There’s a lesson newspaper people learn continually in the business. You never know what readers will care about.
Each Monday and Tuesday Kevin Bersett and I talk and sometimes agonize over what should be on the front page, what should be above the fold, where is a picture going to go and how big, what should get pushed back. Unabashedly, we’re trying to sell papers. A lot of people say that as if it were a bad thing. We’re in that business. We’re trying to sell newspapers.
To no one’s surprise, people react to some tiny story inside that doesn’t affect the average reader at all. For some reason the city can raise gross receipts taxes, prisoners escape our pseudo-jail and the school board can settle hundreds of thousands of dollars of special education suits and no one cares. It won’t spark a letter or even a nasty phone call.
But say the 2008 Española Valley High School basketball team is better than the 1991 and you better have the server cranked up because the blog comments are going to come fast and furiously. It is also not surprising that Ojo Caliente and El Rito will probably argue until the second coming about who should and shouldn’t be superintendent and who shouldn’t have been one and who’s sleeping with whom and who got hired and why and, well you get the picture.
We’re in the communication business and we want people to read us. With the new facets of the web site, we want readers to participate too. We want you to submit your pictures and give feedback on stories.
But the mean, nasty, vindictive and unsubstantiated back-biting that Bersett has to go through on a daily basis is simply embarrassing. A few of the comments swirling around the Robert Archuleta contract story are dead on:
• Let’s act like adults and stop all this sniping. We’re above all this;
• Please remember our children and Mesa Vista students are reading this too;
• Can we get politics out of the school system and address the problems at hand?
It got to the point last week I considered pulling the plug on the Archuleta blog altogether. It had passed from being a public space where a community could communicate its concerns and share ideas to a Peyton Place of libel. Over 100 comments were posted. At least that many more were not posted for just that reason. Many more weren’t posted because of name-calling and innuendo.
I realize it’s hypocritical for me to spout first amendment all the time and then say we don’t want people to have their say but you have to remember that we have a responsibility when it comes to letters to the editor, submitted columns and things posted on the web. When someone makes a false statement and we allow it, we could be held just as liable as the writer.
So in that spirit please continue to read us in whatever medium you prefer and submit comments in whatever manner is best for you. However, make sure your thoughts are clear and collected and you make a real point. Don’t just fling half-truths and false statements in an attempt to wrongly hurt someone.