News in my world means negotiating an endless stream of questions. What’s the story, who is affected, what does the community need or want to know? How important, how interesting? What are our resources for coverage, including time, and how much should we throw into this tale vs. that one?

Reporters make decisions about these on their beats, and editors with their sections. I have my share, too, assigning a bunch of stories, writing some myself.

Most of that whitewater of possibility goes uncovered, by us and everyone else. The nature of news is such that no media organization can do more than dip from the stream. Try to choose well.

---

---

Some stories are easier calls than others. The civil rights investigation concerning the schools. The progress of the Olympics bid. The various efforts to build scores of houses and other large developments. Traffic. New chairlifts.

My decision not to cover our employer’s lawsuit over the encroachment of a rock wall a few inches across residential property lines wasn’t difficult, either. The public impact here is all of zero.

---

---

Yes, I know the context. I expect we all do. The closest neighbors, Eric and Susan Hermann, owners of a big modern home overlooking Old Town, are leading the appeal of the Park City Planning Commission’s narrow approval of Matthew and Tatiana Prince’s bid to replace two big houses at 220 King Road with one big modern home suggestive of Silver King Mine structures.

A three-member panel will hold a hearing April 30 and decide whether the Planning Commission applied the right standards. Litigation is sure to follow.

Meantime, Matthew Prince has sued the Hermanns over their large dogs crossing his property unleashed to a city trail where dogs are supposed to be … leashed. That one has some news value, given the eternal off-leash dog conflicts with people, wildlife and other dogs in this community, and specific encounters cited with Sasha and Mocha on the Princes’ property.  

But at root this is a private feud between neighbors with the means to mess with each other, a slightly more civilized Hatfields and McCoys, the aggrieved parties thankfully firing legal briefs instead of bullets.

Really, though, how much of it requires a community’s rapt attention?   

In a sense, I’m liberated by suspicion of whatever we do in coverage of our owners’ affairs.

Cover them straight up and we’re indicted for, say, not exaggerating the size of a home that would be both smaller and larger than what’s being reported out in the world, with a profile that would be a little lower than the houses there now.

Decline to cover a lawsuit over a few inches of rock wall and no doubt we’re failing to recognize oh-so-crucial news developments, presumably because we’ve been suppressed.

Tellingly, at least to me, I’m not questioned on what is true or accurate in coverage of our owners, but whether we’ve been mean enough to them, basically. That’s kind of an indictment of its own, though not of us.

Any news decision about them can only fail in a court of public opinion among those concerned with such things. Maybe knowing you are disbelieved regardless somehow makes it simpler to just focus on doing the right thing. Think Serenity Prayer.

A few examples of what I mean by the right thing:

• The Princes see coverage and opinion about stories concerning them when you do, no sooner. They aren’t consulting me ahead of time about their lawsuits or turns in the government gantlet to get their home approved. I’m not consulting them about coverage of them.
• We run all the letters to the editor and other commentary we receive about their efforts, subject to fact checking, of course. I just came from helping a daily whose previous editors didn’t vet factual assertions and were sued over a letter to the editor, so yeah, your facts need to be correct. And rumor mongers, I’m calling you out. Here’s a claim you can test easily enough.
• Bear witness to the actual story of the house, however it goes. We’re not going to be guided by fear or favor.

Park City is a great place with a paper on its way to great, no question in my mind. Not that it was a slouch before. I’ve been an admirer over the years from afar — Vail, Lake Tahoe, Aspen, so I’d know from the standpoint of a peer.

I don’t think it’s much of a secret The Park Record hit a tough patch like nearly all the local papers across the country. The times have not been kind to the business of local news media anywhere.

But our print circulation is up 30% or so since we went free around Christmas. I just saw metrics showing about the same readership growth online, which I attribute most to a full focus on local stories in the, um, local paper and more stories from a staff on a growth curve that goes against the trend right now.

I hope I’m a positive force, of course, but this has little to do with me and everything to do with the local ownership here now. You don’t have to share their dreams for a new home in Old Town or like their overly publicized spat with a neighbor to appreciate the bigger picture.

At least I do. I still own a home in a community where new owners based in Canada eviscerated my now-former paper. They retained me as editor and lost me at the same time. Some lines can’t be crossed.

Don Rogers is the editor of The Park Record. He can be reached at drogers@parkrecord.com or (970) 376-0745.