Originally published in Countryside Post, Issue 1.7.
I used that quote from Admiral James Stockdale (you might remember the 1992 vice-presidential debate) to describe this column. I never really explained what it is. I assumed the title “Letter from the Editor” would tell you that it was a letter from the editor—not an editorial, nor an opinion piece. Basically, it’s meant to tell you some of Countryside Post’s behind-the-scenes stuff; stuff that doesn’t ordinarily work its way into articles but are kinda informative anyway.
I know, it’s something you’ve not seen in other newspapers before. That’s how we do things around here. Since the only thing editors seem to write anymore are editorials, some of you assumed this was an editorial. It’s an honest mistake. For someone who’s supposed to be responsible for some good balanced reporting, editors are awfully opinionated fellas, aren’t they? Wouldn’t newspapers improve dramatically if the person on top was the least opinionated?
So as you can see, the opinions in this column are mostly about how the Post should run. That falls within its guidelines—Countryside Post’s behind-the-scenes stuff. Unfortunately, a lot of that stuff lately has been typos, errors, and printing glitches.
Like last week, when a computer error put parental rights advocate Karen Holgate’s picture over Mike Walker’s name in “On the Spot.” Or when Columbus Day set the Post’s distribution back a day because the postal service didn’t feel like scrambling to make up for their missing Monday. Things like that. (Notice how neatly I slipped that in?)
There will be less apologies for mix-ups in the future—’cause, hopefully, there will be less mix-ups.
…Another thing which relates to the headline is the Post’s mission statement. Other papers have ’em. The Union likes theirs so much it’s on the banner—they wish to preserve the Union. Sounds like a worthy endeavor, and the Post wishes them well. (Or is it not the Union they’re trying to preserve, but The Union?)
Well, since people are now aware that papers have such things, I’ve been asked what the Post’s mission statement was. The Post doesn’t have any such foolish thing. It’s in the news business. It provides community news to its community. That’s it. That’s all. Isn’t that what newspapers are supposed to do? People complain enough about hidden agendas without the Post adding to the problem.
—Kent Leslie, managing editor
Update, 9/4/2009: Honestly, I’m not the least opinionated person. Anyone who reads this blog can figure that out. On Countryside Post’s staff of two, I was more opinionated than Jill, and two extra Jills, put together. But for the sake of running the newspaper, I stuffed ’em. Every opinion I had was to be suppressed. If the newspaper was going to reflect the community, it was not supposed to reflect me.
Admittedly, that’s sort of a load of crap, ’cause my opinion permeated the paper. I got to choose which articles got put in, which ones were placed more prominently, and what their headlines would be. I set the tone of the paper. There was a whole lot of me in it.
News is inherently biased. If we didn’t think a story was important, we wouldn’t write it and wouldn’t run it. There’s just no way of getting around that fact. So the only thing I really could do was emphasize, “Send me stuff!” then turn around and say, “I just ran what people sent me.” If they disagreed with how I presented it, they had reasonable freedom to say so. That was the best I could offer. The public appeared to accept that.
Ah, and then there’s the damned mission statement.
“We need a mission statement,” Jill announced out of the clear blue sky one morning.
“Since when?” I said.
“Since everyone’s been asking me what our mission statement is.”
I hadn’t yet discovered Jill’s odd little idiosyncrasy: When she said “everyone,” it actually meant one person—a person whose opinion she valued—had said something, and Jill had agreed with it, so she took herself and that other person and extrapolated it into “everyone.” (To be fair, sometimes it was even two people.)
Once I discovered this was how she rolled, she made a point of asking as many people as possible whether her opinion was so. If she got a majority, this became “everyone.” Of course, if she found that she was getting opposition, she’d stop asking before she became a minority.
In any case, she really began pushing for a mission statement. She pointed out that the Grass Valley Union had its mission statement right there on their front-page banner: “For the Union, One and Inseperate.” That’s been its motto since it was founded in 1864, during the Civil War.
“I think it’s succeeded by now,” I joked. “Didn’t the Union win?”
But Jill was quickly turning this “mission statement” issue into a cause. She was polling her friends as to whether or not the Post needed a mission statement. By and large they were saying yes… because they’re idiots. A mission statement makes you sound noble and proactive, and makes sense when it’s not entirely obvious why you exist. Churches, fr’instance, need mission statements to remind themselves that they’re not just Jesus fan clubs. But a newspaper’s mission is—or should be—pretty freaking obvious: Cover the local news.
Which is what I said here, and all the “mission statement” talk stopped.