I stepped right in it when I arrived in Poplar Bluff as a new reporter for the Daily American Republic.
I couldn’t help notice the strikingly-handsome neoclassical building at Poplar and Main streets downtown right next door to the newspaper, and I was curious why it was empty.
Little did I know that my questions would cut right at the center of a struggle inside the city’s borders to revive the fading downtown: How to save a once-thriving cultural center – captured on quaint 20th Century postcards I found on Ebay – in a city struggling to keep its businesses and population?
I knew little about Poplar Bluff before I arrived. I couldn’t figure out why the city’s name resonated with me. Then my colleague Barbara Ann Horton mentioned “Designing Women.” That’s it! I was a fan of those Southern divas Suzanne and Julia Sugarbaker, the sassy Charlene who hailed from Poplar Bluff, and the sweet Mary Jo, who in my youth some even thought I looked like.
I had an interest in interior decorating. It was the one field that I seriously weighed pursuing before I concentrated on journalism. I still like looking at interior design magazines and “picking” at flea markets and thrift shops for items and furnishings to use in my own and others’ homes.
It’s journalism that I’ve concentrated on because I felt the field would afford me the opportunity to learn a little bit about a lot. If I just asked the right questions. And asking the right question I’ve learned means asking a lot of them – some not always welcome. It’s in the asking questions, though, that you learn, and I have been taught by teachers and journalistic mentors that there is no such thing as a wrong question. But there is an art to asking them with finesse. I confess that is an art I’m still learning.
Here’s what I can also tell you. I think it’s a privilege to tell people’s stories. I think it’s my duty to get the story right. I strive hard to get as close to the most complicated truth possible. That’s the truth that reflects all angles of a story. I call it ‘’the space between” narratives.
Here’s my pledge to you. I promise that I will always endeavor to see all sides of a story, to listen to your perspective, and to challenge you with tough questions. The goal is serving you and Poplar Bluff with honesty and communication. That’s a journalist’s duty, and you should expect no less than that for you and your community.
Elizabeth Coady is a staff writer at the Daily American Republic. She can be reached at ecoady.dar@gmail.com.