Thank you to all who took the time to send feedback to The Lincoln County News last week as we work to fine tune our editorial page policies. It’s not too late. We plan to formalize our changes by the end of the month, and if you would like to add your thoughts, please send them to feedback@lcnme.com.
Reporter Bisi Cameron Yee will begin a sabbatical-type break beginning next week.
Bisi started as the paper’s first photojournalism intern just as the pandemic took hold in the spring of 2020. She returned for a second internship in the fall of the same year, adding words to her pictures and proving to be a competent reporter. When former Waldoboro reporter Alex Violo departed for a new job, Bisi joined the LCN staff.
During her time covering the Waldoboro beat, jumping in to provide coverage of Edgecomb and Dresden municipal meetings since Evan Houk left in October, and writing and shooting features from one end of Lincoln County to the other, Bisi captured – for me, and I believe for readers, too – the very heart of our communities.
It’s one thing to report the news. I won’t say that’s something anyone can do, but I do believe it’s something teachable. There are some basic rules and guidelines to follow, and with guidance accurate coverage of the news can be learned.
What remains an ineffable quality in a journalist is the ability to understand and write – the story. One can report the facts with indisputable accuracy, but without the context provided by a sense of what is important to those impacted by municipal decisions, community events, tragic situations, and so on, the facts remain flat against the backdrop of the page where they lay.
Now don’t get me wrong. There is a fine line between the discernment required to craft a news story and “editorializing,” stringing the facts along through placement and tone in a way that leads readers to form conclusions other than their own.
Bisi always walked that line, bringing to life the people, places, and personalities of Lincoln County through the clear vision of her camera lens and the thoughtful craft of her words.
Bisi is not just a reporter for The Lincoln County News. I elevate her work to the sacred realm of storytelling for it requires great trust both from those who allow their stories to be told and from those who read them.
It gives me great pleasure to share that Bisi was selected to participate in the inaugural New England Equity Reporting Fellowship program. We are proud to support her development as a journalist through this opportunity. During her time away, Bisi will also attend a course on lyrical documentary photography at Maine Media Workshop.
The rest of us on The Lincoln County News staff will have to sharpen our photography skills this winter.
But by and large, January is a great time of year to find new ways to grow.
