Apply the Four-Way Test

I recently had the fun of attending the local Rotary Club meeting. Rotary, for those of you who don’t know, is a service club of local professionals and businesspeople, whose mission seems to be networking coupled with public service. They meet for lunch weekly, and get involved in community projects from providing books to young readers to maintaining Fauley Park in Cloquet.

When I first got to town in 1999, then superintendent Russ Smith sponsored me in my membership, mostly as a favor to one of my bosses, Tom Skare. Russ interviewed me first, and one comment from that meeting stuck out: “Attendance matters,” he said, his voice reminiscent of the schoolteacher he once was. He was right — you can’t network and you can’t participate in good deeds if you don’t show up.

Rotarians follow a code called “The 4-Way Test,” which I have found applies in just about every situation, and specifically to our newspaper, the Pine Knot News.

The first part of the test is: “Is it the truth?” Simple. If it’s not true, we should not be saying it. Newspapers, like businesspeople, must be credible or no one will trust them. The trend in media is to find alternative ways to present information. Uncomfortable news is often “twisted” to fit a certain viewpoint. That may be OK for a cable TV network but it’s death to a local community newspaper. At our paper, publishing the truth is paramount. If news hasn’t been verified and cross-checked, we don’t publish it.

“Is it fair to all concerned?” Fairness is elusive. Just ask any child under 12 — “It’s not fair!” may be the most common defense ever. Kids learn pretty quickly that life isn’t fair. But wouldn’t it be nice if it were? Striving for fairness is a virtue. At a community newspaper, reporting must be fair, or it’s not news. Even opinions must be fair, or soon no one will respect the writer. More importantly, sources won’t trust the newspaper if they don’t feel they will be treated fairly. And part of fairness is admitting an error, and trying to correct it, which is why we print retractions when warranted.

“Will it build goodwill and better friendships?” For the newspaper, this one is the most difficult to honor. But I think the Pine Knot News does a pretty good job at it. In our role as a watchdog over the government, we sometimes need to publish stories that actually expose wrongs and may even disturb friendships. But that’s too narrow a view, I believe, of this prong of the Four-Way Test. Certainly, the human interest stories, stories about events and organizations, and of course the sports page, are all examples of the newspaper’s role in building goodwill and better friendships. I am still stuck on the hard news, though. On the surface, reporting hard news, such as criminal cases, government action, and local tragedy doesn’t always promote “goodwill and better friendships.” But such hard news is a large part of our role as a community newspaper. If we can honorably carry out that mission, I believe we’ve satisfied the third prong of the test.

“Will it be beneficial to all concerned?” I love this part of the Four-Way Test. The whole point of providing news focused on the local community is to benefit our readers. More than once, I have wanted to write opinion pieces about national issues and policy, like gun control and reproductive rights. But as a community newspaper, most of those issues are just a small part of our readers’ daily lives. Important issues, certainly, but what benefit does Carlton County get from my views on our president, or recent congressional action? Not much. As a newspaper, reporting on local news provides a benefit that, really, isn’t duplicated anywhere else. It’s the whole reason we started the Pine Knot News.

Rotarians chant the Four-Way Test at the end of every meeting. Attending the Rotary meeting was a good reminder to apply their test to our everyday lives.

Pete Radosevich is the publisher of the Pine Knot News community newspaper and an attorney in Esko who hosts the talk show Harry’s Gang on CAT-7. He can be reached at [email protected].