Once in a while a rabid Journal-hater’s interior walls will burst, and pent-up passions come burbling out in a frothing, acrid foam. What can sometimes be disappointing, in such a case, is lack of detail.
What we need from you is specifics. What, in particular, set you off? What was the proverbial back-breaking straw? Having this information in hand while we’re sitting around the break room helps us keep the laughs going, and will let us know exactly what we’re doing right. Take this letter as a model of the form.
Today’s entry scores high with its hyperbolic outrage and its vivid scatology — a Chihuahua? — but sadly falls short on the grounds outlined above.
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Thanks, caller! You brightened a gray day. A word of caution, though: When gathering free newspapers in California, be sure to stay on this side of the law. This week marks the second anniversary of AB 2612, which criminalized the theft of free papers for various purposes — including, presumably, yours.
This article appears in The Sonoma Gang.
nice…one of Palins, book banning brigade…watch for them coming to a library near you.
http://srnnews.townhall.com/news/politics-elections/2008/09/12/gop_campaign_downplays_palin_book-banning_inquiry
I thought awarding the angry writer your ice cream prize was brilliant, Hank.
If she claims it, you can ask if she read the next edition of the NCJ despite her rapprochement to the contrary.
Ah, yes, many of us have dealt poor Mr. Sims some clobbering rants over the years…they’re usually about as rational as the mood swings that provoke them…of course, I berate you for playing into the right-wing establishment, which you do from time to time…and who knows what the chihuahua lady would have said if you didn’t!
The Sun Valley consensus, by the way, that was excellent…
I thought she was pretty specific, you are a leftist piece of shit. Any questions?
Yes, I do have questions!
I know I’m a lunatic leftist piece of shit. Have been for ages. What I need to know is what compelled the caller to call and tell me so.
After all, she’s probably had something like five years of my lunatic leftist shit. What particularly set her off on Friday? I need to know. For research and development purposes.
Hank, its just another demonstration of “The Spirit of the North Coast” Do you have caller ID?
That’s evidence for a raise if I ever heard one.
Interesting way to handle criticism there, Hank. I refer to the letter not the call; I haven’t listened to that yet. But as for legit criticism (letter specifically objected to too much Hank, too little news), some editors seek to improve, and criticism from former readers could give a guy some direction.
People who think they have a handle on the grand conspiracy imagine that when it comes to newspapers and media in general, the advertisers sit at the top, calling all the shots. Anyone who buys an ad also buys a direct line to the editorial staff, and can dictate the line as he sees fit, thus keeping the world safe for plutocratic capitalism. So the theory goes.
In fact, at our level, at least, advertisers could care less what goes into the paper, so long as people seem to be picking it up and at least glancing at the ad. You can run a cover story about the questionable ethics of a major advertiser, as we have done more than once, and never hear a peep back about it.
Advertisers, at least at our level, are not concerned. Who are the petty, vicious, censorious players in the equation? The readers. Or at least a fairly significant subset of them.
I agree — the letter in question would seem to be reasonable, at least on the face of it. Justified, even. We’ve been down one reporter — half our reporting staff — since June. (We wanted to wait for the right person; that person has been located, and will start Oct. 1.)
But I call bullshit on the letter-writer anyway. Why? First of all, because we’ve done great work in the last couple of years, as our peers across the state have recently re-recognized (and as our faithful readers have known all along). We’ve been cited for our investigative and enterprise reporting every single year I’ve been editor, completely sweeping the category for our circulation class as often as not (as we did this year). We do major, game-changing stories on a regular basis — less regular since we’ve been short-handed, but regular nonetheless.
But mostly I call bullshit on the writer because no one but no one writes angry letters because they are bored. If you’re bored, you don’t bother. You write an angry letter because your world has been trampled on in one way or another, for reasons you might not care to enumerate.
Not sure dissing the readers is a reasonable stance for an editor to take (“petty, vicious, censorious”) since readership is the point.
Some critical or disappointed readers simply stop reading the publication without ever bothering to write a letter explaining why. Maybe it is the ones who hope to be heard, or who hope for improvement, who bother to write.
Congratulations on the awards but I hope they won’t give you a bad case of hubris.
I can understand why the phone caller lashes out at our powerful and oppressive alt-weekly. She’s trapped in a tiny world of her own making, catering to the whims of feckless, yapping little leftist dogs.
Indie: Define “improvement.” A hundred people will define it a hundred different ways.
You can’t please everyone, so our working theory is not to bother trying. You try to please everyone, you end up as the Humboldt Beacon.
The public never knows what it wants out of its media outlets. Does it want them supine, catering as best they can to the whims of absolutely everyone with a mouth? Pure demos? An absolute leveling?
Or does it want the news ballsy, pursuing the truth as it sees it, as best it can, and not giving a good goddamn about what anyone thinks?
People want both things at once. Not different people, either. The same people at the same time. The big critics of “The MSM” want both things at once.
And you can’t game it. Maybe some people stop picking up the paper. Maybe some people start picking it up. We have a readership. It happens to be the smartest on the North Coast, which is the way we like it.
You don’t have to be a member of our fan club. I don’t particularly care if you are or not. We’ve held and grown our circulation in the last five years, as Humboldt County has grown into the most media-saturated rural place in the United States. That’s good enough for me.
CPR: You’d call Chihuahuas a left-wing breed? I say they’re closet fascists.
Irish Setters lean to the left, politically.
Hank you need to realize no matter what good work you think you do, or a small club of peers (we all have them in professional life), there will be people who dissent with you point of view. I would object to her aggressive ad hominum attacks but be pleased you have struck a chord with a dissenter who cannot object with fact but crude slurs. What I find a problem with the journals “reporting” is that is definitely comes at a slant, plays up on the us and them (con-lib) divide in Humboldt and doesn’t amount to full disclosure. Pretentious conclusionary comments (no facts to support presented) such as we have the smartest readership in Humboldt County belie your scorn of your opponent. Embrace your enemy, earn respect, and slit their throats as you look them in the eye. That is the honorable way.
Recent Point on full disclosure: Pacific Choice had a load of stinking shrimp shells out front making everyone upset. Kirk Yonkers said they had a transportation problem because they couldn’t get enough trucks to move the stuff. While I understand you would sell your mother to stop port and rail development in Humboldt did anyone at the journal think that other transportation options might help this company turn waste into organic fertilizer? There are many businesses in Humboldt that could benefit from transportation options and from my experience using the highways around here we all could use reduced truck traffic.
As for why Friday…….could be a moon thing or just got to her at the wrong time…some people have hair triggers.
I think I love you.
It’s admittedly old, but the market research we did five or so years ago shows that the Journal‘s college-educated readership was way, way above the T-S‘s. If we have any competitor in that department, I’d guess, it’d be the Eye.
Not true at all. You misunderstand. Here, let’s try an experiment.
I have a plan to boost the Humboldt County economy. Want to hear it? It’s very simple. We should persuade Boeing and Microsoft to relocate to Eureka. For one, that’s a whole lot of great blue-collar jobs. For another, we’d be instant leaders in the technology sector.
And, voila, my plan is now the official economic development policy of several Humboldt County governmental agencies.
What’s that, you say? Well! How dare you! What do you know about it, anyway? Have you ever run a multi-billion dollar corporation? I didn’t think so! So how would you know? Why do you hate jobs, hippie? You’d sell your mother to keep Microsoft and Boeing from Humboldt County!
I am sure you are wrong quite often but the real question is: have you ever thought you were wrong?
Like Rush Libaugh, you don’t seem troubled by any obligation to make sense.
that love thing kinda creeps me out but its an old-world way of treating enemies.
I do wish your weekly would explore the alternatives with a little less bias and less pretentious derision of the opposing side. It may be un-intended (I think you guys are a little smarter than that, word intended), but words have meanings and as an editor it is your job to ensure the writing in your paper reflects the tone of your publication. It is true that you probably sell/distribute more papers through salacious comments and innuendo than straight reporting. I would suspect the national enquirer has more readership than the USA today or at least is very large compared to a “real” newspaper. Okay that was low, but good fun.
As for the market research, true, your readers are mainly college educated folk. I am sure you blanket their stomping grounds with papers. Your advertisers also show a leaning to catering to the college educated and attending consumers.
However, you said smartest not most-educated.
As someone with a graduate degree, I have many time been bested and surprised by un-educated ranchers and laborers. True, we weren’t solving derivatives but they have a common sense that can sometimes out do the best schooling knowledge. I don’t think you need a college education to be smart or intelligent.
I agree with your experiment, I did go personal on ya with the mother thang…….you leftist piece of shit…..(kidding).
All right, everyone gather ’round now … c’mon, Indie, you too …
Ready?
** BIG BLOG HUGZ **
thanks I’m glad you agree with me. smooch.