Each week it is possible to guage just how good the content quality of the Ashfield Chad for the week will be as early as Friday.
A busy Friday and a steady stream of news over the weekend means we are likely to have a full paper, packed with quality news and plenty of stories to entertain and inform our readers….but a quiet Friday followed by a dead weekend can certainly leave us struggling.
And this week was just one of those week. Come Friday the phones were quiet, the email flow of news virtually non existant and this week’s edition was still sparse to say the least.
Fear not, we will be saved by what happens over the weekend and on Monday ….or so I thought. Monday again remained quiet and unless we took decisive action then the Ashfield Chad would be a pityful publication this week.
So what do we as journalists in the Ashfield newsroom do to rectify the sorry situation in such circumstances? Well we work super hard of course to find stories to fill the paper with.
When we are devoid of dramatic court, inquests and calls stories (police, fire and ambulance activity) the best place to go is to the grass roots and community stories. The best place to get that is of course councillors who are out there on a daily basis with their fingers on the pulse of all things Ashfield.
And after enough phone calls to leave my finger-tips a tad on the sore side we came up trumps, with a steady flow of stories about new play areas, flower gardens and community carnivals. Ok, not the most interesting perhaps, but still crucial to people of the district.
So hopefully come Wedensday our efforts will help make this week’s Ashfield Chad once again another must-read for everyone connected with the district.
