Help! As you surely noticed last week, this newspaper suddenly got bigger. That means we all have to work harder. And that includes me. From now on, I have to write twice as many stories as I did before. I need your help. In this town, there is a lot of news and there are many inspiring stories just waiting to be told. I’ve received a lot of leads from people calling into the Courier-News office. But I’ve received even more from just overhearing regular people talking on the street. I need help here, so if you don’t want me standing in my trenchcoat behind a copy of the Courier-News eavesdropping on your conversation in the market for some juicy tidbit to report, you’d better help me out. Of course, if I stood for even 30 seconds in Goodwin’s with a trench coat on and a newspaper covering up the front of me, I’d probably have some 300-pound lumberjack tackle me to the ground and try to make a citizen’s arrest. Then I’d have some news to report. So let me give you a few ideas. I think most everything is news. For example, I’m soaking my trees to keep the healthy ones from dying. Ever since I started doing this, a female robin has taken up residence at my place and likes to just lay on the soaker hose and cool her underside off. It looks like she’s nesting after giving birth to the longest, sweatiest timber rattler I’ve ever seen. Another new resident—a red-breasted nuthatch—also cools off by running under the drips for a shower and drinking them. It’s funny, because you never see nuthatches in a horizontal position. If I could sneak up on them and get a picture, I would call that news. Let’s say you’re down on your bottom floor trying to investigate some creaking and groaning you’ve been hearing down there for a few weeks. You notice a little water leaking under your well-insulated door to the build up under your house. You open the door and suddenly you’re flushed out into the room by a flood of water. Now the creaking and groaning starts coming from upstairs. You look into the build up and notice that a lot of the dirt that used to be there is gone and most of the concrete piers there are now hanging in the air at the end of the 4X4s they used to support. You know it’s time to run as the creaking and groaning are replaced by crashing noises. Once you’re outside, everything appears fine, except that the roof is gone. Well, not gone, it’s just sitting on the bottom floor. The walls are still standing. This is what we in this business call news. Give me a call so I can come out and take some pictures. I know you’re not so happy about it, but your fellow citizens will think it’s really cool, and one day you’ll drag out that old issue of the paper and have a good belly laugh…or cry your guts out, but hey, that’s what news is all about. In Fallbrook, where I used to run the local paper, we got people into the spirit. I would never know when some bug-eyed stranger would come into the news room, literally drag me out of the office by my wrist as I grabbed my gear, and throw me into a car idling at the curb. We encouraged this behavior. One time this happened, it was because a baby goat had climbed up onto somebody’s roof. I kid you not. It made the paper, though. The guy even poked his head into the office a week later and said, “It’s up there again,” then raised his eyebrows quickly a couple of times. His car was idling at the curb. I don’t want to emphasize animal stuff too much because there are a lot of other stories waiting out there. Some are right under your nose. We once had a lady on staff at a publication I worked for who volunteered building houses for poor people in Tijuana on the weekends. It wasn’t until we tried to give her a weekend assignment and she declined that we learned of it. Now that was a good story. Let’s say you’re Ronald Reagan’s nephew and you spent lots of time with him. There’s a story there. Perhaps you’re a relative of one of the earliest settlers of Crestline. I’m all ears. Maybe you just bought a house, loosened a few boards and found a long-forgotten attic full of old treasures. It’s all news to me. And remember, a newspaper can be a powerful tool when people are in dire straits through no fault of their own. Mobilizing people to help others in real need is one of the best things we do in this business. So any time you have anything you feel is worthy of a news or feature story, just send me an e-mail at lreeder@crestlinecourier-news.com, or leave me a message at 337-6145, ext. 270.
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. © 2004 Winning Words and Crestline Courier-News
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