Dear dimwit on the phone

Sounds like it was a great story that was well worth reading. I wrote a few of those for different newspapers and the old-timers were always so much fun to talk to.
Actually did a local Hall of Fame story not too long ago and my subject was a legendary coach (now close to 90). Talked to him and some of his players, wrote the story and never thought anything else about it. A few weeks later, the coach's wife called me at home just because she wanted to thank me for the story and talked about how many people had really enjoyed it. Made me happy to have written it.

 

"PRIDE" and "PROGRESS" are different to me. We did a "PROGRESS" at my last stop and it was basically an insert tab, not a section. We went and dropped off a questionnaire and took some photos. They filled it in and we put what their answers in story form. Easy.

"PRIDE" is what we do here. This year was a tornado anniversary edition. Those have nothing to do with businesses. We wrote 30 feature-style profiles on people who were heroes of the tornado and got little credit. That was a great special section.

 

F*ck Progress sections. I almost got fired a couple months ago for refusing to drape my tongue against the balls of some local businesses for that shitshow of a section.

Progress sections, and those who force them on people who want to be journalists instead or PR flackies, can die a slow and painful death.

 

Still a little unsure what a progress section is. Basically an advertising section passed off as journalism where you write about a business and they buy advertising in the section?

 

Some are, some aren't. The ones that are advertiser lube jobs tend to be published by smaller papers, where the opening of a restaurant or a retailer often is big news (and perhaps rightly so, for the community). Those sections are seldom all that great.

However, I've seen some metro papers do such sections and do them well, where they take a look at state-of-the-region topics such as housing, construction, education, jobs, traffic, entertainment, etc. Sometimes they would take a look at a particular business as a jumping-on point for the larger story, or to hold up as an example of a larger issue, but wouldn't focus entirely on the company as the story. These tend to be more interesting overviews of the area as a whole, if approached with a journalism focus.

 

I'm glad I didn't have to be the one to ask.

 

Progress sections are basically a chance for many small-time papers to say "Hey, you, local business, if you give us money, we'll write ANYTHING you want".

I know this because I was told this. Word for word.

I was told, point blank, that we would write a "positive" story about any local business that advertises with us in the section, whether or not it was warranted.

And my publisher, who NEVER reads anything in our paper, read this two-part section LINE BY LINE to make sure there wasn't anything "upsetting" to our businesses in it. She even called up people who were quoted in one story to make sure that's what they said and how they wanted it to sound in the story.

It's an advertisement section. I get that. But I never feel dirtier every year than when we do this piece of crap. Bottom line be damned, we're supposed to be objective journalists, not rah rah PR flackies.

I hope, beyond hope, every year that the business I'm unlucky enough to write a positive story about in this section gets involved in a massive child sex slave scandal one week later so that I can write a gigantic story to balance my journalistic karma.

Ok, rant over.

 

Yeah, it's interesting how papers keep coming up with these specialty niche publications --- my last paper did a quarterly home and lifestyle thing about fancy houses and ritzy living --- that supposedly appeal to advertisers. Yet they expect the editorial staff to produce them and STILL do the daily publication and website on top of all that.

How does that equate? You take a group of people who is already over budgeted time and expect them to do MORE stuff? What kind of math is that?

 

This year at our paper, the subjects of the "Progress" stories were given final approval rights over the stories (can't remember if they bought the privilege or not). This probably because they already had final approval rights over the weekly "Advertorial" stories they bought on the Business page.

 

We had this at my stops in Minnesota and North Dakota. It's PR copy and more work piled on staff. The publisher claimed it made a ton of money, but ad reps struggled into the last week before deadline to sell most spots.

 

I remember there being issues with ad sales in my neck of the woods (Georgia), too.

 

If that's how you guys see progress sections, then the problem is with your publisher and editor.

Several of the rare occasions where I did actually good work in my career came in progress sections, when I was given the time and space to do some deeper reporting on larger issues facing the community.