LAURINBURG — While many take to Facebook to share articles from across the country or even from satire news sites, the local media in Scotland County shares a desire to bring the facts to Scotland County.
Dave Wells, the news director for WLNC radio and a familiar voice that brings the news multiple times throughout the day, and W. Curt Vincent, editor for The Laurinburg Exchange, say they both have advantages and disadvantages from their medium.
“I have only so many minutes to get the story out,” Wells said. “I’ve got five to eight minutes to get the major stories out … but the paper can give the details because that’s what the reader wants. I want all the details when I read it, but on the radio or even a TV broadcast you get the bare minimum.”
Vincent added the radio can do it more instantly and also can repeat it over the course of the day, while the paper is unable to do that since it only goes out once a day.
The two both added that, while they get many calls and tips per day, the important thing for them is checking their sources and figuring out the truth behind whatever is being said rather than taking rumor for face value.
“We’re all trained to check with the official sources,” Vincent said. “We have to rely on the experts — a lot of people say, ‘well they just aren’t going to tell you,’ but we can’t look at everything we get with a jaundiced eye when it’s coming from the people in charge, we have to trust them to a certain degree.”
Both agreed also that the community deserves to know the facts and that’s what each are going to provide to the community.
“When I took over for Sandy, there was several things I said, ‘OK, here are things I’m going to do,’ and I’ve stuck to those,” Wells said. “I would only report the facts, I would never report it with a slant, I would not editorialize things and I would tell the truth. No matter how it fell I was going to tell the truth.”
While at first COVID-19 was only one of the several top stories run by each outlet every day, now it’s become more and more relevant as it gets closer to the county and the effects have begun to be felt.
“It has progressed — when it first came out we were saying, ‘oh we’ve had these pandemics before,’ because we still compare it to H1N1,” Wells said. “But maybe that is where we learned our lesson, to take these precautions more seriously.”
But Vincent and Wells agreed that, while the virus may be taking a front seat, it isn’t the time for news in the community to be left behind.
“This is the kind of thing, after 35 years in the business that excites me,” Vincent said. “This is when we can really do some cutting-edge journalism. We’re not expected to put out what we’re fed on a regular basis, whether it be meetings or festivals or plate sales. This is when we’ve got to beat the bushes for stories that actually mean something for our readers.
“But we still have to keep up with other things happening here,” he added.”
In past years, the only crisis that has hit the area has been hurricanes, specifically Hurricane Florence and Hurricane Matthew, which devastated the area. Vincent said with hurricanes “you can see what it’s doing, you can see the destruction — but with the virus, you can’t see anything, but you know it’s out there.”
“I think with the hurricane you knew you were going to survive, but with this, you’re hoping you will,” Wells said. “You’re hoping you won’t get it, you’re hoping you won’t get complications from it, you’re hoping someone you know won’t get it.”
Reach Katelin Gandee at kgandee@laurinburgexch.wpenginepowered.com.
