Send your questions about writing, editing or life in the newsroom to writing coach Mary Ann Hogan. My editors keep telling me maybe I can start on one when my daily beat work is done. But my daily work is never done. You're talking about narrative as if it's somehow different from journalism. That's bad for the reps of both.
Most good journalism is narrative.
The answer, given the size of your paper and nature of your beat, is no. And your readers wouldn't want you to. Narrative means telling a story, with a beginning, a middle, an end, and a point. It doesn't have to be 800 inches and full of flashbacks and foreshadowing.