The top priority for The Platte County Citizen’s news editor Dennis Sharkey’s is focusing on sports and local schools, depending on how COVID-19 impacts both, but policy will be his major focus.
After serving as news editor at Mound City News in Mound City for three years, Sharkey made the move to the Platte City area to work for the Citizen. Both papers are owned by Adam and Will Johnson.
Long-time reporter and former assistant editor Jeanette Faubion will continue as managing editor.
When Sharkey was at Maple Woods Community College he didn’t really know what he wanted to major in but when he took a class in pop culture he realized, with the help of a teacher, that journalism was the path he wanted to follow.
“The class was taught by a guy named Dave Sharp,” Sharkey said. “Sharp also taught the class for the student magazine on campus. One day in class Sharp asked if anyone thought freelance writer sounded like a cool job. I was one of two people that raised their hands. After class Sharp talked me into joining the magazine. I already had a friend who was on the magazine so I agreed to do it and the rest is history.”
He will be covering a lot more sports teams than he covered in Mound City.
“As Mr. (Will) Johnson outlined in his column (in the Citizen) a few weeks ago, the resources are limited but we’re going to cover all the sports to the best of our abilities,” Sharkey said.
Although Holt County is probably the least populated and smallest community Sharkey ever covered when he worked for the Mound City News, he said the news never stopped.
“It doesn’t matter where I am, I’ll find interesting things to cover, it’s exciting,” Sharkey said.
The biggest story he covered in Mound City was the March flood of 2019 and aspects of it are still developing and it is still generating weekly stories. Sharkey plans on staying involved in that.
“The federal government has turned their back on many of the flood’s poorest victims and there’s a lot of questions unanswered,” Sharkey said. “Unfortunately Gov. Mike Parson’s administration has been secretive about the issue and has brushed those folks off. Currently we’re following a court case that the Missouri Press Association is also involved in that will hopefully give us the tools we need to find out what’s going on. Of course the other important stories are always Friday Night Lights and hot winter nights in the gym.”
As far as the Platte County area, for now he will focus on how COVID-19 will impact residents’ lives moving forward and the economic repercussions. He is looking forward to delving into many local issues including how COVID will affect school funding.
Many issues will be similar to what he covered in Mound City.
“Who doesn’t have a problem with roads,” Sharkey said. “I will say there is little crime in Holt County, so that’s going to be new. Platte County is one of the fastest growing counties in the state and region which means there’s a lot of stuff going on. On the other hand the county is diverse. There’s a lot of smaller communities and a robust agriculture scene, so I’m looking forward to getting more involved in that aspect of news coverage.”
Although journalism has changed immensely since Sharkey’s junior college teacher sparked his interest in the profession, he says that while social media has been a radical change from the days of print media exclusively, he believes the more things change, the more some things stay the same.
“Social media has been a great tool for organizing and giving a voice to the normal person who in the past was just lost in the shuffle of cards,” said Sharkey. “Journalism is still the same and there’s still a lot of great journalism happening. Social media in many ways has replaced journalism and that’s not good. Instead of relying on facts to make decisions many people are instead relying on opinions to make decisions.”
He believes it’s important for small towns to support their local newspapers because the newspapers support their communities.
“There’s data that shows that communities that lose their local paper often end up with lower bond ratings for their local governments and corruption develops,” Sharkey said. “If no one is watching, what’s going to stop corrupt government officials from doing what they want with no consequences?”
Sharkey is from the local area and excited to start a new job at the Citizen.
“It’s going to be cool covering events that my friends and family are going to be interested in and it’s going to be fun serving them,” Sharkey said. “On the selfish side it will make my personal life a lot better.”