Carla Robinson is used to asking questions. So it was mildly intimidating to be interviewing this long-time reporter and editor of the Chestnut Hill Local. Still, that was the situation when we sat down on Valentine's Day from 9 to 10 a.m. for “A Local Lens,” the Local's monthly radio show on G-Town Radio.

You can hear “A Local Lens” every second Friday from 9 to 10 a.m. on 92.9 FM, but if you missed last week's episode, we explored the woman at the heart of all the Local's editorial content, Carla Robinson.

Robinson got her start in journalism by happenstance, when her college roommate suggested she interview with a local paper. She majored in English and had no technical journalistic training, yet, from the very beginning, she had the necessary temperament.

“Journalism suits me,” she said. “It’s a way of being present and curious. It's a license to be completely curious about your world.”

Robinson came to the Local in 2021 after having taken a brief hiatus from reporting to care for family members. “Both of my parents passed, my daughter was older, I was ready to get back in,” she recalled. “I missed it. I was on a Facebook page and one of my old Daily News alumni, Bob Warner, posted a note, ‘We're looking for a new editor at The Local.’ I thought, ‘That would be perfect for me.’ So, I tossed my hat into the ring and there we go.”

Warner is a former Chestnut Hill Local board president and resident.

Since stumbling into the career that has come to fit her like the proverbial glove, Robinson has valued journalistic approaches that are rooted in community. She believes that the best reporting is done by those who embed themselves in the neighborhood they’re covering. When advising other journalists, she encourages them to understand their communities and to be curious about them. Sometimes, she acknowledges, being a member of a community can present challenges for a reporter. There’s a different level of expectation when reporting about a contentious issue or covering a person or an organization when a reporter is an insider to a community and has ongoing source relationships to balance against a commitment to sharing truth with readers.

“This is where the basic principles of the trade protect you and protect the work,” she said. “I'm not going to report a story unless I actually report it. But, what I can promise is that I will report it fairly and accurately. Everyone will get a chance to say what they think, and, in my experience, most people appreciate that.”

As editor, Robinson assigns all the stories, reads every submission and revises it as needed, and also reports and writes stories of her own. At a paper the size of the Local, she grinned as she said her real job is to “do all the things that haven’t been done yet.” 

But the larger part of Robinson’s job entails understanding our community and engaging in ongoing conversations with stakeholders, both on and off the record. These are conversations that take time, and integrity. People need to know that they can share information anonymously as well as trust that their quotes won’t be taken out of context. They should also expect that when she looks into an issue, she will do it fairly and represent all sides. 

On-air, she recounted the Local’s investigative series about water issues in the Northwest and its recent collaborative reporting project about Jumpstart Germantown, both of which were shaped over months, if not years of background reporting.

She also alluded to a few stories which she was not ready to discuss, but which are in the works, so stay tuned for those as well as for the upcoming issue of the Wissahickon Magazine, the Local’s quarterly lifestyle magazine.

“It’s not hard-nosed reporting,” she said of Wissahickon. “It’s a lifestyle magazine. I’ve really enjoyed that project. It’s another way of looking at the place where we live. “

Robinson is always looking for new ways to see this community and learn about what’s happening here. She invites people with interesting information to contact her at Carla@chestnuthilllocal.com.

Next month, join me at 9 a.m. on Friday March 14 for an interview with Len Lear.