What we do at Southside Pride

BY ELAINE KLAASSEN

Meredith Webb, the third-grade teacher at Hiawatha Leadership Academy, at 38th Avenue South and 56th Street, called Southside Pride asking if someone could talk to her class about newspapers. In the absence of our owner/publisher/editor-in-chief, who was out of town, I was the logical candidate since I’m the managing editor, I’m pretty fascinated with the phenomenon of newspapers, I find Southside Pride an unusual and interesting paper, I’m passionate about education and I generally enjoy children. The date was set for Dec. 14.
Ms. Webb had asked me to talk about the word “bias” and discuss the difference between news, feature and opinion articles. Beforehand, I wrote her the following:
I have a lot to say about bias because Southside Pride has a very particular bias and deliberately so. I went to work at SSP in 1996. One of the reasons the job interested me was that the owner/publisher had written a front-page editorial a few years earlier describing the particular bias of Southside Pride. He said that all newspapers have biases but just don’t acknowledge them. Southside Pride was open about them.
I would say the basic biases of SSP are a belief that the political process can make the world a better place; a trust in grassroots action; a belief in fairness, inclusiveness, and that everyone should have a place at the table; a belief that war destroys the environment and basically destroys the future; a belief that “we all do better when we all do better” (in health, education, economics, etc.).
Before I worked at Southside Pride I always read it when it was delivered to my house. I thought mainly it promoted good health. It seemed like it was talking about a healthy community where people worked together to make a good quality of life for everyone, regardless of race, culture, sexual orientation, economic status. It talked about preventive health care, both personal and collective, and there were lots of discussions about money and wealth and how it should be used, personally and collectively.
When I got to the classroom, the bright-eyed 8- and 9-year-olds were sitting on the floor, most of them wearing gray hoodies with the academy’s logo on them.
This was the gist of what I had prepared:
All articles express an opinion; they have an angle. For example, when you see an article about another part of the world, we are expressing the opinion that international news is connected to us right here. Just the fact that something is included in a publication expresses a bias.
Feature articles express opinions, too. The food writer, Carla Waldemar, always tells about wonderful restaurants and usually has a positive bias. I guess if she doesn’t like the food she doesn’t write about it, although once in a while she does. But why do that? In general if we can possibly do it honestly, we want to promote our local businesses. The other feature is the bird column. John Karrigan is a charming, engaging writer who describes the activity of birds in our beloved Powderhorn Park. His only bias is that he loves nature and especially birds.
When writing a news story, try to go to the scene and talk to as many people as possible, bystanders and officials. Remember that each person sees and remembers different things. Each person has their own bias. It’s often difficult to find out what is going on. It’s good to take a camera and to write things down. Be accurate about the who, what, when and where. The why you often can’t find out at the scene and you have to do follow-up. Anyway, Southside Pride is a monthly newspaper and we don’t have staff reporters who run out to cover stories, so we don’t often do this type of thing.
When writing a feature story get your material from a good interview and from research. Your story should be educational. Read a lot (from a wide variety of sources) and make a list of things you want to find out from the people you interview. Be open to letting your questions and  focus change if another story presents itself.
Your story should be interesting.  I can’t really pin down what makes something interesting. In general, though, it’s something that’s not usual. For example, if only one family in a whole neighborhood raises goats and chickens, that would be a more interesting story than if everyone in the neighborhood raised goats and chickens. If everyone did, then you’d have to find something unusual about one of them, like if they sold eggs and cheese and ran into problems with licensing, or if one family’s animals were cared for by a disabled child.
The first sentence is a big deal. I personally can’t write an article until I write the first sentence. But many writers write the whole article and then write the first sentence. They “punch up the lead” to grab the reader’s attention.
Simplicity is really important in newspapers. Try to make sentences that the reader doesn’t have to read twice to see what they mean. Don’t combine too much information in one sentence.
Editors keep their “ears to the ground.” We get our stories from people who call in with ideas as well as from our network of people who are always looking and listening. Clearly, Southside Pride tries to cover stories that many other publications don’t.
The students were lovely and asked some great questions once they got past their concern about staples: “Why isn’t this paper stapled together? It keeps coming apart!!” That was pretty funny.
They seemed especially interested in production itself. Our production process goes like this: On Monday and Tuesday Ashley Pederson, our graphic designer, creates ads; David Goldstein, our sales director,  and I  sell ads; and I correct all the “copy,” that is, articles and calendar items. Ed Felien, our publisher/editor decides which articles go in the paper and by Wednesday gives us a lineup, that is, a list of all the articles and what pages they go on.  By Wednesday, David and I give the list of ads that are scheduled to be published to Ashley. On Thursday, she lays out the paper, that is, she places ads and articles on each page. By then the religion calendar, which I always put together, and the community calendar, which she puts together, are done. On Friday we go over everything to make sure there are no errors (ha ha) and then send it to the printer by 1 p.m. On Monday the newspapers are delivered to the neighborhood by Sara Nelson and her sister Cadence’s team, and our accountant, Bridgit Jordan, comes in to send out bills to people who buy ads in the newspaper.
One child asked what hours we worked at the newspaper and was surprised to learn we worked until our tasks were done, no more, no less. Another asked if the newspaper office was my home, if I lived there (not such a strange question considering that in the past there were various staff members who tried to move in). “How do you decide which facts to put in a story?” “How long does it take to write a story?” “How do you decide what to write about?” “How can anybody write this many words?” “Do you ever get false tips for stories?” “What time do you go to bed at night?” “What happens when you make a misteak?”
I felt like the conversation was just taking off around the time my visit was scheduled to end.
Someone asked if we had a kids section. No, we don’t. But I’m hoping we will and that we can collaborate with the third graders at Hiawatha Leadership Academy.
Our February edition will make it 25 years of delivering Pride to the Southside.