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The picture looks bright for community journalism
By Dale Bryant
In April, Silicon Valley Community Newspapers announced that it had begun doing business as a separate company, no longer under the umbrella of Metro Newspapers. In about six weeks, some of our staff will move into our new company headquarters at 1085 The Alameda in San Jose.
While our newspapers have continued doing business as usual, I've spent the past few months learning the nuts and bolts of being the executive editor--learning to do the budget, handling personnel issues, looking at policy matters. While I haven't been curled up in a cocoon, I have been removed from the part of community journalism that I enjoy the most--being a part of the community.
Our move to our own company headquarters will mean few changes for our readers, but for me, it's wrought with symbolism and significance. I'll no longer be spending my Mondays at Metro where I've done production for the past eight years. Our production facilities will be in the same building as much of our advertising and administrative staff. Editorial staffs from four of our newspapers--The Campbell Reporter, the Willow Glen Resident, the Cupertino Courier and the Sunnyvale Sun--will be there, too, and I'm very excited about the opportunity to work more closely with these reporters and editors.
Now, instead of focusing on nuts and bolts, I'm thinking about the big picture, looking at who we are in the communities we serve and how we can do an even better job of community journalism.
I am absolutely committed to keeping our focus on local communities. At the same time, I want to make our papers stronger and more professional. I believe the opinion pages are the heart of our papers, and I want readers to look on them as a forum for the exchange of ideas about their community. You'll be hearing from me in your op/ed pages, primarily talking about who we are as a company and how we make the editorial decisions we make. Our editors will also share some of themselves and their views about issues in their communities. I hope readers also will share their thoughts in letters and in opinion pieces. I believe having more of the editorial staff under one roof will make it easier for us to achieve these goals.
My commitment to local news isn't an abstract ideal. For almost eight years, I was the editor of the Los Gatos Weekly-Times. For several of those years, I also edited the Saratoga News. I know the down side of being an editor--the long hours, the new stories that never seem to break until after deadline, the angry phone calls, the letters suggesting the editor is a clueless moron. I also know how insignificant those negatives are compared to the positives.
I loved being a community editor. I loved knowing who could give me the inside scoop; I loved knowing how the community worked, what motivated people and how they related to each other. I loved the gossip, the speculation about who might throw his hat in the ring. I loved the small-towness of being a community editor. And, of course, there's no satisfaction like seeing residents bent over your newspaper in a local coffee shop.
To ensure that our papers remain passionately local, I will insist that editors and reporters know their community well and report on it accurately. That's not always easy in a valley where city and neighborhood boundaries overlap, and one corner often looks like another. It's not easy when the population--including many of our staff--is mobile.
As an editor, I had one great advantage--I grew up in Saratoga and attended high school in Los Gatos. I was editing home town papers in my home towns. When I was an editor, it was not uncommon for me to bump into childhood friends on my way to lunch. Old teachers stopped by the office to visit. I'd talk politics at the meat counter with the teacher who taught me and several generations of Los Gatos and Saratogan seventh-graders ballroom dancing.
Most of our editors and reporters aren't so lucky. They must get to know their communities having no history on which to build. But like newcomers to a neighborhood, our editorial staff is eager to learn the lay of the land, to become a part of the communities they cover.
Until we move to our headquarters, I don't really have a door to throw open, or I would say that my door is always open. Until then, I can be reached by email at dbryant@svcn.com. I've been busy learning the nuts and bolts of being an executive editor. Now I'm ready to get back into the community--all of our newspaper communities. I'd just love to hear a little gossip.
Dale Bryant is the executive editor of Silicon Valley Community Newspapers. The Saratoga News is part of the SVCN family.
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Saratoga, California Since 1955
