Stranger Than Fiction

So, I had a chance to talk with Ron Rollins of The Dayton Daily News last week. He's an interesting guy. He has that Ye Olde Journaliste feel to him. Someone who's seen a lot. We talked at length about a particular frustration journalists have.

"It's not what you know, it's what you can prove..."

Yeah. It's like Alonzo Harris from Training Day said. As journalists, we have access to a whole boatload of extraneous information when we cover stories. Well, I mean, you guys could be savvy to this information, too, if you chose to.

But the thing is, we can't print all of it. We have to abide by certain rules or we'll get sued. You see, that's the frustrating part.

Rollins mentioned a story about a crime being investigated by a police officer. This police officer ended up dead--taking with him a lot of information as well. Now, we can all really make judgments based off of facts and data, but we can't just print it.

And it's tough.

So, for all those stories that you look at and read and say "Wow. This is a complete load of bull," we might share the same feelings. But that's what Amanda and my desk does. We report facts and facts only based on data and what people say. Anything else is just editorialized.

For instance, let's imagine a person says "I swear to everything holy and my mother's life that I would kill anyone that does ______." And, let's say someone does _______ and ends up dead at the house of this person. Unless this person says "I killed him," or a jury finds this person guilty, we can't say that he did. Hell, even if the person says he killed someone, all we can really do is write I killed this person, SoAndSo said.

So don't complain! We're journalists, but we do have opinions--which is why this blog is here.

I'm not sure if you all have a beef with news, but it's our job to report facts and only the facts and you make the judgments. But if you do have information you feel we should know about, don't hesitate to tell us. We're here to help, after all.

-Gin