 20 to 30 people in attendance. This is in a city of 10,000. The vast majority of people get the information they need from newspapers.
I know a lot of the reporters in the area, which is not surprising. It’s a small community and we cover many of the same meetings and events. I am often disappointed in the flippant attitude of others in my profession—not only in our community, but everywhere.
I don’t think many reporters think about the fact that many readers take what you say as fact. This leaves little room for error. The responsibilities of a reporter are to capture (accurately) what is said at a meeting, but to capture the mood and tone of what was said, and sometimes what wasn’t said.
Brandyann Phelps, who covers our Sylvan Beach and town of Vienna happenings, said it best. “I don’t think of myself as a reporter, but as a storyteller.”
This burden weighs heavy on me. It is our responsibility to tell you what happens and how it happens, without making any mistakes and without looking biased. This is difficult. I am not only an editor in Oneida, I live here. The decisions the common council makes affect me just as much as they affect my readers.
It makes it even more difficult when I am not only directly affected by these decisions, but I know the people that are making them. On a professional level, I have to deal with the mayor and the common council, so portraying them negatively could affect our relationship. Personally, Don Moore’s daughter was my maid of honor, I grew up with Rob Brown’s son, Mike Murawski knows all of my siblings and Max Smith has sung at my church.
My father is on the school board and Mickey Moore (board president) is a long-time close family friend. Board member Brian Simchik’s daughter plays field hockey with my sister.
All these connections both help and hurt when covering the goings-on of municipal bodies. On one hand, I have invaluable resources who sometimes give me the “inside scoop” that other reporters are not privy to. On the other hand, it pains me when I have to be critical of decisions that they make.
For the first time since working in Oneida, I blasted a public official in my editorial this week. There will no doubt be repercussions to this decision, but it was one that I didn’t take lightly.
As a member of this community, I felt it my duty as a journalist and as a person to express my disappointment with the mayor this week. I left the meeting feeling like the government we had elected to represent us, was not representing us, but ignoring us. This is coming from me, who proclaimed last week to be the “least political newspaper editor on the planet.” This shows just how much the tenor of the meeting affected me. I do not like to get involved in politics, but when elected officials are arguing with those who need him to listen, it becomes bigger that politics and policy-making.
