Feature Article July 24, 2002
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On being the editor of The Frontenac Newsby David Brison Editors of newspapers, whether they work on major dailies such as the Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star, or small weeklies like your own Frontenac News, have to decide what is fit to print. What might sound like an easy task is complicated, because readers often disagree with what is published in the paper and sometimes are quite vocal about it or remain quiet but angry or hurt.
As your local editor, I have had many more compliments about the quality of the paper than criticisms, but hardly a week goes by without someone pointing out that we have made a mistake: misspelling a name, ignoring an important detail or getting it wrong, or unnecessarily hurting someones feelings in the way we have reported an incident. Occasionally we get people who claim that we have published something that we had no right to publish without their permission. These critics often dont like the news and dont like us for publishing it.
Editors the world over agonize about the decisions they have to make about what to print. As a group, we generally take ourselves quite seriously. The reason for this is that we usually have lofty goals that guide our selection of events to be covered in the paper, but often these goals arent readily apparent to our readers.
In this paper, for instance, what might appear to be a collection of straightforward and not very important accounts of a concert, a Karaoke competition, a horse endurance ride, and the criminal court, are part of the bigger picture at least as seen by this editor.
On the day that I was writing this story, Steve Lukits, the managing editor of the Kingston Whig-Standard, resigned his position in order to return to teaching. He said that he was going to miss the satisfaction of playing a role in creating each days first draft of history.
You might say, Does this guy really think he is helping to write history? The answer is yes, and most other editors, including this one, think so, too. After all, newspapers are one of the major sources that historians use when they are trying to reconstruct history.
The point is that if it is a first draft of history, you better get it right, by selecting events that are representative of what is happening at the time and by writing accurate accounts that arent distorted versions of what occurred.
Another editorial goal is to help readers to stay informed of the issues of the day so that they might become productive citizens. Sounds grandiose, I know, but most editors like to think they are creating an informed citizenry by offering news accounts, editorials, and letters to the editor. In this regard, one of the major contributions The News has made was the coverage of the 2000 municipal elections (which included News- sponsored all-candidates meetings). I believe it helped increase voter turnout, in specific, and interest in municipal government in general.
There are several other editorial policies unique to The News which were initiated when Jim MacPherson and I began publishing The NewsWeb (www.newsweb.ca) in November 1999, namely:
That we would try whenever possible to print good news stories that present the region in a positive light so as to contribute to a sense of regional identity, or
When there are happenings that dont make the region look good, we would try to write them in a way that avoids polarizing the community (dividing people into camps) but rather in a way that could lead to constructive solutions, and
We would try to avoid accounts of individuals that are embarrassing or hurtful, which some papers routinely do, such as interviewing hysterical participants at car accidents or funerals, or revealing details of a persons life that he or she might not want others to know.
With regard to this last point - thoughtlessly, I recently printed something that was not a necessary part of the story, and which upset the person I was writing about. I did not intend that at all, and feel badly about it.
Other editorial directions have been picked up along the way:
To provide a voice for the region when, as is often the case, our concerns are being overridden by other, urban-based levels of government. There are numerous examples of these kinds of stories written in the past two years I am especially pleased with the articles on the courts, for example, and
To protect our precious and fragile environment (the stories by Gray Merriam on ground water, and septic re-inspection are prime examples of this).
I realize that I make the job of editor sound like a very difficult task, one that is not at all fun or satisfying. This is certainly not the case, but it is a complex job, and one must be constantly alert so as not make errors, and to prevent the paper from drifting off in unintended directions. However, I have never done anything so personally satisfying.
Given all of these goals, there is the distinct danger of taking oneself and ones job too seriously. We try to remember that when all is said and done, we are still part of the entertainment industry, and we couldnt exist if what we printed wasnt interesting enough for people to want to read.
I suppose that I have written this in part to try to provide explanations to the occasional critic, and what I would like to get across is that although we may make mistakes, we are trying, and trying perhaps more than many readers realize.
