Respecting opinions.

Originally published in Countryside Post, Issue 1.14.

People are still talking about the hate mail we got in issue 1.10—to me, it’s old news, but some people have yet to put in their two cents about it, and when they meet me, they do. Some of them, unfortunately, end the conversation with, “Well, you gotta respect a person’s right to have an opinion.”

I hate that saying, because it’s not true. Few really respect any opinions other than their own. Any other opinions are worthless unless they agree with it. And if you’re under 30 or “inexperienced,” you don’t know any better, so shut up and let your elders talk. (Being under 30, I deal with this attitude constantly.)

Wait a week…

Originally published in Countryside Post, Issue 1.13.

Last week was a bit too soon for me to announce “The Countryside”—which was where we were gonna stick a bunch of neat stuff, such as ancedotes and photos from people in our countryside. The first one will be in the next issue.

The delay is my fault. Regular features need development time, and Thanksgiving kinda got in the way. Besides which, I’m sure all of you were too busy with Thanksgiving preparations to even think of sending stuff to the paper.

Being thankful.

Originally published in Countryside Post, Issue 1.12.

The front-page quote is from Franklin Roosevelt’s Thanksgiving proclamation, in the year he moved it. Originally Abraham Lincoln, who proclaimed the first Thanksgiving Day in 1863, set it on the last Thursday in November. Roosevelt moved it to the fourth Thursday—a subtle change, but three years out of seven it means an extra week of Christmas shopping. Be glad it’s where it is, or the Xmas season would start after Halloween.

So what are you thankful for? Me, I’m thankful for a good past three months at Countryside Post. I’m thankful that many of you like it so far, and that you’re contributing—contributions have been downplayed in the news biz over the last 11 decades, and though it’s not a new idea, it’s not put into practice much. I’m also thankful that many of you are overcoming your shyness in order to send things in. Some people are way too critical of their writing ability. Don’t worry; it’s my job to make you sound good.

Dealing with mail.

Originally published in Countryside Post, Issue 1.11.

Jill has been speculating all bloody week about who Yvonne Wright might be. Since Ms. Wright stuffed her letter in the Post’s mailbox and left, without the courtesy of including a number nor address, and since no one we know knows her, I’ve been referring to her as “Ms. Wright—if that is her real name.” It probably is.

Jill just wants to know how on earth we managed to tick her off so much. I don’t speculate on things like that. It’s a waste of time. I expect hate mail in the course of this job—there is always going to be someone you rub the wrong way, no matter how much you try to do everything right. If she had a legitimate concern, and presented it as constructive criticism, I would address the problem and see if I could solve it. But she had neither, so that’s that.

Big dead animals.

Originally published in Countryside Post, Issue 1.10.

In this space I often mention the complaints Countryside Post gets, and I apologize for them. This week, I'm offering no apologies for something we ran. Young David Martin shot his first deer recently and proudly submitted a picture of it to the Post, and we ran it on page 5 last week.

Since then we've received five phone calls from people who, for various reasons, do not wish to see dead animals in their paper. I can understand where they're coming from; deer are cute and friendly and it's not nice to see one of God's creatures butchered like that. On the other hand, we've been running pictures of dismembered animals in our supermarket ads… but then again, deer have better publicity. Disney never made a cartoon about a baby cow.

News sometimes isn't pretty. Sometimes it's horrible. Take that horse some psychos set on fire the day before Halloween. We almost ran a photo of it. Why? Because it was news. Insane behavior, when it affects other people, is news. I prefer good news, but sometimes the public has to know bad stuff whether they like it or not.

Slow growth issues.

Originally published in Countryside Post, Issue 1.9.

If this issue seems to have a lot of ads, it’s ’cause it does. As you know, the reason you get Countryside Post free is because advertising pays for everything.

That’s the way newspapers work. Even the ones who take subscriptions work that way—in their case, subscriptions just pay for the cost of circulation. In the Post’s case, we eat that cost. That’s partly because I believe that news is free and should remain so—if you’re gonna call news-reporting "a public service," it’s not public if you charge for it—and because if you circulate to everyone, you’re not so dependent on circulation figures that you have to resort to harebrained schemes to increase circulation. Nor do you have to appeal to "the nobility of journalism" or being "the voice of the community" in order to get customers. That’s a load of bull dooky anyway, and we all know it. Advertisers want numbers, and if we circulate to everyone, we got ’em.

The 𝘗𝘰𝘴𝘵 endorses…

Originally published in Countryside Post, Issue 1.8.

…nobody. Countryside Post will not exaggerate the solitary opinion of the editor or publisher by labeling it the opinion of the paper. That’s as it should be.

It isn’t easy bottling your opinions. Especially for me. Seven years of writing editorials makes it second-nature to generate opinions at the drop of a hat. I won awards for them, believe it or don’t. But most people already have their mind made up, so what good are my two cents? The only way I could add to a discussion would be to tell them something they didn’t know. In other words, write news.

So we did, or tried to. This election the Post sent out questionnaires. To date, only Lorraine Jewett-Burdick and Todd Juvenal ever got back to us in time. In the interest of fairness I decided not to publish their responses since there was no equal comment from their opponents. I apologize for wasting their time.