Saturday, February 03, 2007
Crazies still get their letters in the CV
Ric Morris of Nanticoke is one of those guys who thinks criminals read the Voice to adapt their operations to avoid police detection. "The general public doesn’t need to know how the LEAs do their crime solving," the letter reads. Apparently no one edits these letters before publication.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
13 comments:
This is a new one; there are two regulars who write short, to the point, weird letters. I read them on the Radio Home Visitor because (a) they fill thirty seconds at a time when I can use it and (b) they're pretty funny.
One guy seems to know he's funny, while the other seems quite serious.
No, no one edits the letters for content, facts or usage.
Sad.
What is an LEA anyway?
No, no one edits the letters for content, facts or usage.
Generally, I don't think the editor should; at that point, it is no longer the writer's words or opinion.
However... In today's CV, there is a letter which should have a note after it from the editor pointing out two of what I think are inaccuracies.
(1) I don't think anybody gave Communion to Bill Clinton. I think it was the Pope and Tony Blair.
(2) The Vatican said the Pope spent a moment of recollection inside that Mosque. A bit different from praying, and a diplomatic way of working around a can of worms.
Tom,
Opinion is one thing. Factual errors are quite another.
An opinion editor at a newspaper is supposed to edit for facts. Leave the opinion alone but check to make sure the person is not spreading falsehoods, rumor or, in this case, craziness.
That's what I said, before my two examples. Either don't print it, or (if it seems the letter should, for some reason, be printed), add a corrective note at the end. I've seen this done elsewhere in the country, as well in national publications.
I'm limiting my remarks to letters, not to op-ed pieces. I've edited op-eds for the CV, as well as written them, and that's where accuracy must be *in* the piece and not added afterwards by the editor.
LEA: Law enforcement agency
The Letters page is a place for people to express their opinions--no matter how uninformed or inelegantly stated.
I just hope no one outside the valley reads this poor, paranoid cop's rantings. They might think we're ALL knuckle-draggers and mullet wearers.
See Ric. See Ric write a letter to the CV. Did someone steal Ric's dictionary, or does he think it's spelled "tragidies"?
Can you say "heyna," boys and girls?
I think it's spelled "haina." Maybe we could as Ric.
I didn't know there *was* a proper spelling for hayna / heyna / haina. That is, if you used it, you couldn't spell. I once wrote to the people at the Merriam-Webster dictionary company about it and the best they could come up with was a corruption of "ain't it," so maybe "haina" is closer than what seems to be the favorite, "hayna."
Or no?
If you're the op/ed page editor at a big paper, you rarely have a shortage of thoughtful and well-written letters to fill your daily space. Local editors, however, scramble each day to fill with anything. The criteria seems to be if it was submitted, then it's available to run. The Times used to run letters from a convicted child molester who wrote from jail. And no one cared.
When I was religion editor at the Voice many years ago, I used to get incomprehensible letters from guy who was locked up in an institution in NJ. I may even have one of them kicking around here. We never published them, of course; they were extraordinarily lenghty, made no sense and the guy obviously was deranged.
But at least he had an excuse. Some of the letters I've read... I dunno.
Iseman can't, though...
Post a Comment