Column Writing

2008 TPA Better Newspaper Contest

First Place D3

The River Cities Daily Tribune (Marble Falls)

Too for the 'prize' of one

By Seth Green

About the same time every year, newspaper editors across the state order their reporters to submit stories for journalism contests, mostly on the state level. It's a time for us at the Daily Tribune to look back on a year of progress and history for the Highland Lakes. It also reminds us that hand-in-hand with you, the reader, we reporters…

(... have different standards for a good story, or at least what constitutes a good story in a reporter's mind when he writes it. When I write about a trial, I focus on the technical stuff like where this embezzler hid the money or what kind of ammunition the murderer used to shoot his victims or who made the meth that sent the other drug user to prison. But my editor; Thomas Edwards, reminds me that the readers want to know how much the embezzler cried at his sentencing, what the murderer's family thinks about his mistrial and which exact curse words the drug addict screamed at the judge as bailiffs took away. But despite the tabloid-like nature of those stories, they really...)

…can make a difference in the world. Reporters are watchdogs of government. A trusted community newspaper functions as a gatekeeper and repository for knowledge and history of its area. When I worked in Louisiana, my editor and his family had owned and operated the newspaper for 30 years. Steve remembered the oil boom, the hurricanes, the fuel plant explosion and all that neat stuff. You could come to The Daily Review and peruse archives going back several years. He taught me to write stories that could truly...

(... make a big impression in the minds of journalism contest judges, who are all either bleeding-heart liberals or too old to remember how to read. To make the liberal judges happy, we put in as many smarmy details as we can, to complement the serious technical details that make an award-winning story. When I wrote about the Katrina evacuees who passed through Morgan City La., I had to point out how many generations this family had been unemployed and on welfare and how many times that rescue worker got shot at. Though they were interesting stories, I was a young reporter. I don't think those stories could...)

…galvanize the community I have a great opportunity to do that here in the Highland Lakes. The Meadowlakes Golf Course issue somehow manages to simultaneously galvanize and divide the community. It could rob a city of its sovereignty and kill business for a country club. But I still have a problem: This is a local paper and a regional issue. And low-national interest in my stories means I will not...

(... win a Pulitzer prize. That's really what I'm shooting for. Who cares about a stupid state award when I can get a Pulitzer? It comes in the mail with job offers and ludicrous salaries from every newspaper, television news station, cable news station and blog in the world, including Matt Drudge and Borat Sagdiyev. But Pulitzer judges are even more liberal than the state guys. To accommodate them, the journalism community has actually begun considering a new format, in which we would produce two separate types of stories. There would be stories for contest judges and news stories. We only ever submit individual stories, so you readers could keep your blood and guts and the contest judges could enjoy their heart-rending, detail-ridden stories that will...)

… be able to just magically show the nation how serious an issue this Meadowlakes Golf Course debate is. It will take hard work to turn that perception around; to show the world just how strongly our community feels about it. And that will be a happy day. Journalists dream of positively changing the course of world events with good writing. Yes, we have high aspirations, but societies never progress without idealists. The founding fathers wrote the freedom of the press into our Constitution, thus ensuring that I, Seth Green, could someday realize my dream and...

(... win the Pulitzer. But don't worry, we will keep the crime stories coming. We will make them up, if we have to, to sell papers, so I can keep my job and do what I always wanted to do, which is to win a Pulitzer prize. Who cares about world events? I certainly don't, and neither do I care whether the parties involved manage to...)

help pave the way to an all-around beneficial settlement on the Meadowlakes Golf Course. It will be a long, hard road for us reporters. But somebody's go to do it.