The readers have the reins

Whenever a young journalist heads into a job interview there is almost always a trick question on the way. Intimidated by an editor or publisher, the job candidate squirms a bit as questions concerning ethics or hypothetical situations are answered by the book. Finally, the interviewer asks this: "Who do you work for?"

The candidate thinks to himself, "You, you dolt," but answers with some bumbling response about the company and the myriad editors and management. The interviewer just keeps staring, waiting for the right answer so the candidate goes on about how they work for the paper and it's reputation, et cetera.

Finally, after copious amounts of sweat have poured off the candidate's forehead the editor fixes them with a hard look and says, "No. You work for the readers."

Ahhh, of course. We work for you, dear reader. There are few faster ways for a journalist to lose their job than by readers calling for their dismissal and few better ways to keep it than to have the support of their readership.

The fact that we are, in fact, working for you, is why we look for letters to the editor and listen for phone calls to show us our shortcomings and our strengths.

With that in mind, the Bigfork Eagle heads into 2008 with high expectations for the types and quality of coverage that we present. We hope that changes we make this year bring you a more readable, informative and useful publication. One that, we hope, you'll find an important part of your week.

In a small community like this there seem to be a nearly equal number of people who want to see hard-hitting, in-depth journalism and those who couldn't care less what we write, so long as we have plenty of cute kid photos in the paper. That is the fundamental coexistence of community journalism and we will try to strike the right balance.

We cannot, however, do it without you. Make no mistake, we try hard here to get all the stories and get them all right. But we don't. We're sometimes wrong, misguided, mistaken, even misled and without a phone call — even an angry one — we'll keep going right along our merry way. We're bound to miss things. It's not a slight to your organization or cause, it's a reality of having a very small staff and a desire to eat dinner at home some nights.

So heading into 2008 keep in mind that this isn't our paper; it's yours. You pay for it. And while you can't direct coverage or demand a change, you can sure lobby for one. If you want to make the Eagle better then we want to hear from you.

We're all ears.

— Alex Strickland