by Curt Kovener 
We in the media (and usually when we are talked about there is a qualifying adjective expletive or two in front of media) get frequently blasted that we never carry any good news.
That isn’t true because we do publish the church happenings, the organization news, honor rolls, the achievement of school and students, when local folks receive honors.
I suggest that the reason we don’t get credit for publishing the good news is nobody cares about it.
Oh, we say we do, but in reality we like to know the grit, the dark side, the scandalous events of others. Get them privately off to the side, even my Baptist friends acknowledge they like reading about the travails of others…but, of course, only so they can be placed on a prayer list.
Would you really subscribe to a paper that just printed good news? What if week after week, we told you “All the school buses arrived safely today”, or “No one’s house burned down last week”, or “Police report no crime in Crothersville over the weekend”.
If we did that, before long you would find the Crothersville Times along side the names of the Crothersville Herald, Crothersville Index as former local publications.
Having run this newspaper for durn near 30 years, (it just seems like all my life) I can make some anecdotal observations. Even though we have 14 churches in the township, a front page story about sex, drugs or murder sells. And sells big time.
And contrary to some folks who read news they don’t like and claim they don’t believe it, we don’t make up stuff on the front page. We report when police arrest, fire departments extinguish, and state agencies admonish.
We do confess that at times, literary license is invoked in this column space. But not this time and never on the front page.
We print good news because it is a part of coummunity’s chronicle even though you may not remember it. We print bad news because it too is a part of the community fabric. And bad news does sell newspapers and that is why we are in business. And since bad news sells, you must be wanting to read it.
So please keep buying the newspaper and we’ll just keep this little secret between us.
