Column: Thanks for Listening

We need to be better. Our media organizations need to be covering the events that are important to our lives. Walter Cronkite once said, “Our job is only to hold up the mirror — to tell and show the public what has happened.”

I have been quite disappointed in the fact that our top media organizations have gone and went after the low-hanging fruit.

A quick example is the tripping-over-each-other coverage of Britain’s Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s visit to America while right smack in the middle of America is Minot, N.D., which has literally thousands of homes under water. We have hard-working Americans that by the thousands are homeless and what do we decide to hold the mirror up to? You got it: a couple that was just recently married (I wonder if you heard) in England and has already had enough media attention.

Same thing happened with the Caylee and Casey Anthony court case. All of the world’s top media spent millions covering this case and forgot that our own government has not done anything about the Wall Street disaster and debt-ceiling crisis that is hurting our economy right now.

We need to start holding people’s feet to the fire and not letting our own “look, a squirrel!” mentality of how we consume media take us down a reality TV show path that ends with us swirling around with the “Jersey Shore” buffoons on the top of the New York Times best-seller list.

We are better than this.

Rant over. Thanks for listening.

What’s going on?

I hope you have noticed that over the last few months, our team at the Tribune has been reaching out to citizen journalist for stories about what is happening in their lives. So much happens in our great communities that we just cannot get to that we have been reaching out to people through Facebook, Twitter and other social media to “share their story.”

A good example is on Sunday was when Maddi Herrera shared her story on Page 2 with us about a visit to a Taylor Swift concert she and her friends made.

Please keep looking for these citizen journalist stories as we move forward to bring you all the news of our amazing area.

It may be as easy as a picture and a small, little write-up underneath or as large as a feature of where someone went in the world. Feel free to Facebook friend me or email me an idea you have for being a citizen journalist.

Running for a cause

Congratulations to everyone who competed in the recent April Sorensen Half Marathon. This race has become one of the best area events, and I really want to thank the organizers of it. Kudos to you all.

Walking for a cause

Please remember that Freeborn County Relay for Life is coming soon and that the different area fundraisers are heating up. All of the money goes to a great cause — the American Cancer Society — as we all want cancer to end.

Tribune Publisher Scott Schmeltzer’s column appears every Thursday.