Writing the news: This job is personal

In a few weeks, the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman will mark its 65th year recording the history of this place and its people. From front to back, we’re all local, or “hyper local” as big media markets call it now.

The Frontiersman is what we have always been — a community newspaper that covers the Mat-Su Borough and the people and places within it.

Three-times a week, the Frontiersman publishes a printed version of the newspaper and these days our website is updated nearly every day.

But we’re a small staff in the newsroom, just five people, with a huge coverage area. We feel personally the weight of the stories we write about our neighbors — often people we know — who die tragically in small plane accidents, rollover car accidents, who drowned or who die in head-on collisions.

It’s difficult work to hold a child in your arms whose father was just murdered. Now try going back to your desk and writing a story about it while knowing what you write about his murder will be how that child in your arms comes to know the story of her father’s death.

This job is very personal. It makes us cry. Sometimes, it makes us angry. Often, it makes us want to help.

Our families say we see everything as a news story, and that is probably fair. The driver weaving in and out of traffic, following too closely in the winter or driving with bright lights into oncoming traffic — all potential news stories with tragic endings our families know we’d prefer never to write.

Our loved ones also recognize that random calls or texts that say “I love you” likely mean we are writing about a person on our end who won’t be coming home to their families, ever. We’d prefer to write only happy stories with happy endings — and we print our fair share of those, as well — but that’s not a reporter’s only job. We write the news, and sometimes the new is tragic.

It is writing the news that has made us safety freaks. We are fans of seat belts. We love drivers who leave a half-mile of space between vehicles. We adore adults who insist their family members wear helmets on bicycles, snowmachines, four-wheelers and while river rafting. We can’t say enough good things about life preservers.

The loss is especially tough when someone dies a horrible death that might have been prevented with something basic like a life vest or seat belt. Please know that when you see us working at a fatal accident scene, we are there only because it is our job to report the news. Know that for us, there is no joy in documenting death.

To all our pleas for safety printed here, we add another. While we’ve asked readers before to please drive and play safely, perhaps it is useful somehow to know what motivates our safety cheerleading.