At the beginning of each story is a placeline. The community identified serves as a clue to readers how the information was gathered for the story.
According to Canadian Press style, reporters should “place stories where incidents occur rather than at the news centre that reports the news, provided the scene is more than a crossroads.”
Our newspaper’s style is to use the placeline to show where the reporter was for the story. If a staff member was at Shamrock, Sask., that would be the placeline. If the reporter stayed in Saskatoon, but phoned people in Shamrock to interview them for the story, then the placeline would be Saskatoon.
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The most familiar placelines are Saskatoon, where our head office is, or our bureaus: Regina, Winnipeg, Ottawa, Calgary and our newest one in Camrose, Alberta.
When readers see those placelines, they can conclude reporters did the stories from the office or they attended conferences or events in those cities.
If several places were visited for the story, usually the reporter’s home bureau will be used to avoid confusion.
Newswire services provide stories to us with placelines to let us know where their reporters were located. For example: HAMBURG, Germany (Reuter).
When we feel the place might be unfamiliar to some of our readers, we use the name of the countries or provinces in the placeline. Toronto would stand alone, but we would identify Dauphin as being in Manitoba.
Sometimes placelines can be confusing, especially in freelance stories. For example, we use a freelancer in Ireland who writes stories from areas ranging from Ireland to Australia. Generally we use the placeline of Tullybeg since that is where he resides.
Other freelancers also generally use the place where they live, but will identify if an event or interview took place “here” or in another location.
