Political correctness doesn’t rate high here

We didn’t tell our reader’s Merry Christmas across the top of our front page Tuesday morning. But we didn’t say Happy Holidays either.

That, to the one person who accused us of yielding to the pressure to be politically correct, should have been a clue. We didn’t choose not to say Merry Christmas because it’s a Christian holiday. We chose not to say anything because space is at a premium and we had, some time back, made the decision that our readers probably knew when it was Easter, or Memorial Day or Thanksgiving. So we stopped putting bunny rabbits and turkeys at the top of our front page to remind them.

In fact, we haven’t had a holiday headline across the top of our front page in almost a year. We did say Merry Christmas Southeast Texas (with a small, tasteful wreath) last year and we did say Happy New Year in plain blue type when we rang in 2007. But we didn’t tell anyone Happy Easter, or Happy Fourth of July – or even Happy Thanksgiving this year.

We pulled back from that because we decided we were overdoing it a bit, then we overdid the pulling back. We were going to trim the number of holiday salutes and we trimmed a bit closer than our original intentions. So, we’ll probably tell you Merry Christmas on your front page again next year, but you’ll see fewer holiday greetings than you might have in past years.

That’s not a matter of political correctness, in fact probably the opposite. If we acknowledge Memorial Day, should we also acknowledge Flag Day, Armed Forces Day and Veterans Day? If we do Christmas, should we do Hanukkah, or more appropriately Yom Kippur or Rosh Hashanah? What about Kwanzaa – or Cinco de Mayo, or more importantly Sept. 16, Mexican Independence Day? And how about Chinese New Year? What about Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and Grandparents’ Day? If we do Thanksgiving, should we do Valentine’s Day?

And, if we acknowledge Martin Luther King Jr. Day, do we do it on his actual birthday (Jan. 15) or the national holiday (Jan. 21 this year)?

We could discuss this at length and spend a lot of time scratching our heads and being concerned about perceptions and political correctness – or we could just worry about the news, putting out a good newspaper, and leave the holiday acknowledgements to the calendar makers.

That, at least this year, is our choice.

We strive for perfection, but fall short

One reader who wrote to comment on my most recent blog post pointed out a typographical error (now corrected.) Others regularly call the Reader Representative phone line at (409) 838-2846 to point out egregious errors in headlines, photo captions and stories.

We fix the mistakes we can, print corrections on most of those and continue to strive for perfection, recognizing that we will frequently fall short of our goal. I could start whining about deadlines and stress and the quantity of information we handle on a daily basis, but I would ultimately be wrong. We shouldn’t make mistakes, certainly not so many mistakes or such obvious ones.

The public is justifiably critical of our mistakes. We are, as they point out, professionals. Virtually every member of the news staff has at least an undergraduate degree, most of them in English or journalism. We all know the difference between there and their; between accept and except; even between affect and effect -- but we make mistakes.

The bottom line is that we all need editors. Even editors need editors, because our brains sometime read what we mean to say instead of what we actually write. I’ve found mistakes in items written by staff members higher on the organizational chain than I, and though I’ve been in newspaper management for more than 20 years, others have found mistakes in my work. It’s inherent.

Although composing at the keyboard is now standard practice for even elementary school students, the computer-age basic is a long-standing journalistic practice. Journalism students who felt the need to write their stories out longhand before putting a piece of paper in the typewriter disappeared from classrooms in the 1970s. I can’t imagine a journalism student today who would need such a crutch.

Sometimes our fingers work faster than our brains, so we make mistakes. We have spell check and grammar check at our fingertips, of course, but we all know they aren't infallible either.

When you see a mistake in The Beaumont Enterprise, call (409) 880-0748 or e-mail readerrep@beaumontenterprise.com and speak up. If something is confusing or inaccurate, we’ll correct it. If it's just stupid, we'll 'fess up and try to learn from it. Letting us know about errors rather than assuming we've seen them also helps get the on-line version corrected more quickly.

We take no pleasure in admitting our mistakes, but we don't try to hide them either. And we continue to work hard to keep errors out of the paper and off the Web site.

Why is there a pimp on MY front page?

The past week has both puzzled and angered some long-time Beaumont Enterprise readers.

The death of nationally known (and now Grammy-nominated) rapper Chad Butler, a Port Arthur native known to his fans as Pimp C, has made the front page of The Enterprise nine of the past 10 days.

Some readers have been offended by that, angered that the word “Pimp” was in a headline on our front page. Some were particularly offended that there was a front page story on Friday, Dec. 7, arguing that the front page should have been used as a salute to Pearl Harbor rather than to a dead rap star.

There are three things those readers need to recognize: (1) We ran a major story and large photograph on the death of Luke Trahin, a Pearl Harbor survivor on Thursday, Dec. 6th; (2) Our world now includes more rap fans than WWII survivors; (3) Just because we had substantial coverage on the death of Pimp C doesn't mean we left anything else out. We still managed to cover everything else we would have covered with or without Pimp C coverage.

As I told one caller – “No, I do not know Pimp C’s music. I am completely unfamiliar with him. But I recognized years ago that, musically, I am completely out of the loop when I reached the point that I didn’t recognize most of the people who were winning Grammy awards.”

Our Web page hits surged with our coverage of Pimp C. When “The Bayou” blog was the first to post information about final funeral arrangements, it got an average of about four hits per minute in the first hour and a half.

Our single copy (newspaper rack) sales in the Port Arthur area surged with initial coverage and continued to peak with sales Friday, the day of funeral coverage in the print edition. That doesn't mean The Enterprise made tons of money from the coverage -- not at 50 cents per copy -- but it DOES indicate that there was a great deal of public interest in this story and that IS important.

A newspaper is about many things, including recognizing our past, acknowledging our present and moving our community and its readers into the future. It’s also a business that has to recognize and serve all of its readers. It's about covering a community, or in our case, a region. The death of Pimp C WAS the biggest news in our region in the past 10 days. Because of that, it got a lot of coverage . . . well-deserved coverage.

One caller who left a message on the Reader Representative telephone line (409-880-0748) said he simply didn't understand what all the fuss was about because he had never heard of the guy. I called back and left him a message with some of this explanation. The next day, he called again, to thank me for the explanation and to further offer that he read Friday's stories and found them very interesting and informative. He kept an open mind and learned some new things along the way. That's another important role a newspaper can play in a community and the lives of its readers.

I’m still probably not going to listen to Pimp C’s music, but he IS now part of the history and heritage of this region. Arguing against that is simply a case of refusing to acknowledge facts.

Newspaper offers a treat for every taste

I am a subscriber to the Beaumont Enterprise. Yes I pay for it, albeit a discounted rate.

It is delivered to my home, so I am both an employee and a customer.

As a customer, I read most, but not all of the paper. As an employee, I read more than I probably otherwise would. And, I don’t read every single comic that appears in our paper.

Quite frankly, I simply don’t enjoy some of them. Others make my day.

Dilbert has been a favorite since we first started publishing it about a decade ago. Among the reader calls about our recent changes to the Money & Markets page, several involved concern about the disappearance of Dilbert from the front page of the business section. Those readers were relieved when I told them it hadn’t disappeared, but merely relocated.

And, I love the Dinette Set because, as in the case of many of our readers, those people remind me a bit of some relatives I’ve had to deal with through the years.

I choose to read some of the comics and skip others because I am familiar with their content and type of humor. Just as some people like slapstick humor, some like physical comedy and others only want to hear political chuckles, some people (like me) enjoy some comics but not others.

Bizarro, one of The Enterprise’s edgier comics, is one I can take or leave.

When I have time, I read it along with everything else. When I don’t, it’s generally one I would skip. In either case, I know it’s probably the place, or at least one of the top two or three places, on our comic page where the humor might not be in a style I would appreciate.

A reader, this week, complained about a recent Bizarro comic panel (Friday, Nov. 30) that contained the line “flip him the bird.”

The reader was offended that children might have read the comic and therefore parents might have had to explain its meaning to their children. Guess that reader missed the “sucks” reference in last week’s “Zits” comic (see earlier blog entry.)

I’ve been a kid. I’ve had kids. I don’t think kids would ask. I think they’d either get it, or not get it and move on. I think if they asked parents to explain it to them it would be because there was a better than 50 percent chance they completely understood it and were just wanted to watch their parents sweat.

For the record, cause there’s no way for you to go back and look this up, the joke was about three-toed sloths taunting two-toed sloths. Put that together with the punch line and you can figure out the one talent at which the three-toed sloths excelled. It’s worth a chuckle, but it’s certainly not laugh-out-loud funny.

The comics page can’t be all about entertaining children any more than it can be all about entertaining adults.

This isn’t required reading and there’s no pop quiz afterwards, so, if you prefer to stay away from slightly edgy topics – skip Bizarro and stick with Hi and Lois.