Donna Sybert

The Butler Eagle is going on location this fall — stepping into area classrooms, but not in our expected role of reporting on student achievements or innovative teaching initiatives. We want to share our story.

Reporters are good at telling other people’s stories. We are often behind the scenes as nonprofits meet the needs of our most vulnerable citizens. We document government processes and their impacts and shine the light on area businesses and workers affected by economic changes.

Our neighbors trust some of the most powerful moments of their lives with us — letting our writers weave their voice into articles that becomes part of Butler County’s history and our legacy.

With On Location: Journalism & You, we want to explain how those stories make the front page or a top spot on our website. We outline the news gathering process, explain how we verify the sources of our information and then let students experience how decisions are made on story selection and ranking their importance and interest to the community.

This collaboration between area school districts and the Butler Eagle is the result of a brainstorming session led by Brian White, Butler Area School District superintendent, and Eagle publisher Tammy Schuey. The overarching goal is to create more responsible news consumers as students shift through a bombardment of material from all forms of media. We want to give them the tools to determine what is fact and what is fiction.

We also want to stress to young readers the importance of community journalism in connecting people, events and institutions; the value of professional journalists who serve as the citizens’ eyes and ears; and need of a reliable news organization during times of prosperity as well as during a tragedy or a pandemic.

In September, I spent a day talking to social studies students at Butler Intermediate High School and a day with students at Karns City Area Jr./Sr. High School. This week I will visit Knoch School District. The lesson, one of three planned, reveals how breaking news happens quickly but gathering verifiable facts — not speculation or rumor — takes time and persistence.

When I made up my mind to become a journalist as a sixth-grade student at Mars Middle School, the profession was well respected. Icons like Walter Cronkite and Barbara Walters were trusted. Journalists were celebrated for their work uncovering the Watergate conspiracy or reporting on the Vietnam War and its political implications.

The profession was even celebrated in movies and comic books. When he wasn’t saving the world, Superman spent time reporting for the Daily Planet. Spider-Man worked as a freelance photographer for the Daily Bugle when he wasn’t fighting evil foes.

Today our industry is under fire, caught up in a haze created by open platforms where the material presented is not held to any ethical standard and bias organizations who color their news with opinion.

We hope by telling our story and explaining our processes that we can earn the trust and respect of another generation and strengthen the bonds we have with our current readers. We want to be the go-to news source when engaged citizens need the facts to make important decisions that will affect our way of life.

Your community newspaper — serving Butler County for more than 150 years — is still staffed by passionate journalists who believe it is important to gather the news, verify the facts, respect our community and work to tell both sides of story.

As we celebrate national newspaper week from Oct. 5 to 11, please support community journalism. If you are a subscriber, enjoy the articles, photos, podcasts and graphics created by our staff. If you have not yet subscribed and value community news, please consider joining us.

Donna Sybert is managing editor of the Butler Eagle, where she has worked as a community journalist since 1982.

To subscribe, visit butlereagle.com or call 724-282-8000, Ext. 300.