Last weekís paper had a letter calling me on the carpet for not having anything in the paper about an accident that had occurred the previous week.
That prompts me to ramble about the subject of news, how we gather it, and what we print, or in this case, what we donít print.
Thereís a lot of gray area on this topic. For example, another editor might have put something in about the truck rollover on Schauble Hill on June 2 that drew the writerís ire last week.
Iíll explain it a bit not as a means of making excuses, but to say how the process sifted through my own gray area.
In this case, I could not get any information on the accident from the Minnesota State Patrol, despite three phone calls and two emails. Neither the photo I took nor the one that our freelance photographer took was very good.
So do we use a marginal photo of an accident with no information, except that traffic was delayed? Thatís what went through my mind on June 5 as we laid out the paper. I chose not to use it.
Some editors would have done differently. Thatís the thing about newspapers: they all have different approaches, and sometimes they are pretty whimsical.
Hereís another example from that week: There was a fire on June 5 at the Norman Oseth farm west of Caledonia. I heard about it on the scanner, found out where it was, went out, took pictures, interviewed Norman and fire chief Chuck Gavin.
But it didnít get in. The paper was quite full, it was late in the lay-out process, and it wasnít a major fire. Thatís my judgment again.
Another editor might have put the story in. In fact, we might have put it in if it had been a slow news day, if we had had more room, or if it had occurred earlier in the week. Journalism is not an exact science.
No one was injured at the fire either, which is also another criteria on the ìnewsworthyî scale. But thatís a gray area too. The truck driver on Schauble Hill had minor injuries, or so I was told at the sheriffís office. Would major injuries have made it more important news? If the driver had been killed, would we have used the photo of the truck on its side?
And that gets into the ethics of newspapers printing pictures of fatalities. I get very nervous about that. Iíve passed up more than one photo opportunity of a sheet-draped body. Yet I took a picture a couple years ago of rescue workers trying to recover a body at a grain bin. Was that right? Was that news?
We have a photo this week of an accident that occurred on Badger Hill on June 6. Is that news?
Sometimes we take photos of traffic accidents and are asked NOT to put the pictures in, because the people in the accident feel embarrassed about it. So then what?
Like I said, itís not black and white. Thatís one thing I like about my job.
Iíll be the first to admit that we donít always get in the news that we should. And I donít mind being criticized for that, even when it is laced with sarcasm. The fact that people donít always agree is the way it should be. We are all free-thinkers.
I welcome your letters. Send them to P.O. Box 227, Caledonia, MN 55921, or email me at david.heiller@ecm-inc.com.

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Caledonia Argus
314 West Lincoln St.
P.O. Box 227
Caledonia, MN 55921-0227
507/724-3475

E-Mail: editor.argus@ecm-inc.com