Changing beats?

With the newsroom losing two reporters in the last month or so, I'm firmly set in “wait and see” mode when it comes to covering courts. I've taken over the Bennington town beat, and until new people get hired I'm doing what I can to cover what I can.

I'm not complaining. For me, the challenging part of the job has always been finding things to write about, so having many beats to cover isn't so bad. What I'm waiting to see is whether or not I can cover both the town and the court and do both justice.

I was told that the town and court beats were once covered by the same person. It makes sense, as stories often overlap. Many times the former Bennington reporter, Neal Goswami, would be following a Bennington story until it went to court where I would pick it up. Most times it's best to have one reporter on a story, but it worked well enough.

The trouble with court is “court time.” One might think a place with a daily schedule of events would be predictable and easy to cover. Just drop in when something interesting is scheduled to happen, talk to who's scheduled to be there, and leave.

Nope.

You have to respect the court clerks and sheriff's deputies who make the place run as well as it does. They're short-staffed, and they manage a lot of people who, because of the situations being dealt with, are low on patience. I've always found the court staff to be as helpful as they can be, but I'm not the highest thing on their list of priorities.

And that means getting the information I need from court often takes a lot of time. Even if I'm covering a hearing where I have the background information and don't need paperwork, that hearing scheduled for 2 p.m. might not happen until 3 p.m., or even 4 p.m. A few times I've waited a few hours for a court hearing only to have it canceled. Stories can fall through on any beat, but most times you know that fairly early and can adjust.

I enjoy covering courts and hope to continue to do it, but if I have to pick between beats, I may lean on the side of change.

Which means I'll have to come up with another blog...I started this court blog with the notion of explaining court things that I couldn't fit into articles. Years ago I tried to get a gardening blog going, but didn't get much support for it (I wonder why?). For me, the trick for reporters and blogging is keeping some sort of distance between you and what you cover. A court blog was fine, because there's a lot that goes into how courts are covered that doesn't have a lot to do directly with the articles themselves.

I cover fish and wildlife, too, but I haven't been hunting in years. There's blog fodder for you, maybe even a series. Who said it was hard finding stuff to write about?