From the editor: On covering WNC

Our front page declares the Citizen-Times to be the “Voice of the Mountains.” But are we, really?

This question has weighed heavily on my mind for months.

Over the summer, I looked at our city and county coverage. It had become a hamster wheel of meetings. And while it’s important for us to attend meetings, communities don’t get covered as well when your reporter is sitting in meetings.

So I split the beat to allow the city and county reporters to tell more stories in Asheville and beyond. I think that has helped: We’ve had more comprehensive coverage, digging into the geographic impact of the Asheville bonds and development in the Weaverville and Woodfin areas.

We asserted that “voice.”

But in October, we lost six journalists to layoffs. As a media company that answers to stockholders, we could no longer afford to pay as many journalists a living wage. In reducing our staff, we lost decades’ worth of knowledge, writers and editors who know these mountains and people, and had been telling their stories for years.

After commenting in a story on the layoffs that we would remain the “Voice of the Mountains,” I received emails that begged to differ.

One reader asked, “What world r u living in?”

Another offered, “These words ring hollow and offer little solace when so many of the real voices have now been silenced.”

I learned an area mayor and longtime subscriber declared he would cancel his subscription because we could no longer cover his part of WNC very well. Maybe we hadn’t in a while.

Those words stung.

They ring in my ears when I look over the paper each day and survey what we’re covering. I promised myself that we would do better to serve all of WNC, even with a smaller staff.

And then, Donald J. Trump won the election.

It is no surprise that he lost Buncombe County and little surprise he won all of the surrounding counties. In the newsroom on election night, someone commented that on the overwhelmingly red map of WNC, Buncombe looked like a pond. No, another staffer said, it looks like a puddle.

Why did Trump win those counties? We could say that the residents are more conservative, and then move on. We could dig into some data and find out exactly who those voters are, and then move on.

But that doesn’t tell their stories. It doesn’t give our readers a chance to empathize with voters who were frustrated by the economy or hated Hillary Clinton or simply were ready for a change.

It doesn’t give readers a chance to learn about Clinton supporters who bucked the trend in a sea of red.

In planning for Election Day, we dispatched journalists to city and suburban precincts as well as Buncombe’s corners, to precincts in rural areas we don’t often visit. In the hours after Trump’s win, it sunk in that we shouldn’t have corners of Buncombe that we don’t visit. We shouldn’t have voters whom we don’t know well.

I’m not saying we didn’t cover the campaign season effectively. But we didn’t cover it as deeply as we could have, relating more of the greater region’s hopes and frustrations.

Lesson learned. We will do better.

As many of you have pointed out, it will be much harder to cover WNC with a smaller staff. It’s a challenge I’ll accept, but we will need your help.

Guide us to your stories. Send us your photos. Keep in touch.

And on my end, I’m reassigning a reporter to cover the region, to tell its stories. Tonya Maxwell will shift from a purely investigative role to a regional reporter position. You may see her reporting from our Asheville offices or out in Jackson County, in Mills River or in Marshall.

I believe we are the “Voice of the Mountains,” and I’m going to do all I can to make sure we live up to that.

Katie Wadington is the news director of the Citizen-Times. Contact her at kwadington@citizen-times.com.