Inside the theory of editorial choices

We spend hours each week working together in groups, collaborating on personnel, logistics and most importantly, how to give our readers the most with the resources we have. One of these meetings is our bi-weekly manager meeting, which has representation from all of the five papers who work together in our group — Findlay, Sandusky, Tiffin, Norwalk and Fostoria. In last week's meeting, a spirited discussion ensued about the placement of a story out of Wakeman and Richland County, involving a 28-year-old man who died following a struggle with police officers at the county jail. The story detailed this event, and the aftermath, which the man's parents say has provided neither closure nor justice. As we discussed the merits of this type of story being printed in all our papers, Brandon Addeo, news editor of the Sandusky Register, suggested I delve into the topic of how we choose news for my next weekly column. As a guy who always is seeking topics to write about, I thanked Brandon for taking a little pressure off me this week. For our five papers, our general philosophy is the same. We believe in hyper-local content first. Each publication is located within a unique community, and we believe local news is what attracts the most people to our papers. This news is designed to be the mirror of our communities — we can play watchdog, cheerleader, explainer and promotor all on the same page. As I leafed through this Thursday's papers, I found a clear example of this focus in each paper: • Norwalk: A story and spirited photos of a group of Norwalk Catholic Elementary sixth-graders who are battling to name one of their fellow students a leader through a democratic election process. • Sandusky: An update on the underpass at Columbus Avenue that has been disrupted for almost two months following a train derailment. • Fostoria: A story on a pair of Fostoria High students who have organized the group "Students for Change" in an effort to positively affect their community. • Tiffin: An update on the Seneca County Commissioners' efforts in trying to hire a new EMS director. • Findlay: A rundown of the harrowing false alarm active shooter hoax that gripped Liberty-Benton High School Wednesday morning. These stories are the glue of what we do. Community-minded, and informative, we hope that people gain a better sense of where they live when they read our papers. But it goes beyond that. We've determined that regional and state coverage are the next most important things to deliver to our readers. For regional coverage, we utilize one of our best assets — ourselves. We try and hand-select stories that may have interest beyond their originating market for our other papers. For example, in today's Tiffin and Fostoria papers, there is a small story on an inside page about a 20-mile high-speed police pursuit in Hancock and Wyandot counties. That story originated in the Findlay newsroom, but was determined it was of interest to two of the other readerships, but maybe not so much in Sandusky and Norwalk. For the aforementioned jail death story, we determined the unresolved aspect of the story was worthy of all audiences seeing it. An underreported incident at the time of its happening, we wanted to tell the story and raise the question — was this a miscarriage of justice? Stories like this are not meant to take one side or the other, but rather to ask tough questions and bring to light things that the public does not have ready access to. Beyond regional content, we rely on our partnership with the Associated Press and other sources to help fill out our state, national and world coverage. Every day our editors collaborate with one another. One may be sitting in a desk in Findlay and another in Sandusky, but they make decisions to share content that might make our websites or the next day's paper a little more interesting. Can you debate our decisions? Always, but our editors all have the same goal in mind — give you the best product we can while focusing on local, regional, state, national and world news, in that order. Community newspapers both try to provide a little bit for everybody while maintaining a specific focus. The fact we have talented reporting teams across Northwest Ohio that work together helps us in both categories. Jeremy Speer is the publisher of The Courier, Findlay, The Advertiser-Tribune, Tiffin, the Sandusky Register, the Norwalk Reflector and Review Times, Fostoria. He can be reached at jeremyspeer@thecourier.com.