Hey, it’s nothing personal

One of the really neat things about this job I have is the fact that I pretty much get to stick my nose in everybody else's business — especially those people who go trucking around with your tax dollars. It's one I take seriously.

The press's role of being the watchdog of government is one which often puts us at odds with elected officials and bureaucrats at all levels of government. This is especially the case at the local level, where most of the time you wind up being neighbors to those you're reporting about.

The hardest part of reporting local news lies in communicating the message to those you cover that critical reporting isn't anything personal. I don't hold grudges.

In the three-plus years I've been here now, some of my reporting has certainly stepped on some toes. I've ticked off Commissioners Courts in two counties, the school district, City Council, the Governor and probably countless other folks.

At the moment, for example, I would describe the paper's relationship with the school district as "somewhat strained." Some of the stories which have cropped up over the past three years, frankly, have shed a less-than-positive light on the Katy Independent School District.

I've been dressed down at Board meetings, snarled at by anonymous phone callers or letter-writers — and yes, we've lost a few subscribers over that coverage. By the same token, we've gained a few subscribers specifically because of that critical coverage. And we've got a slew of awards hanging on our walls because of that coverage.

It's nothing personal. It's my job to question, openly, the decisions, actions and events which most impact my paper's readers. The press's role is to point out problems to the reading public. Were we simply finding problems and pointing them out privately, we'd be adjunct bureaucrats.

It's my job to give the side of the story officialdom doesn't or won't give you. If they say it's red, I will at least listen to someone who might have the opinion that it's blue or green; if what they have to say has some credibility, I will pass that information along to my readers.

If KISD, City Council, the county or anyone else says they're doing "this" when they're actually doing "that," it's my job to challenge that in print — when I have something to back it up. You should see some of the stuff I've got that we couldn't run, primarily for lack of something solid in the way of evidence.

At the same time, it's also my job to point out when things are "right." I would challenge those who question our "negative" bias to stop by our office sometime, take a pica pole and run through three years' worth of back issues to measure the column inches devoted to "positive" and "negative" stories.

There are a lot of "positive" stories in our paper — in fact, sometimes there are so many of them, they become easy to overlook. By the same token, there are a lot of good stories out there we never hear about, and still others where we simply don't have enough warm bodies to cover everything we'd like to cover. We rely on our reading public — and the school district, city, county and other organizations — to feed us information and photos. We love 'em.

The bread-and-butter of any community newspaper is "refrigerator journalism" — getting Johnny and Susie's name in the paper for Mom and Dad to clip out and tack up on the refrigerator. We'd be fools to ignore those stories.

Many small newspapers, however, take the view that only the "good" news is worthwhile, to avoid giving offense to anyone (especially advertisers). They rely exclusively on what's fed to them.

That's unethical and cowardly — avoiding the responsibility of a free press — and I consider this community fortunate that our publisher and parent company take that responsibility seriously.

Feel free to disagree. It's nothing personal.