Your Turn: A Local News Wishlist For 2024

Welcome to Community Conversations, a new monthly editorial series in which we welcome your insights into how we develop and produce the news.

Shasta County has an abundance of water, but the plumbing infrastructure to deliver that water where we need it, when we need it, is largely what makes it useful to us.

Similarly, we live with an abundance of information all around us. What we really need from local news media is not more information, but an infrastructure that fairly and accurately curates the flow of information we receive and delivers that information where we need it, when we need it.

That’s what we’re working towards here at Shasta Scout. And as I reflect on the year that’s ending and make plans for the year ahead, I need to hear from you. How did we curate and deliver the news well this year? How could we do it better? What community resources do you dream of finding here at Shasta Scout?

I hope that you’ll respond in the comments. But first, a few of my own thoughts.

What We’re Doing Well

• Powerful Public Meeting Reporting: We’re previewing important public meeting agendas in our Signals newsletter, live reporting from those meetings on Instagram, and sharing simple recaps within a few hours of the meeting on our site.

• Strong Columnist Content: Our recurring columnists Alissa Johnson, Sharon Brisolara, and Irene Salter are producing monthly opinion pieces that uplift, educate and inform in ways that enrich our broader community.

• Impactful Investigative Reporting: Our reporting has included investigations into education, elections, hiring, housing, water, labor, land use, law enforcement, public health, mental health services, local government policy, local religious movements, and constitutional rights.

• State Stories: We republished statewide stories with strong local relevance.

• Simple Explainers: We launched an explainer series to help the community understand how local projects and policies work and to provide foundational knowledge to help you understand more of our in-depth reporting.

• Fact Checks: Our new weekly fact-check series documents the truth about statements made in public meetings.

• Meet the Candidate series: We used your questions to interview political candidates and published their curated responses. The result was a more informed electorate — and more trust across the political spectrum.

On My Wishlist for 2024

• More of the news you need: As our staffing grows, there are so many more explainers to be written, public meetings to be covered, investigations to be followed, and fact checks to be completed. I can’t wait to cover more of the tips you share.

• Access to core community information in one place: On-site “dashboards” that serve as one-stop resource centers for you to access everything you need to know about water, fire, schools and more.

• New ways of sharing the news: Our in-depth investigations and public meeting reporting takes serious time and makes a serious impact. By finding ways to repackage and redistribute that kind of reporting, we can bring the news to more people in ways they can access, understand and find time to use. This year we’re hoping to share recaps of our stories on TikTok, through expanded use of YouTube for public meeting coverage, via an interview-style podcast, through on-air radio collaborations, and in schools.

• Your words on our site: a curated weekly letters-to-the-editor column that features your thoughts and ideas for our community.

• More behind the scenes looks at local journalism: a relaunch of the Open Notebooks series, a new Community Conversation series, and audio and video interviews with journalists are all part of our authentic and transparent approach to rebuilding trust in local news.

• Events: We’re working with local partners to plan our first interactive in-person learning events in 2024.

Your turn! What do you think we’re doing well? What should we change? What on my wishlist matches your dreams? And what ideas do you have to add? Share your thoughts in the comments, or, if you’d prefer more privacy, you can email me at editor@shastascout.org.