By Adam Stewart
From the Newsroom
Filling out the spreadsheet I use as my time card last week, I noticed I was up to “Sheet52” in Excel. Yes, it’s been a full year since I joined The Hutchinson Tribune full-time.
In the past year, I’ve written a lot of stories, taken a lot of photos, and spent a lot of time in public meetings. I know the meetings take up less time than writing and photos, but some weeks—like this week, with school board, county commission, and planning commission all in a span of probably 26 hours—it doesn’t feel that way.
Despite some long meetings, I like the work most of the time. I enjoy talking with people and digging through data, and those are essentially what a lot of the work of reporting is. I like writing about people who are trying to do good things for our community, and there are a lot of those stories to write.
Thinking about my favorite stories I’ve worked on over the past year, I noticed that what I liked about them wasn’t the same for any of them.
In December, while working on another story at the Salvation Army, I bumped into Art Sundquist, who was dropping off dozens of homemade toy cars for the Christmas toy drive. We talked for just a few minutes, I got a photo, and I had an unexpected nice story in no time at all. That unexpected element is the part that makes the story stick out as a favorite. Sometimes being in the right place at the right time makes the difference.
At the far other end of the spectrum, a series of stories last summer about potential changes to floodplain maps in Reno County was not spur-of-the-moment, quick or lighthearted. Instead, in the stories, I worked to explain what is happening, why it is important, and what the City of Hutchinson was doing to minimize the impact. Those stories took a lot of work, because there was a lot of ground to cover, but it feels good to report on issues that matter.
But the biggest highlight of my first year with The Tribune was on Aug. 27, when I got to hold the first print edition of the paper in my hands. Opportunities to be part of something special, right from the beginning, don’t come around very often.
The response from readers has, overall, been really encouraging. People appreciate local news coverage, and there is no shortage of news to cover in Reno County. I am not worried about running out of stories to write, except during the week between Christmas and New Year’s. That week is always challenging.
And since this is a bit of a meta-column about The Tribune, I’ll take this opportunity to encourage readers to share your personal and professional milestones with us: 50th anniversaries, 80th birthdays, engagements and weddings, births, retirements, etc. Those things are news, and people like to know about them.
Adam Stewart is the assistant news editor of The Hutchinson Tribune. He can be reached at adam@hutchtribune.com.