Newsroom
Guides for enhancing and extending your resources for reporting, editorial, photojournalism and other content generating areas.
Fugitive drives story into weekly’s territory
April 30, 2013
Sometimes we go find the news. Other times, it finds us.
Reporters stymied by public information officers
April 10, 2013
“For an interview, please contact our PIO.” These types of stories are all too familiar to journalists.
Use your platform to educate, preview—and apologize
February 1, 2013
A reader questions your policy for reporting suicides. A local retailer challenges your staff to produce timely and relevant business news. A reporter is confronted for printing a press release charging a candidate with unfair campaign practices without contacting the accused for a response.
Community papers should cover controversial subjects
February 1, 2013
Part of our job at the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues is to give rural journalists the information and inspiration they need to tackle controversial, uncomfortable issues. Several recent items on The Rural Blog illustrate that.
School safety and gun control becoming major stories
January 2, 2013
As this is written in mid-December, there is much concern over school safety and much talk about gun control, and that is likely to continue as students return to school and the new Congress convenes. The Rural Blog offers help for covering these and other issues that have a local impact or stir local concern.
Newspapers can mitigate libel with story inventories
November 29, 2012
Preventative medicine—it’s a good way to avoid debilitating illness. For newspapers, preventing libel claims is just as important.
Expand your paper’s coverage of the coming elections
July 31, 2012
At many community newspapers, treatment of this year’s presidential election may be limited to online polls. If your coverage stops there, you are missing an opportunity to build your paper’s brand and help your readers cast their most informed vote ever for president, in what is likely to be one of the most consequential elections our nation has seen.
The Rural Blog honors outstanding community journalism
July 2, 2012
The Rural Blog is mainly about the issues that affect rural and small-town America, but it is also about good rural journalism.
Websites, social media integral to everyday coverage
July 2, 2012
The newspaper is just off the presses, and your photographer is dispatched to a fatal accident scene. The mayor gives an inspiring State of the City speech; your story in the next day’s edition captures the highlights, but time and space do not allow any attention to the details. Newspapers deliver blow-by-blow stories of election campaigns, but casual readers fail to grasp the continuum of coverage.
Taking the pulse of your readers
June 5, 2012
Want to create more reader interest in your website and your print edition?
