News

Sometimes it is difficult writing and reporting for the newspapers of record in such small communities like Virginia City. All sorts of things can go wrong, like seeing a bad story about a friend.

That happened this week, and I had to bite the bullet and do my job, whether I wanted to or not. There was no way to soften the blow of stories subject — solicitation of a minor.

I consider everyone innocent until proven guilty, but many people prove themselves of the opposite thought.

Writing about death, whether natural or an accident, or unnatural, makes for a bad day. It is worse when the story fails to make the pages for whatever reason.

That happened about a month ago when a person’s obituary got deleted. I’m still sick to my stomach over that one.

Then there are the times I get caught by some opinionated loudmouth wanting to know why I didn’t report on this or that or to complain that I wasn’t harsh enough on a person in an article. The most recent happened while I was repairing the paper box in front of the post office.

I try to educate rather than argue.

“Think about the word ‘news,’” I often say. “It is an anagram for north, east, west, and south. It also contains the word ‘new.’ If it isn’t new information, it isn’t news. Further, the word ‘news’ doesn’t contain the word opinion, and therefore it doesn’t fit with reporting the ‘news.’”

They usually go away as angry as they were when first approaching me. I can be very stubborn about this, as I want my work judged on its fairness and not on whose side I stood when it came to small-town politics.

Lastly, there are times that I never hear about a story until after my weekly deadline of Tuesday at 5 p.m. In those cases, I have to wait for the following week.

Hey, I ain’t a mind reader, Mr. Barnum.

But before I can whip out a story, I need to judge if it is still relevant by following the ‘news’ as I laid out before. If it is, I move forward — if not, it is ‘redlined.’

To escape all this week-to-week drama, I read, draw, paint and write these dispatches to break the stress. Anyways…