How do you do good journalism in a small-town with an annual news budget of less than $15,000 a year?
Steve Young, who’s with a small public radio station, provides some of the answers in a great piece at transom.org, the online resource for many things radio. In the piece, Young writes:
Throughout the life of the station I’ve had no fulltime reporters. I did a lot of reporting myself and somehow found and, when needed, trained many other freelance reporters and producers. Of course we followed the news and chose particular stories to follow when they occurred. We won a number of awards for our news coverage, in fact. But in part because my annual news budget is $12,500 a year, I’ve had to choose my shots with great care.
It’s an interesting piece with, I think, lessons that go beyond the under-staffed, smalltown newspaper. What Young writes applies just as well to newspapers and even citizen-driven hyperlocal sites — pick your spots and do it well.
