With so many news offerings across all media platforms, people now have unprecedented access to information about wider state, national and international stories.
Therefore it is crucial to portray local happenings, personalities, events, council decisions and sports.
This is what readers come to a local paper for and if you are not relevant at the local level people will lose interest.
Nevertheless, these local stories should always be placed in a wider context, with reference to similar issues affecting communities Australia wide.
When a larger story does affect local residents, it is important focus on the aspects that have the most relevance to your community.
A country journalist must attempt to distill complex issues and figure out what matters most to their readership in an economic, social, political and personal sense.
To do this you must find local people, businesses, schools and organizations that are directly effected by an issue and seek out their opinions and perspectives.
It is also important to be part of the “bush telegraph” to tell stories about local people, their achievements and of the area’s history.
These smaller stories might not get much play in larger newspapers and therefore are especially important to the local community you cover.
In short, local relevance is crucial to country newspapers, however, as a journalist you should always see how local issues can be placed within a larger
context in order to further inform and educate your readers.
One of my more interesting days working as a regional Australian journalist occurred recently when the Governor General of Australia Quentin Bryce came to the Gannawarra Shire, which I cover for The Northern Times.
She visited residents who were affected by the severe floods that hit the region in January.
This was her second visit to our region, which is still recovering from the worst floods to have hit Victoria in living memory.
This time around she visited some of the most affected communities in the regions to show her support for farmers and residents recovering from the devastating floods.
It is always difficult to produce interesting coverage from a visit by a person of such high office.
Such visits are often tightly scripted, giving you less chance to find an interesting or novel angle to report on.
However, due to my role as a journalist for the area’s local newspaper and our close relationship with the local council, I was lucky to be able to accompany Ms Bryce’s entourage as she visited farmers hit by the floods.
For me, this highlighted the importance of cultivating a good working relationship with local government, businesses and prominent community members, as they can often make all the difference in getting you exclusive coverage on a story.
This meant that I was the only journalist attending her visits to the properties of two flood affected farming families.
As such I was able to give more depth to the story than other media outlets covering the Governor General’s visit.
As is often the case with such visits, we were told by her office in no uncertain terms that she would not be answering direct questions from the media during her visit.
In many ways, this was a relief, as there is only so much to that can asked during such a visit, which is really aimed at representing the government and reassuring residents that they have not been forgotten.
Knowing this, I decided to focus more on the story of the farmers she visited and people she talked to, in order to use the event of her visit to highlight issues
still confronting farmers recovering from the floods.
Travelling with a local council employee, I arrived at the Governor General’s scheduled stops 15 or so minutes before she arrived.
This gave me the opportunity to interview the people she was visiting and get their views on what her visit meant to them, as well as background information on their plight in the wake of the floods.
When she arrived I was able to focus more on my photography, which is always a nice thing, as photography tends to come second when you’re playing the dual roles of journalist and photographer.
Having got some good quotes and background material from the people that were being visited, I was able to put my notepad down and concentrate on getting a good shot.
One of the best parts of working at a small regional newspaper is getting to try your hand at all aspects of the craft.
As such, I have been slowly developing my photographic sense and ability, and have been enjoying this aspect of the job immensely.
Visits by well known dignitaries always attract media outlets from a much wider area than a typical local news story.
I always enjoy the chance to watch more experienced journalists and photographers in action and try to pick up some pointers along the way.
This is especially true with photography, I always look to see what experienced photographers are doing, watching the angles and techniques they use to get a good photo, and try and learn from it.
Another aspect of the day was to trying to generate future stories that could be followed up at a later time.
One of the farmers she visited on the day had a son who was using the social networking site Facebook to raise money from people affected by the floods.
Knowing this before hand, I used the opportunity to get more information which I planned to use for up a follow up story about the boy.
I also spoke to the boy’s father about other issues affecting the district and gained some valuable insight to water distribution issues and flood levee works in the area, which served as background for an ongoing series of stories on these issues.
I have found that it is always useful to have a bit of an extended chat with people even if it strays off the topic of the immediate story I am covering.
You never know what will come up and I have found many new angles and stories this way.
