When editing a local news page, there is a trap that as an editor, you should avoid at all costs. Small towns definitely suffer from a lack of new news sometimes. That said, when a big story happens, they can become inundated with new content very quickly. Unfortunately, 99.9% of that new content is going to be about that one big story, right? This is where the trap lies.

If all this new content is now added to the news page in a flurry of excitement, you soon end up with a news page devoted to that one big event instead of your town as a whole.

When that happens and continues for any length of time, you lose readers. Really! You lose readers!

You know how sometimes you hear a song that you just LOVE and you play it and play it and play it, until you get so tired of it that you hope you never hear it again? That’s what happens to your readers. If every time they visit your news page, all they see are multiple headlines about a particularly bad car wreck or a church scandal that made national headlines, they start to get bored and move on. It is always important to cover the big news, but try to never lose sight of the rest of what goes on in your town.

Even in the midst of real tragedy, life goes on in small ways all around you. Make sure those other stories make the news. Don’t forget the local sheriff’s race or the Founder’s Day parade or that giant flour truck that overturned, mixed with rainwater and made pancakes that grilled right there on the asphalt. That’s all good stuff! Make sure it makes headlines too!