Another of my newspaper columns and a disclaimer: If you're not affiliated with the newspaper industry or live in my corner of Northeast Nebraska, this probably won't be the most interesting ever. But if you are a consumer of local news in any form, it might be worth a read just to know what happens on the other side of the broadsheet.
I'm sure there are soulless, morality-free journalists out there.
I just don't know any of them.
The contest challenges Nebraska newspapers of all sizes to enter their best work from the previous year. Organized newsrooms keep a running record of photos, features, layouts and special sections they feel are worthy to be entered. That is not the procedure here — which isn’t to say we’re not organized, for the record. We just have a different method.
Jeff, Jamie, Marilyn, Elaine and I spend a few weeks in January poring over the past 52 newspapers. I don’t quite know how to describe the feeling that comes from reviewing the body of a year’s work — it’s equal parts surprising and mortifying. It’s surprising because often I’ve forgotten what we’ve covered; it’s kind of like finding a extra $5 in a coat pocket. It’s mortifying because you see precisely what you should have done better ... and didn’t.
the bane of a newspaper’s existence: Every mistake or poorly designed page doesn’t go away. It’s printed in black and white and impossible to ignore.
But we’ve come a long way, design-wise. It was almost a year ago when we switched over to the redesign, which included new body copy, headline fonts and fresh take on our front page flag. It’s made life much easier from a page layout standpoint, and I hope it’s been a positive change for our readers, too.
So every year after our entries are on their way to Lincoln for judging, I resolve to make our upcoming newspapers the best I can.
At my first newspaper job, a colleague told me the reason contests exist is so reporters, photographers and designers can get affirmation from their peers. To receive praise from your readership is, in a sense, to relinquish the objectivity necessary for producing unbiased news.
I’ve revised my views on that sentiment since working at the News-Chronicle. Certainly we want to be objective, but I don’t think it needs to come at the expense of reader interaction.
I like hearing how people react to our newspaper — what they like, what they don’t, their suggestions for stories we could cover. It is, after all, the readers who are the reason we produce a newspaper each week. There is nothing more affirming than to hear people can’t wait to open their News-Chronicle each week — that they feel out of the loop if they don’t read it.
Newspaper contests give us a chance to reflect and review, to reevaluate and renew our vision for the coming year.
But we don’t write to win contest awards. We write, photograph and design for you, our readers.
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| Look! I was a winner, that one time! |
On the Lighter Side
Published February 1, 2012
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