Something special in the ‘Land of Dodge’
In case you haven’t noticed, one of the hallmark staples of this newspaper is a weekly feature called “Land of Dodge Stories.”
We began running this feature last fall. Each week we dedicate an entire page or more to a single feature story with photos.
Over the past nine months, we’ve shared amazing stories of a farmer who keeps ripping up the fields after 86 years of life, a miracle strawberry farm involving a family, a rural church firing up wood-fired pizza for thousands, a woman representing Miss Minnesota Super National, a coach committed to running in marathons, a little community newspaper finding new digs on Main Street and the list goes on.
The stories may be happy, sad, inspirational, joyful, quirky, unreal, touching, funny and even sometimes tearjerkers.
I’ll admit this is probably my most favorite section in the newspaper to read. Plus, as an added bonus for me, I frequently get to go do the interview and write the story. Life really doesn’t get any better than this!
I love feature writing. Crafting stories about people was really the way I got started in this business many years ago. People in my hometown always loved when I came around to tell their stories. It goes without saying that people love to read stories about their friends and neighbors.
Our criterion for Land of Dodge is simply to showcase a human-interest story of someone or a group doing something special or unique. It’s kind of a profile featuring someone who may be doing something unusual, extraordinary or off the beaten path from every day life.
In addition to great writing, we also focus on superb photography and excellent graphic design work to make the page attractive and eye catching, We want this feature to be a designation for readers to go every week. It’s our job to share the stories in a way that will be appealing.
It’s our way to be creative storytellers away from the rigidness of normal journalistic writing for news that deals with the basic who, what, where, when and why. News stories often don’t allow much creativity as journalists are driven to provide the facts and nothing more. Land of Dodge takes us out of the “journalistic box” and provides our readers with something special.
Many of us often get sucked into a vacuum of negativity with life in general. The Land of Dodge is a refreshing look at positive things going on in our communities. It deals with people who function in life with the glass being half full, and not half empty.
I had a reader compliment us last week by saying he simply “feels good” after reading our newspaper. To me, there is no greater compliment a newspaper can earn than that. And I like to believe what makes readers feel good is the feature stories we are becoming known to produce.
Unfortunately, there are going to be times when we have to deliver tragic or controversial stories. It’s just part of the responsibility we have as journalists. We report the news no matter if it’s good or bad. We don’t make up the news.
Features like Land of Dodge help balance things out. We hope when you’re having a bad day, just pick up our newspaper, turn to Land of Dodge and you’ll get a little extra dose of positivity.
If you haven’t ever read the Land of Dodge, I encourage you to go in hot pursuit of something pretty spectacular.