The good, the bad and the ugly

Are you one of those people who gravitates to the scandalous headlines and crime reports? Are doom and gloom stories what you live for? Or are you more interested in uplifting community stories? Perhaps you have children in school and that’s your focus or you’re a sports fanatic who can’t wait to read about which team is winning.

From time to time we receive complaints from readers saying we’re covering too many crime stories and they’d rather not know about the bad things in the community. “Just the good news!” But on a week we happen to have a softer community front page story we’re guaranteed to receive a call asking how we can ignore the police corruption at a particular station or the City’s billing incompetence in favour of a feel-good article.

There’s no pleasing everyone but we do our best to strike a balance between crime stories – which while often rather depressing include vital information empowering you to stay safe -, municipal complaints that are prone to sounding frustratingly familiar, community events, and individual achievements. But at the end of the day we can only report on what we know about.

Sadly readers generally tend to contact us to report “bad” news rather than good. So if you think there’s something we’re missing and should look into please let us know. Think about who goes above and beyond in your neighbourhood and perhaps doesn’t receive the recognition they deserve. It doesn’t necessarily have to be something huge. We all have a story to tell, wisdom to share and experiences others would love to laugh with us about.

We want to know what stories you’d like to read in your weekly paper.

Drop us an email at northside@caxton.co.za or give us a call 011-794-6869. We’d love to hear your story.