Readers best source of local news

We had a group of school kids in for a tour today, a not unusual occurrence at a newspaper. One of the questions they often ask is, “How do you get the news?”

We get the news in several ways, of course — reporters dig stuff up from their regular “beats,” the City Editor assigns them to cover events, or we “localize” news from the wire services, for example.

One of the best ways is when a reader calls in with a good idea. Today, I got a call from Brocklehurst resident Janice Bradley, who reported that a 737 had just come in for a landing but had suddenly lifted its nose and done a steep climb. As we spoke, she said, it was circling around in the clouds.

So we called airport manager Fred Legace, who knew of nothing unusual, and said the Wesjet flight was sitting on the tarmac. Checking back with Janice, I found her insistent that the plane she’d seen aborting a landing was definitely not Westjet. She pointed out the Westjet plane was due for takeoff any moment, and wondered if there’d been a conflict with the other one.

Back to Legace, who now checked with the flight information centre, and found out that a cargo plane from Kelowna was testing out its gear on its way to Calgary, and had never intended to land in Kamloops. And, it was now on its way east.

Fair enough. We had an answer to the question even though  it ended up not being a story. But it might have been, just as one of our reporters was tipped off Monday night to the passing of former school trustee Dick Dickens, even though it wasn’t mentioned at that night’s school board meeting for family reasons.

Newspapers wouldn’t do nearly the job we’re able to do without the information and “tips” our readers often provide us.