Process, process, process — just like always

SPRING HOPE — I usually just stare at people when they do it.

The info-baiting thing.

You know, the conversational pivot where folks — usually friends, or at the very least, acquaintances — bring up something mildly sensitive before dribbling from their face that “the media” is responsible for the daily wars we make.

Misinformation, they say.

Disinformation.

Liberals, the lot of you, writing party-line copy.

Fake news.

Puppets in pockets, with beets for brains, doing our letter-best to deepen the grift that keeps on giving — after all, that’s exactly what bought up one side and down the other means.

Only, that’s not how it works.

At all.

•••

Over the course of a given week, here’s what we actually do.

We go to meetings.

Fires.

School openings, car crashes, first appearances and ball games.

We go to crime scenes.

Floods.

Waste lagoons, ribbon-cuttings, speeches and convocations.

Tornado aftermath.

Primaries.

Groundbreaking ceremonies.

Rescue efforts.

Forums.

Program roll-outs.

Festivals.

Drought-stricken fields, annual pageants and sentencing phases.

We go wherever you need us, post-haste.

And as it turns out, we don’t alter facts, mistake bias for balance or take copy edits from a floating icosahedron found in the belly of a Mattel Magic Journalism 8-Ball.

“Dearest MM J8 … should I force my coverage of a piece to end a certain way — even if nine months of reporting indicates otherwise — just so I can further the hushed agenda maintained by a bunch of shadows I’ve never met?”

It is decidedly not so.

•••

Courtesy of Stephen W. Raper’s book, “Addendum Number 1 to Nash County, North Carolina Newspapers, 1870-2013,” there have been 10 media outlets to offer reporting in Spring Hope, beginning with the Nash County Sun in 1894.

Information that mattered.

Real news.

Trusty leaves landing on doorsteps each week.

And I’m willing to wager those scribes covered the community the same way we do now — with dedication to the truth, paired with editing and photos that engage, keeping you close to stories that matter.

Stories that break overnight in a remote bend of the county.

Stories that develop over a week.

Stories that kick and kick and kick without expiration in mind.

That’s the gig.

If anything, it’s our chance to contribute to places that either raised us or look very much like the ones that did — not an opportunity to chase gossip, wild-eyed and uncouth, smearing someone’s name or reputation in the process.

It is decidedly not so.

We work through public record, sources and secondary sources, the offices of elected officials and other civil servants, trying in vain to vet each detail of a story from all sides of an issue relevant to Enterprise subscribers.

If we get everything, it prints; if not, we hold and continue working — it’s that simple, and it always has been.

Justin Hayes is The Enterprise’s news editor. Reach him at jhayes@springhopeenterprise.com .

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