How to Submit a News Tip or Photo to The Shire Courier

Something is happening on your street and you're not sure whether it's a story. A zoning notice taped to a lamppost. A pothole that has eaten three hubcaps since March. A school board decision made at 9:40 p.m., after most parents had gone home.

Send it. We can't report on what nobody tells us about, and a surprising share of what ends up in these pages starts with a reader who spent four minutes writing an email. You don't need a finished story or a source list. You need to say what you saw, where it happened, and how to reach you.

Here's how it works.

What Counts as a News Tip

More than you'd think. The tips we act on usually fall into a few loose groups:

• Things you saw yourself. A crash, a fire, a road closed without warning, a burst main, a queue outside the food bank on a Tuesday morning.
• Things you were told. A decision from a meeting, a change to a bus route, a new fee, a closure nobody has announced publicly yet.
• Things that don't add up. Public money spent without explanation, a contract handed to a familiar name, a planning application that seems to contradict the rules.
• Things worth celebrating. A shop reopening, a volunteer who has run the same youth club for twenty years. Good news is still news.
• Things we got wrong. More on that below.

You don't need to know whether it's a story. That part is our job. Yours is to hand over the thread. If you're the only person who has noticed something, that is usually a reason to tell us, not a reason to stay quiet.

One exception, and we mean it: if someone is hurt or in danger, or a crime is happening right now, call the emergency services first. Once everyone is safe, tell us what you saw.

The Details That Make a Tip Usable

A tip with five pieces of information can be checked by lunchtime. A tip without them can take days, or go nowhere. Try to include:

1. What happened, in a sentence or two. Plain language beats a long build-up.
2. Where. A street address if you have one, plus cross streets, a building name or the nearest landmark. "Near the Co-op" isn't enough on its own.
3. When. Date, and a time if you know it. If you're not certain, say so — "sometime last Tuesday afternoon" is far more useful than a guess dressed up as fact.
4. Who. Names and titles if you have them. If you don't, explain why you think that person or organisation is involved.
5. How to reach you, and whether you're happy to be named. Your details never appear in print; they're how a reporter checks back with you.

Write it the way you'd tell a neighbour over the fence. If documents exist — a letter, a council email, a planning notice — mention them. Don't send anything you aren't entitled to have. Just tell us what's out there and we'll take it from there.

Photos, Video and Documents

Pictures move a story faster than anything else, and phone cameras are fine. A few habits make all the difference:

• Send the original file. Not a screenshot, and not a photo of your screen taken with another phone.
• Leave it alone. No crops, no filters, no brightness fixes. We can crop; we can't un-crop.
• Caption it. One line covering what it shows, where it was taken, when, and who took it.
• Be honest about the source. If a friend took the picture, say so, and confirm you have their permission to share it.
• Keep your own copy. Don't hand over your only version.
• Stay safe and stay legal. Don't trespass, don't stand in a live carriageway, and don't fly a drone where you're not allowed to. No photo is worth an injury or a fine.

Large video files are best sent as a link to a cloud folder or file-sharing service. Say in your email what you're sending so we know to look for it.

Anonymous Tips, and What We Can Protect

You can send something without your name ever appearing in print, and we won't pass your details to anyone else. But anonymity has limits worth understanding before you hit send. We still have to verify what you tell us, which usually means at least one conversation with you, even if the finished article says "a source familiar with the matter." Anonymous claims are harder to stand up and harder to defend if they're challenged.

If what you're sharing could put your job, a licence or a legal matter at risk, it is worth speaking to your own adviser before you send anything. We can protect a source's identity. We can't protect you from every consequence of coming forward.

Corrections and Clarifications

We get things wrong, and we would rather hear it from you than discover it months later. A useful correction request includes:

• The headline or article title, and the date it was published.
• The exact sentence or detail that's wrong — quote it, so there's no doubt which line you mean.
• Why it's wrong, and what the correct information is.
• Any document that supports the correction.

Send it to the same address you'd use for a tip, with "correction" in the subject line. Straight factual errors are usually fixed quickly, with a note explaining what changed. Disagreements about emphasis or wording are still worth raising, though we may resolve those with a clarification rather than a rewrite.

What Happens After You Send

Everything that arrives is read by a person. We can't reply to every message, especially on a busy news day, but a tip with the details listed above usually gets a response within a day or two. After that, the path varies. Sometimes a reporter calls to check a fact or two and that's the end of it. Sometimes the tip joins a file that grows for weeks before it becomes a story. Sometimes it doesn't become a story at all — because we can't verify it, because someone else has already covered it, or because it turns out to be a private matter rather than a public one. We'll try to tell you which.

If a week passes with no reply, send it again or ring the newsroom. We would rather receive the same tip twice than miss it entirely.

When in Doubt, Send It

The bar for getting in touch is lower than most people assume. You don't need documents, witnesses and a timeline. You need a sentence about what you saw, a rough idea of where and when, and a way for us to reach you. If it turns out to be nothing, we'll say so, and nobody will think less of you for asking. If it turns out to be something, you've done the Shire a favour.

Tips, photos, documents and corrections all go to the same place: [email protected], or the newsroom phone number listed on our contact page.

Photo: Startup Stock Photos / Pexels