Last week’s Town of St. Paul council meeting raised some issues that in turn ruffled feathers, including minor hockey’s concerns about ice time and questions over whether taxpayers were subsidizing the local airport.
On the surface, these issues seemed minor, but reporting on these items strictly from the meeting, without adding context or following up with other sources would have led to inaccurate or unbalanced reporting, as well as likely conflict between different parties.
At the Journal, we do our best to cover issues that may be contentious in a thorough way, trying to get the background first and then talking to different people who hold opposing viewpoints on the subject. This commitment is the only thing differentiating a journalist from any person with a blog or a social media account. Of course, conflict might still happen as a result of a news story, but it should not be because a reporter failed to get his or her facts straight.
Recently, headlines were made by extensive job cuts in Postmedia-owned newspapers, caused by the merging of newsrooms for the Edmonton Sun and Edmonton Journal paper and in other markets, as the chain looks to find its way out through sagging finances and a heavy debt-load.
While community newspapers are not immune to the challenges faced by daily newspapers, we at the St. Paul Journal recognize that to keep our readers and advertisers, we need to maintain our commitment to the elements that have seen this paper through its 90 plus years of existence – putting local coverage first, and offering credible, thorough, fair and accurate reporting. Once we lose any of those elements, we lose the trust of our readers, which we hold first and foremost. As we keep working to provide local, credible and fair news coverage, we hope you will continue to support our product by reading and by feeling free to share your feedback with us any time.
