Small town newspapering is where the journalistic rubber really hits the road because of the relative intimacy of the setting.
In addition to the usual stories about local government doings, small town newspapers like The Journal cover a range of stories from 4-H to Little League to church news because these events are

an important part of the community fabric. Nearly all of these stories and photos are positive and we enjoy bringing them to our readers.
And yes, we also devote a lot of ink to our local schools, because they are an important part of the community. Although it gets lost in the shuffle when controversy flares, The Journal’s coverage of the King George school system is also overwhelmingly positive, although you would never know it if you listened to some folks.
Since we keep tabs on such things, we at The Journal know that the vast majority of the school stories we run focus on scholastic sports, club news, honor rolls, and other positive stories. Even though we are not paid to run school bus routes for example (which take up several pages), we do so because we know parents want to see them.
Of the 299 King George school-related stories we published last year, 70 percent had nothing to do with the School Board or the school administration. In addition to stories, we also liberally publish photos of school activities, and since 2007 on average there has been a school-related photo on the front page of every King George edition of The Journal. Over the past four-plus years, we have substantially increased our total reporting on King George schools.
In 2007 we published 207 school related stories and 239 photos, with the count rising to 299 and 277, respectively, last year. This year we are on a pace to publish nearly 500 school related stories and 300 photos.
And yes, we publish stories on the School Board and the administration, and yes, when controversy rears its ugly head, we always hear complaints that The Journal never has anything good to say about the schools. Some people don’t let a few facts get in the way of a good complaint. They can’t be bothered with the fact that 70 percent of our coverage focuses on all that is good about the schools — you know, those pesky honor rolls, sports stories, club news, and especially those student of the month photos.
Yes, we have been critical of the school administration and the King George School Board, though by our tally, not as often as some of our readers think.
By our count, we had eight negative stories about the School Board in 2008, none in 2007 and 2009 and one in 2010. For the school administration we had 11 negative stories in 2008, three in 2009 and nine in 2010. So far for 2011 the number has been 13. That’s a lot of negative stories for just the first three months of 2011, but there has been a lot to write about.
 A high school student had his jaw broken in three places. A King George Elementary School student had an actual knife held to his neck. Not a plastic knife or a toy knife — a real knife. The Virginia Department of Education has found systemic problems in the special education program in King George, which took months for anyone on the school board or administration to acknowledge in a public meeting.
And this is just a partial list.
Those are all negative things that we did not fabricate or seek out. These stories came in the front door because we are the community newspaper and people in the community know us and people who work for The Journal. We reported those stories because we think those stories are important, and based on comments we are getting, so do readers. One commentator, with a child at King George Elementary School, asked “Why haven’t we been informed of this? Why do I have to read this on the front page of the Journal?” referring to the knife story.
Yes, we have been critical of the school administration and the School Board. We think the School Board should follow state law and provide guidance and oversight to the school administration. The School Board has ignored state law in several instances — the most recent being choosing to hire a new superintendent to start in January 2012. After we pointed out several times in articles that state law provides that superintendent contracts end on June 30, the School Board has decided to wait.
The School Board collectively acts as if they have blinders on. They never, ever, second guess or critically query Candace Brown in meetings.
For instance, we have been reporting since January that the VDOE has found that the school division is out of compliance with federal regulations on special education services. But the matter has never been raised at a school board meeting until last Monday — months later — when Rick Randall finally mentioned it.
For years we have been used to School Board members and top administration telling parents that The Journal doesn’t print the truth. From the response we have been getting recently, it is clear that those parents now realize that they have been misled about their community newspaper.
Unfortunately it has taken some serious incidents and confirming coverage by The Free Lance-Star and TV channel 9 in Washington, D.C., to bear this out, but at least now parents know better than to blindly trust the nonsense fed them by school officials.
So to our continuing critics, we say pardon us if we keep pointing out in articles in The Journal those inconvenient facts about state laws and regulations. While some may see that as editorializing, we see it as our obligation to point out that the School Board and administration are not doing their jobs.
At the same time, we will, as always, continue to print the other 70 percent of our coverage of the school system by sharing all of the positive things happening there as well.