The good, the bad and The News Connection

Why do I write so much about The News Connection? I guess it's because what they do each week strikes a chord with me. Sometimes I'm thrilled, sometimes I'm horrified.

This week's issue is a perfect example. I enjoyed the second-front "SK8R boys" skateboard story -- a good point-of-view piece featuring kids who don't ordinarily make a newspaper. (Lots of kids get ink, but they're usually athletes, Eagle Scouts, "A" students and such.) The sports coverage is getting better too. Several good features throughout the paper, in fact. They're covering more news-of-the-day as well, keeping the "news" in "newspaper".

The News Connection is also getting all the good local Letters to the Editor too. On the weekend before Election Day, I was stunned to see no letters in today's (Saturday's) Leader, but the News Connection had a bunch. Didn't the Leader used to be the place where all the good letters got published first?

But here's the one journalistically-horrifying thing that keeps popping up on TNC's front page every week, it seems: the one-sided slam piece. This week, in another of a long line of drop-by sit-down interviews, The News Connection interviews Chris Ventura, who's running against incumbent Darlene Whitten in the County Court at Law No. 1 race in Tuesday's GOP primary. Because no Democrats dare to run for office in southern Denton County, the winner of Tuesday's vote wins the seat in November too. What stuns me is that there is no opportunity presented for balance in this story. Ms. Ventura's claims and criticisms are left unchecked. Since this is the last issue of The News Connection before election day, there's no opportunity to provide necessary journalistic balance. Would it have killed the TNC reporters and editors to have contacted Judge Whitten to get another side to the story? I wouldn't think not. Either they don't understand the importance of seeking balance in controversial stories, or they don't care. I'm hoping they'll grow out of this someday. It's a dangerous precedent to set.

Does this mean every article in every issue has to be 50-50 balanced? Of course not. Balance can take place over a period of time too. A profile of one candidate one week; a profile of an opposing candidate the next. That's perfectly fine. But that's an impossibility in this judge's race now that TNC has profiled just one of the candidates before election day. The voters lose when reporters and publishers play favorites in their reporting and publishing.

Bottom line: I give The News Connection great credit for building what I see is a successful local newspaper. From the looks of the ads they're selling, I hope they're rolling in the dough. I wish them the best, and I hope they'll keep getting better at what they do.