I would like to take this time to respond to a letter sent to the editor a few weeks ago which expressed some frustration in a lack of local coverage.
I have been trying to refocus the paper on local events as best as I am able. If there are things which readers want to see more of or would rather not see, please email and let me know. I hope that my photo-essay type pieces have been enjoyable, but I don’t know without any public input.
But any frustration in my not being as engaged or connected as the Bournes is beyond valid. I am not the same type of writer or reporter as either Nathan or Andi were. I am the type of reporter who always sits in the back of the room and observes. As Reverend Erik Iverson said, I would make a good Lutheran.
Unfortunately this paper cannot replace a decade-long presence. You, the readers won’t have another Andi or Nathan Bourne until some new editor is with the paper for at least 10 years. But that doesn’t mean that a new editor can’t produce as good of content, or make the paper engaging in ways which make up for it.
The goal of bringing me into the editorial position was to allow for a more localized editor and reporter to bring your pages back to the coverage where they belong. Unfortunately again, the housing was so difficult to find that I had to continue living in Helena so I was still a non-local reporter for my first few months.
Even now that I am lucky enough to have some housing in the area, thanks to the Criswells, there are still many aspects of this community which I am not yet well-versed and those that I do have a difficult time discovering.
I am absolutely lacking in coverage of the on-going sewage system debate and that is because there is so much information to digest that I haven’t felt informed enough to be telling this story in a way that is actually newsworthy for the people of Seeley Lake.
I am trying to catch up on the decades of information while still putting out a paper every week, and lord help me, I am not doing a very good job of it.
In regards to including content from outside sources:
A newspaper will always be an aggregate and very few papers are able to go without bringing any outside content but I strived to include pieces which I thought to be most relevant and of interest to local readers. I know that the housing legislation I brought in from the UM News Service wasn’t focused on the issues which most affect the Seeley Lake area but I thought them to be relevant enough to warrant inclusion.
I would like to be able to fill all the pages with original content but if I am given a story by Montana Free Press or UM News Service which is complete and of great quality and is about something in Seeley Lake or Helmville, then you best believe I’ll be excited to print it. They’re good stories, they deserve to be read and I can promise that you’d get tired of reading the same three voices in your pages over and over again if we never included these types of articles.
I am also very interested in including local submissions. Please send me photos of local events, people, landscapes, etc. I will edit them and use them when I am able to.
I know that you have had a rough transition since the Bourne’s departed the Pathfinder but I promise you that everyone on staff and in ownership is sensitive to this fact and is constantly working to remedy it.
I hope that I am at least doing an okay job and I hope to improve and regain your confidence in this paper.
Thank you for your continued patronage and reading.
Reader Comments(1)
moondance writes:
Well written letter, Asa. I suspect you're going to do quite well. And I've enjoyed the variety you have been presenting. Thanks for cleaning up the formatting on the upcoming events section. Much easier to read now. A huge thing that wold help if an improvement to the online comments. It would help tremendously if we were notified of responses to our comment alerting us to log in and read them. So far, the way it works is that we have to remember periodically to check for responses. Pain in the butt. Thanks, Mike.
05/12/2023, 3:24 pm