Some cheese with your whine?

Originally published in Countryside Post, Issue 1.6.

Last week I was on the verge of gushing as I wrote about the people who just love their little paper. This week, the other side of the story. Some have complained that the Post covers too much school stuff and they want to see some articles about south county property development. Some have complained that the Post is, by publicizing Lake of the Pines events, encouraging undesirables to enter their gated community. (Tell the people who send us press releases, okay?) Some have complained that all the news is too “soft,” or “fluffy,” or “happy,” and that they want crime news, or government corruption news, or investigative pieces.

Those are the problems. Here's the solution. Unlike other newspapers, the Post publishes contributions from its public. If you contribute articles about the things you're interested in, you'll see them in the Post. Complaining won't get you anywhere; action will. But in my experience, most complainers are just whiners, and whiners are all talk. God forbid you should actually do something—there'd be nothing to whine about!

Anyway, keep sending those articles to the Post. We still publish everything you'd like to contribute—even whining.

…There was a lot of enthusiastic reaction to my last “editorial” (these letters aren't really editorials, you know) and I suspect some of it was because I implied that I was a Christian, which I am. Problem is, some of you assume that since I'm a Christian I'm a conservative, which I'm not. For me, the two philosophies are incompatible. If you believe otherwise, I don't want my beliefs to become a subject of debate, especially in the Post. I'm simply trying to explain myself, and since it's too complex, I give up doing that here. Talk to me personally.

…Some complaints deserve a mention. Anne Mocek, fr'instance, complained that the Post didn't print her whole quote in “On the Spot” last week; and to make matters worse, we spelled her name wrong. Her whole quote is, “All politicians are a bunch of goons, with Clinton at the top of the list. He should be run out of Dodge, with Geraldo Rivera driving him.” The Post apologizes for mangling her witticism.

—Kent Leslie, managing editor

Update, 9/4/2009: “I don’t know if you should admit that,” Jill said when she read my bit about being a Christian but not a conservative. She was of the opinion that since we were serving a largely rural population, most of them were automatically Republicans—big, angry, veal-eating, gun-toting Republicans who wouldn’t think twice of shooting up their local newspaper office when they took offense. Grass Valley used to be an Old West town, you know.

“I don’t either,” I said, “but if I don’t admit it, next thing you know they’ll be inviting me to Lincoln Day dinners and NRA meetings. I want to keep ’em guessing as to my politics, but too many of them think ‘Christian’ automatically means ‘Republican.’”

And they had. People had actually told me, “I’m so glad you’re running the paper. It means the liberals won’t get away with twisting the news anymore.” I joked back, “How do you know the liberals aren’t the ones sending me all the articles?” That made them nervous—but of course I was just messing with them.

In any event I just wanted to keep them guessing about my politics. I didn’t want to alienate the liberals. I didn’t want to alienate the conservatives either—although I did have to point out that Christianity and conservatism aren’t really compatible. God, after all, believes in an infinitely big government—his. All property belongs to him; our rights are subservient to his will; he gives giant handouts and infinite forgiveness and love to every sort of depraved criminal. In essence, God’s more liberal than anyone on earth. But if I had said that, I would have opened up a monstrous debate that would have consumed the letters page for the next several months. So I kept it brief, and figured that was that. Largely it was. But the Christians were still convinced that I was an ally, if not necessarily a political one. And I’m totally fine with that.

Now to the complaints. The most commonly-heard one was from people who lived in Lake of the Pines who really didn’t want their events publicized outside their gates. LOP is a gated community—you can’t get in unless you live there, or have business with someone who lives there. They had security guards at the gates 24 hours a day to keep undesirables out, and people wanted to keep it that way. In all the time I spent in southern Nevada County, I had gone into LOP maybe five times. Every time was by invitation, and residents weren’t encouraged to let guests in. I never heard these complaints from LOP officials; I only heard them from LOP residents who wanted their compound secure. But as I pointed out, I only ran LOP events because LOP residents sent me events. Well, it seems they had a little talk with their neighbors, and soon afterward the LOP events stopped coming to the Post.

Those who wanted articles about property development were usually the members of the anti-growth group, South Nevada County Concerned Citizens. Of course, they regularly butted heads with those people who owned local property and wanted to develop it. I wanted both sides to send in articles—I, of course, would stay above it and maybe moderate a little. Eventually articles from both sides trickled in.

As for the folks who only wanted negative news, I really didn’t want them to send articles; but since I was telling them the Post was their paper, I wasn’t about to tell them they couldn’t send them in. They didn’t anyway. I called it right: They’re all talk.

Finally, “On the Spot” was one of those features where we corner three to five people on the street, take their picture, and ask them a silly or serious question. Newspapers do this all the time. It’s actually kinda dumb, but it puts people in the paper who ordinarily wouldn’t be there.

Honestly, I was looking for brief little sound bites to squeeze underneath the photos. I didn’t want them to give us an entire paragraph. And there are some folks who really just want to spout off for the next 15 minutes, as if they’re reciting an oral SAT essay. Anne Mocek’s answer had not been quite that long, but I felt it was longer than usual and decided to shorten it to, “All politicians are a bunch of goons.” And thanks to Jill’s handwriting I had rendered her name as Macek—two sins that Ms. Mocek found unforgivable. She called to complain, and I promised her I’d correct it in the next issue. So I did.