Keep the good news coming

I love small-town newspapers. I’m all for hometown journalism that is the core of communities and the heart of their citizens.

Maybe it’s because I started my journalism career at a little weekly newspaper with a no-nonsense boss named Norman who actually demanded that I meet deadlines in a timely manner.

Once and only once, I missed a deadline by eight minutes. I was still in college and the professor had chatted with me after class, making me late to the newspaper. The chewing out I got that day still scares me two decades later.

But ol’ Norman made me a better professional. I’ve never missed a deadline since that day, though once when I was at USA Today, I came close. But I could handle the pressures of that hard-hitting Washington, D.C., newsroom. I had worked for Norman.

Norman also taught me about the value of community journalism. He maintained that readers care most about their neighbors and what happens to the people they know. Obituaries, I learned early, are the most valuable newsprint to readers.

And though newspapers have long clung to the adage, “If it bleeds, it leads,” I have come to learn that in these days when newspapers struggle to retain and keep readers, it is good news that sells papers. A smile in these days of relentless bad news is well worth the price of a newspaper.

I am so sick of television news. All they broadcast, seems like, is the bad side of America and our people. I am tired to no end of 30 minutes worth of every sad or bad story they can rustle up. If I hear much more about the terrible economy, the horrors of war or the meanness of politics, I’m gonna pull a Billy Joe McAllister and jump off the Tallahatchie Bridge. I was looking for a reason to go to Mississippi any way.

This column currently runs in 53 newspapers across the Southeast from Myrtle Beach, S.C., down to Biloxi, Miss., stopping off in a lot of places from here to there. It is embraced by readers of small and medium-sized newspapers who love a good story, who are looking for a 15-minute escape from the emotional pounding of daily life and world news.

Now, some of the publishers of those 53 newspapers are kind enough to put me on their mailing list and send me copies of their pride and joy. As a result, I often find smiles in those papers, especially the front page.

I love the fact that the DeSoto Tribune in Olive Branch, Miss., often has a glowing beauty queen on the front page. They say that many beauty queens come from DeSoto County.

Once while I was on the air with a radio show in New Orleans, a man phoned in to say, “We have so many beautiful women in Mississippi that we have to red-shirt them for Miss America.” Only in the South, would a football analogy fit with beauty pageants.

In the Herald-Journal from Greensboro, Ga., was a big color photo at the top of the front page with a woman and her dog. The headline read: “Hoochie Mama Stays Gone Two Weeks, Travels Four Miles To Greensboro To Find Elaine.”

It was a story of a woman’s dog who ran away during a thunderstorm then returned to find her owner at the drugstore where she works. The story ended with, “Hoochie Mama was back home and Elaine Ellis was the happiest woman in Greene County.”

I not only smiled, I laughed. I loved the story so much that I clipped it out and saved it for a glum day when I need a happy story.

I think that television could take a page from print journalism and learn something about the value of good news.

[Ronda Rich is the best-selling author of “What Southern Women Know About Flirting” and “The Town That Came A-Courtin’.” She lives near Gainesville, Ga. Sign up for her newsletter at www.rondarich.com.]