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COLUMN: Have a minute for a cup of coffee?

Reporter Troy Brynelson of Salem Reporter (Moriah Ratner/Special to the Salem Reporter)

Editor’s note: This is the third of a continuing series of personal columns from the staff of Salem Reporter to the community explaining how we perform our journalism. Read Rachel’s and Aubrey’s.

I think my best reporting tool is a cup of coffee.

My editor and I drink enough of it at Salem Reporter that a lady stopped me in our building a couple weeks back – she knew nothing about us – and asked if I was from the office that smelled like coffee.

But I’m not really talking about caffeine (though it helps). I’m talking about coffee dates. I’m talking about sitting down with as many people as I can, one-on-one, to learn about what he or she cares about and where I should focus my attention to report on Salem.

That’s the only way I’ve done this job in my four-year career. It’s part of how I deliver local journalism.

The biggest newsroom I’ve ever worked in had about a dozen reporters — far from the hedge mazes of cubicles, phones in all directions chirping, that I grew up seeing on TV shows and movies.

My newsrooms have always been small. If they have anything in volume, it’s reporters who care deeply about doing true and impactful journalism.

For Salem Reporter, I cover local governments and business. That’s a lot of ground to cover. I can’t make it to every public meeting. And there are surely myriad private meetings whose organizers aren’t rushing to send me an invite.

That’s why sitting down with people is so important. I’m only as good as my sources. That’s the truth.

You’ll notice many of my articles avoid reporting on meetings. They are about people, like business owners working amongst themselves to bring passenger flights back to Salem Municipal Airport. A couple months ago I wrote about neighbors digging in their heels against a proposed shopping center that the Salem City Council dealt a blow to this week.

It was readers who made me aware of those.

And it was over a morning coffee that I first heard people worry over what they felt would be a purge of books at Salem Public Library. That event, which is still unfolding, was deeply important to the person on the other side of the table. Honestly, I probably would not have noticed any books missing during my own trips to the library.

Sitting down with people and hearing about what’s happening in this community is the best service I can offer. I’m going to keep pestering you all for coffee, if only to hear more.

And if you get sick of that, we can turn to my second best reporting tool: beer.

Give me a call or send me an email if you’d like to sit down and talk.

See you soon!

Have a tip? Contact reporter Troy Brynelson at 503-575-9930, [email protected] or @TroyWB.