On telling newspaper stories
It is a good and healthy thing to take stock of the things we are producing. Is it balanced? Is it well-written? Is there enough variety? Where are we falling short? Where are we doing well?
I keep these questions in mind. As editor, it pains me when we cannot meet the standard I set out for this publication. When that happens, I have some important questions to ask myself.
And in this changing world of struggling newspapers, claims of the death of print media, the rise of AI and with it the accompanying question, I continue to ask myself, what are we doing, and why does it matter? They are questions we all must come to from time to time.
I remember the feeling of reporting on an event for the first time. It’s a bit like stepping into a new world each time, because these aren’t my social circles or my family. I’m there to discover, to learn the rules, to adapt. It’s like stepping into a picture book, a world built by someone else’s imagination. It is my job to find the story and tell it, with all its characters and qualities.
I recently finished reading Make Believe: On Telling Stories to Children by Mac Barnett, which hit shelves this year after first being published in Rome in 2024. Barnett is known to this household as the author of Extra Yarn and Sam and Dave Dig a Hole. We’ve also enjoyed his work through a classic retelling of The Three Billy Goats Gruff.
In the final of three essays, Barnett wrote about the power of children’s imaginations to create secondary worlds within their games, with governing rules, punishments and rewards. Because of this skill, children bring an openness to how they read stories and how they engage with the world within the picture book, even a book as idiosyncratic as “Good Night Moon.”
It is with that openness that I must approach the work of newspaper reporting.
With this first link in understanding what I am doing, I sought to see if Barnett might have some other treasures I could garner to answer these questions.
He makes some significant points in the book, shaking down the pretentiousness of children’s literature critique, which either looks down on children’s literature or tries to make children’s literature more convoluted and burdened by adult ideas than it needs to be.
“A children’s book is a book written for children.”
It is as plain and simple as that.
His definitions and distinctions made me wonder if I could apply a similar method to that which we produce here each week.
The definition of reporting: telling the facts, writing what happened.
How it happens in children’s books, according to Barnett, falls into three categories: propaganda, which, by definition, intentionally pushes a particular message, even a positive one (most books, he asserts); genuine works of art; and samizdat, the stuff developed underground by children, like hand-drawn comics, zines and notes passed in class.
Do we have such categories here? Propaganda is a strong word to use when discussing journalism. But it is important to acknowledge the categories in which a majority of the material we print may fall: articles promoting events or organizations, and straight news reporting. The former may come from the organizations themselves, sharing about their upcoming event, inviting the community to learn about what they do. The latter is the day in/day out of following the happenings of a small-town news and its associated councils and committees.
Then there are those stories that get as close to art as I think we can with a weekly deadline. These are the heart of the town: the profiles of historic people, of people doing historic things, of people doing really, really good work. That is the art of the small-town newspaper; that is the thing that makes it priceless.
And the samizdat– well, in a way, is not this how small newspapers begin and sustain themselves now, leaving the mainstream to tell the stories that interest a subset of the greater population.
In his essay, Barnett asserts,
“We don’t recognize children’s books as a real art form because we don’t think children are capable of understanding art” and “The main reason for our low esteem for children’s books: our low esteem for children.”
Wow.
When it comes to literature, I agree with this.
When it comes to small-town news, I think we can find a parallel here too.
There are those who say our news is not big enough. But a small-town weekly newspaper is a different kind of newspaper and a world away from news online. It is a place where stories are told, the slow stories; it’s a place where history is generally recorded after it has happened, rather than as it unfolds.
The value of which is more relational than viral.
Like Barnett’s analysis of the children’s classic Good Night Moon became a classic because grown-up children remember reading it in childhood, so they read it to their children. Then their children, once grown up, read it to the next generation. The story matters not only because of the story itself, but because of the connection to the others who shared in it, and the generations who came before and lived something like it as well. In our case, the town’s traditions.
Value comes from reading the names of those who never expected to be in a newspaper, there on the printed page, or from seeing those who deserved all the awards for their good work finally recognized by a news outlet.
When much of the good work worth doing often goes unseen by the bigger, broader world, it is the small-town paper that can see it.
These headlines are happening here, in our backyard, our front yard and our neighbor’s yard. Celebrations of the next generation, tributes to the generation that is passing away, and support for the generation in the middle, hard at work to keep it all going.
Reporting in a small town is more than reporting the facts; it is an openness to discovery, to know and to see the other involved, to genuinely listen, and, I hope, tell a story worth reading.
What’s the takeaway? There will be a lot of stories that do the basic work. There will be some who approach works of art. The art of it comes from the content and shape of the story that lives inside a small town’s residents; the reporter only records it.
Originally published in the Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch on July 21, 2026. The Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch is part of MidValley Publications and is committed to the power of the positive press. Reprinted with Permission.
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