One day, I’m going to do it. I’m going to take all of the stories that strangers pitch to me and try to land them all on the front page. Every single one of them.

LOCAL MAN TOTALLY PAYING TOO MUCH CHILD SUPPORT, the headline will scream from above the fold. INSISTS WIFE A SOUL-SUCKING SHREW.

The photograph will be huge. The misused husband in question leaning against the counter at the corner store. He bought a Red Bull there 90 minutes ago and has been hanging out since, just waiting for a newsperson to come in to report this travesty.

Wait no longer, my long-suffering fellow. Your story will be told.

Oh, you’ll want to get a copy of this historic issue. Buy some extras and keep them in a cool, dry place so you can someday bequeath them to your eldest child. All the real stories we’ve been keeping from you will suddenly explode onto the pages, making that crap Woodward and Bernstein put together look like a lame junior high project.

Real stories, personal and vivid. No need for fact-checking here; pure emotion is all the attribution we need.

CLOSE-TALKING WOMAN BOTH SICK AND TIRED OF TEENAGERS GATHERING NEAR HER HOME another headline, the size used to announce the moon landing, will shriek.

KIDS ALMOST CERTAINLY ON POT.

Photo of scowling woman with arms crossed, standing on street corner and thrusting chin at the spot normally inhabited by deviant children. If the police won’t take care of the matter, that look insists, she won’t hesitate to take care of it herself.

“Put that in your Sun and Journal,” the angry woman told me before I ran, in tears, out of the grocery store.

When they refer to the newspaper as “the Sun and Journal,” as it was known back in the 1700s, you know they’re serious. It means they have long memories and the sense of righteousness that goes with them.

They are almost always irate. They almost never want to provide their name, the names of potential witnesses or any pertinent information to back up their claims. Their word is good enough, as illustrated by the fact that they end each sentence with “I can promise you that” or an equivalent vow.

One man enduring a stretch at a state prison wrote to declare that he was being completely mistreated by the system. His entire conviction, from the cop who arrested him to the prison barber, was completely bogus. The inmate didn’t want to provide specifics — he had a pretty good lawsuit planned against half the world, after all — but he insisted that I tell his story as is.

“Mark my words,” he wrote. “This one is going to be big.”

He even provided a headline and suggested where it should run, specifically, in the paper. The courteous con went so far as to give me permission to share this story with the TV news.

The hell with that. I want this one to myself.

COMPLETELY INNOCENT GUY SURE TO WIN LAWSUIT AGAINST STATE FOR VIOLATIONS HE PLANS TO ONE DAY DISCLOSE, the headline will bellow, in huge letters despite it being hideously long. MARK OUR WORDS.

For 16 years, people have been telling me to “put that in your Sun and Journal” whenever they find me at the grocery store, bar or free clinic. The arguments with neighbors, the record-size potholes, the vague reports of something that might have occurred. Possibly.

CONCERNED WOMAN REPORTS TWO FIRETRUCKS DRIVING QUICKLY PAST HER HOME, goes this headline, IS PRETTY SURE SOMETHING HAPPENED SOMEWHERE, IN ALL LIKELIHOOD.

And I’ll tell you, once in a while, one of these long-haired, abstract stories told secondhand down at the hot dog stand turns out to be valid. Most of them don’t. It’s not because those stories aren’t interesting or important. It’s that by and large, they are interesting and important only to the person who is delivering the tale.

The person who hangs out at the store nursing the same Red Bull for 90 minutes wants a place where the news is hyper-localized. He wants all of the prosaic things that happen in his life to be treated with the same importance as the city council meetings, the bank robberies, the high school football games.

Imagine that! A place where anybody could post their own headlines, any time of day, as they saw fit! A place where your downtown Joe could rant about exorbitant child support, and even upload photos to illustrate his tale of woe.

Ha! The very notion is absurd.

REPORTER NEVER SAW FACEBOOK COMING, goes this headline. TOTALLY STANDS CORRECTED. WILL NOW SHUT UP, IN ALL LIKELIHOOD.

Mark LaFlamme is a Sun Journal staff writer. You can share newsworthy tips and prosaic tales at [email protected].