Doing the newspaper’s job

Matt Pearl

Judge Manring in Albany recently made an inquiry about a historical event that was supposed to have taken place in the Berlin area years back — I’ll not bore you with all the details of the event itself, but it was of general historic interest — and searching through back volumes of The Tri-County News and The Albany Ledger has been a task to which I have committed some time lately.

Well, I haven’t yet found the information I have been seeking, but what I have discovered is a treasure trove of small-town journalism’s past: community newspaper reports that have provided me not only with great insight into the past of rural northwest Missouri, but also with a sense of the journalistic expectations that small weeklies used to hold for themselves.

Overall, I have been reminded of something that journalists — even small-town, podunk newspaper writers like myself — should never forget: we are watchdogs. We are sentries positioned by the power of the First Amendment in the doorway of every public office.

From city hall to the local board of education, from the county commission to the prosecutor’s door — what empowers the press is its ability and its responsibility to hold accountable any office operating on public money, and in the public interest.

We do this. But like most things, we can do it better.

So my trip down memory lane has inadvertently resharpened one of my purposes in the field of community journalism: to put the pertinent information before the eyes of the people.

Why?

I’ll answer that question with another question: Why read the Tri-County News except to find out what is truly happening in King City, Stanberry, and Union Star?

I name those three communities, but our readers know we mean Empire Prairie, Berlin, Pleasant Hill, Island City, High Prairie, and a dozen other little “burgs” or “former burgs” across the Gentry, DeKalb, and Andrew county landscape.

Dad taught me never to stir up a storm with the newspaper, and I believe he was right. But when the storm is raging already, or even worse, when one is building on the horizon, he told me that the newspaper was obligated to take an interest in reporting the facts. And I’m thankful not only for his counsel, but also that, in reading through the rich histories of the county newspapers, I have inherited papers with strong historical tradition of doing just that.

But we don’t live in the past, and I have papers to run in the present and future. That means I have a job to do, and it’s good to have one that I love.

Keeping an eye on our public agencies is vital. I don’t say that from a paranoid perspective, and I certainly don’t envision that our municipalities, schools, or other public entities are trying to cheat us or deceive us. But if you and I go long enough without holding them accountable, we are likely to see the liars and thieves show up uninvited, just because they can see the opportunity to steal from folks who refuse to keep up the proper vigilance.

Well, I always heard that if you wanted to accomplish something, the first step was to create and follow a plan of action. I am formulating one, and it begins with more frequent (and, if necessary, pushy) conversations with local municipalities and law enforcement.

Better attention to financial disclosures and decisions made in public meetings will also be an important step in the plan.

I have no intention of stirring things up — to my knowledge, there is little (if anything) to stir at the moment. What I hope is that we always use the power of the press to its full intended use — as well as to its maximum potential.

It’s what is responsible, and therefore what is right.