Being in the media, there’s a certain kinship shared between all of us who have chosen to involve themselves in this crazy, stress-inducing, unpredictable profession for a living. At the end of the day, we’re all just trying to get news stories out there to inform the masses, whether it’s in print, online, video or audio form. No matter how big or little some of us are in size, we’ll always have that connection and share a lot of the same ideologies.
That being said, there are also glaring differences between big, corporate news machines and us little guys in the weekly publication biz, the biggest of which involves population. When it’s a weekly newspaper that focuses on a very specific part of the province, the attention of the public turns much more closely to whoever’s name is in the byline.
That being mine.
This kind of situation is certainly nothing new to me. I’ve been doing this for nearly 13 years, and I’ve come to accept the fact that in a very modest way, I’m sort of, kind of a public figure, or at the very least, a public face. People associate me with the newspaper, and my articles, columns and photos seem to resonate with many dedicated readers. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve encountered complete strangers out in public who just wanted to tell me what a certain story meant to them, or to “keep up the good work, Derek.” From my perspective, some of these people are completely unknown to me, but in their eyes, they know me through my writing and my photography. Believe me when I tell you, dear readers, it’s a relationship that I don’t take for granted and it means the absolute world to me when I have such encounters.
But while it’s nice to have such closeness with our readers, the situation can certainly take a different road when it’s time to cover life’s most unexpected occurrences.
That was the case this past week when The Outlook ran a front-page article on a scandal involving the finances of Outlook Minor Sports, in which it was discovered that the treasurer had been misappropriating funds for a number of years to the tune of just over $174,000.
A lot has been said about the matter, including why our newspaper would run the story to begin with, or feature it on Facebook, and so I just wanted to provide the perspective of us in the media when a delicate subject such as this comes up.
First off, I want to tell you why it took “so long” for us to cover this, and the truth is very simple – we were under the impression that we couldn’t. No official charges were laid by police, so that route was a dead end. On top of that, I was told that at a meeting called by Minor Sports in late October to discuss the matter, a reporter from Rosetown was apparently asked to leave. In my eyes, it appeared that any media would be turned away if they sought comment about the situation, so we left it alone while at the same time hoping that we could soon get someone who would talk to us. It wasn’t until after another meeting in January that I learned that Minor Sports would be willing to do an interview, so I contacted the president of the organization and well, you know how the rest of the story goes.
Secondly, I want to shoot down any talk or hearsay of bias from The Outlook when it came to this story. To put it simply – we can’t afford to be biased. The fact that I may personally know a family involved has no relevance when I start putting pen to paper for any article, or rather, fingers to the keyboard. I’ve covered the events surrounding my one-time neighbor from across the street who tried to rob a flower shop, and I’ve even covered a murder trial where the victim came from a family that I know. Any self-respecting news publication doesn’t “pick and choose” what to cover, and The Outlook sure doesn’t.
The flip side of this coin is the fact that yes, sometimes covering something that involves someone you know causes others a lot of pain, especially in a smaller, rural area such as this. In those situations – and especially in this one – obviously you feel sympathy for the people that the whole situation affects, particularly young kids. However, I also feel that it’s naïve to believe that a newspaper shouldn’t do its core job; getting the facts and the details out into the public eye. In the case of Outlook, doing so is especially important because this community has a terrible tendency to believe all the hearsay and coffee row chatter. If I can do my part in hammering down what the truth is, you can bet your bottom dollar I’m getting it out there into the hands of the people.
A newspaper has to report the news, and sometimes the news isn’t pretty and affects far too many people than it should.
For this week, that’s been the Ruttle Report.
