Published: August 18, 2008 04:22 pm            

Sometimes bad news isn't bad news

When she was still in high school my daughter sold advertising for the newspaper one summer and unfortunately called on someone who was not happy with me due to something the newspaper had written, and who called me by name in her rant. My daughter, young and sensitive, listened politely for as long as she could but then broke into tears and stammered, “That’s my Dad!” before abruptly walking out.

“Don’t worry about it, sweetie,” I told her later, “it comes with the territory.” And so it is.

Lately a few well-meaning readers have taken us to task for publishing prominent headlines regarding local crime. It is a joke among newspaper publishers that all of us want drugs, sex and rock ‘n roll above the fold on the front page of the newspaper everyday – until we get to the Rotary club meeting.

The reason publishers like these headlines is because they usually increase rack machine sales. Generally speaking, those who buy from racks located around town are not regular subscribers and need an additional reason to buy the newspaper. A headline of this sort attracts their attention and interest.

Home subscribers, on the other hand, are generally speaking more permanently entrenched and care very much about how their community is perceived. Subscribers, therefore, sometimes take exception to having the negative underbelly of our area distributed for all the world to see.

This presents a delicate balancing act. Here’s why: if we don’t report these stories readers often find out about them by word of mouth and wonder why the newspaper isn’t covering them.

Some say it is okay to report them, but don’t want to see them on the front page - and we will readily concede that a balance needs to be drawn. Thanks to feedback we’ve heard from concerned readers, we will take that into account. It is a legitimate complaint and we are not ignoring it.

But an experience in another community taught me a valuable lesson about whether or not bad news is always bad news. A gang wannabe problem had emerged in this small town and police and residents alike were at their wits’ end as to what to do about it. The police department designated a “gang” officer to keep tabs on these kids and he organized a photo of them wearing gang colors and flashing gang signs that we ran on the front page of the newspaper.

It was meltdown at the phone banks the next day with concerned readers incredulous we would “glorify” these junior thugs in such a manner.

In retrospect, though, I am convinced that picture was the beginning of the end of that town’s burgeoning gang problem. Those kids’ relatives saw that photo, realized for the first time the magnitude of what their boys were involved in and quickly put a stop to it.

Sometimes calling attention to bad news creates the opportunity to convert it into good news.

        

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