The quickest way to lose a reader is to start an article with this lede: “A meeting was held yesterday.” And yet meetings — of local political bodies, school committees, citizen advisory boards, community organizations — are where a lot of local news happens, and they’re the bread and butter of hyperlocal news coverage. The challenge is reporting the news, not the meeting. Even experienced reporters sometimes struggle to find news at a dull municipal meeting, so getting your reporters and community contributors to do it can take some coaxing. But if their reporting process is solid from the beginning, your job will be much easier. The New York Times reporter (and now City Room editor) Andy Newman wrote up some excellent guidelines for community members covering meetings for The Local when he ran the blog. He kept them pretty simple, appropriately, for citizen journalists, and we sent them out to community contributors before they covered a story. For student and professional journalists, there’s a bit more to covering meetings. Andy’s guidelines are below, and I’ve added a few more guidelines and suggestions: Dear Community Board Meeting Coverer, Please Do: * Take good notes on anything that pertains to or affects the neighborhood, including names of speakers. * Take at least one excellent, or at least usable, horizontally oriented photo. * Write up the proceedings as concisely as possible. Bullet-points or narrative, your choice, but please keep it below 600 words unless something earth-shattering happens. * Spend some time beforehand reading other meeting posts we’ve published to get an idea of how others have approached these assignments. Examples here, here, here and here. * Feel free to question officials afterward if there’s anything you don’t quite get. Better to look clueless to them than...