We recently came home from the Nevada Press Foundation Awards of Excellence with an armload of plaques and certificates—a testament to a year’s worth of hard work.
We took just a minute to be proud of them, and then it’s back at work on another story list, because apparently plaques will not sit through a school board meeting and these stories won’t write themselves.
Awards recognize the work. They do not give us permission to do it.
That permission is protected by the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” Those few words keep government from deciding what newspapers may publish, which opinions are acceptable, or who is allowed to criticize public officials.
The amendment originally restrained the federal government. Through the Fourteenth Amendment, its protections also apply to state and local governments.
The government does not hand out constitutional press cards to only the big, impressive papers. A tiny weekly newspaper in a rural town stands under the same First Amendment as The New York Times. So does an independent writer, a citizen with a newsletter, or anyone else doing the work of gathering information and publishing it.
But freedom of the press is only the beginning.
The First Amendment can protect a newspaper from government censorship. It cannot hire a reporter. It cannot drive her to the meeting, make her read the 591-page agenda packet, or keep her awake while the board discusses something important in language apparently designed to send ordinary people into a coma.
That part requires a newspaper.
Look at our story lists this week. Reporters are covering candidate nights and sample ballots, teacher retention and declining enrollment, planning commissions, library boards, county boards, courts, water levels, and federal decisions about wild horses on public land.
Most of those stories will never appear on a national newscast. Still, they are the stories most likely to explain why your child’s classroom changed, why a road project moved, why a tax appeared on the ballot, or what a government agency is doing just over the hill.
Some of that information can be found in agendas, minutes, and agency news releases. Those records are important, and the public can access them and dig through them for themselves. But they are not the same thing as reporting.
An agenda tells you what officials planned to discuss. Minutes may tell you what motion passed. A reporter watches the discussion, asks questions, checks the numbers, and tells you what changed. Sometimes the most important part never made it into the news release.
Our story this week about the Bureau of Land Management’s Jackson Mountains wild horse gather is a good example. The agency posted information in several places. Bridgette gathered it into one account: the estimated herd population, the government’s target, the number of horses removed, the trapping method, and the reported deaths. She put the facts where readers could see them together and decide what questions remain.
That is what local newspapers do all week, usually without much ceremony. We sit through the meetings, read the documents, and create a public record that is easier to find than a three-hour video buried on a government website.
National Newspaper Week begins Oct. 4. This year’s theme is “Rooted in Community, Committed to Truth.” That is a pretty good description of the job. Local reporting works because the reporter knows the places, people, and history behind the agenda item. The commitment to truth is what keeps that knowledge from becoming favoritism.
Our awards give us a lovely reason to celebrate heading into Newspaper Week. More importantly, they remind us that careful journalism can be produced in small communities and that the work is worth doing well.
Next week, we will talk about the Fourth Estate and why the press became an unofficial institution watching the official ones, as we recognize the important job little local community papers are doing across this country.
Plaques are really quite lovely, and we love ours, but tomorrow is City Council, and Wednesday is County Commission, and someone has to go cover them.
So while the First Amendment can keep government from silencing a newspaper, it cannot guarantee that a reporter will be in the room. Only a community can keep that work alive.
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