We’re not less friendly, just more secure

For the more than 28 years I’ve been at The Beaumont Enterprise, members of the public have been able to walk in the front door of our building and proceed on their way to the office of whomever they came to see. They can still do that, with a slight delay.

Now, instead of walking in the front door and jumping on the elevator, people who want to go beyond the front lobby of The Enterprise building have to wait for an escort, complete with appropriate security clearance, to take them where they want to go. We’re not trying to be difficult; we’re just trying to provide a safe, secure, work environment for our employees.

Most readers of The Beaumont Enterprise probably have a vague idea that our building is located somewhere in downtown Beaumont, but few have probably actually been here, unless it was on a building tour when they were in elementary school.

Most people who do business with The Enterprise don’t actually conduct their business in our office. They interact with an advertising representative, newspaper carrier or handle their business via the telephone or Internet. And that works well in most cases.

Some people prefer to come to the newspaper office to pay their bill, place a classified advertisement or drop off their news release. And that’s fine too. All of that is still perfectly acceptable.

For the convenience of our customers, much of their business, including basic classified advertising, can be conducted in the lobby area of our downtown building. A staff member there can assist them with most ads and another can take their subscription payments or sell them back issues of our newspaper. We even have baskets where customers can place their news releases for pick up by our editorial department staff.

But visitors can’t go to offices in other parts of the building without an escort who has a security pass to provide them access. Longtime customers who know our building, our staff members and our procedures, might find this a bit extreme, but it’s our way of controlling our work environment and making sure our employees are safe.

Just as you can’t walk into offices of many other businesses and institutions in the region, you can no longer make the rounds of the offices at The Enterprise without an escort. Please don’t let that stop you if you need to see us, simply check with the staff members in the lobby and they will let us know you’re here.

Bias exists in people, not this newspaper

Contrary to what is apparently a popular belief, The Beaumont Enterprise doesn’t have a political agenda, at least not where political candidates are concerned. We, as a newspaper, do fight diligently for Constitutional rights such as Freedom of the Press, and for the public’s right to know. That’s our job and we do our very best to pursue it diligently.

Now, for all the people who are picking up their telephones at this moment to raise the issue of political endorsements, please (literally) hold the phone for a moment. Yes, we, as a newspaper DO generally (though not always) endorse political candidates, but that is a completely separate issue.

Those endorsements are discussed and decided by an editorial board of several senior managers. They represent, not one person’s opinion, but the opinion of a group of people of varying backgrounds and preferences who generally have personal interviews with the candidates before making those decisions. Those endorsements are published on our editorial or opinions page – the ONLY place in a newspaper where any opinions (other than those properly labeled as commentary or criticism, such as movie reviews) should appear.

The news pages of the paper (particularly the front page) are not the place for expressions of political support or, in the alternative, lack of support for any political candidate.

Yes, we do have staff members who have their own political opinions involved in selection of those stories and photos and creation of those pages. They are encouraged to keep those opinions to themselves. Our Beaumont Enterprise ethics guidelines prohibit editorial employees from participating in political campaigns or placing political bumper stickers on their cars parked in company parking lots. That’s how serious we are about keeping political bias out of our newsroom.

Last Thursday the Iowa caucus officially kicked off the beginning of major political positioning for the 2008 Presidential election. Barack Obama won the Democratic caucus (while Mike Huckabee won the Republican.) On page 2 of Friday’s Beaumont Enterprise it was an approximately three-inch story, without so much as a small photo.

That was a bad decision and bad play of a very important national story. Not only was it an important milestone in the election, it was an important milestone for our country as the first ever African American, running and a primarily white Mid-American state, won a major party caucus. Our editor, Tim Kelly, sent out an internal message that day, helping editors making those decisions recognize the error in judgment.

They apparently listened. In fact they even discussed it, deciding during Tuesday’s planning meeting that results of the New Hampshire primary would run high on the front page with photographs of the winning candidates for both parties. At that time, obviously, we had no idea who those winning candidates might be. We were trying to correct an error in judgment made when we published Iowa caucus results. It was an error that needed to be corrected, whether or not the perfect political situation presented itself.

This time, Obama wasn’t the winner, Hillary Rodham Clinton was. Some readers want to make that an issue. They even want to make it a racial issue. It isn’t, it wasn’t, it was a mistake that we corrected.

But, just to prove that everyone seems to be a conspiracy theorist these days, we also had complaints that the photograph of Clinton we published was not flattering and therefore provided evidence of our bias against her.

No, it wasn’t. We aren’t. Really. We cover the news; we simply don’t have time to try to mold it to suit any underlying purpose other than that.

Elderly deserve our help, patience

I don’t yet consider myself elderly, though, in some circles, I DO qualify for senior citizen discounts. I also don’t consider myself a technophobe, but, without a doubt, my children can outperform me on anything that plugs in or uses batteries.

When I came to work at The Enterprise, news stories were still being typed on typewriters -- electric typewriters, but typewriters nonetheless. I still remember how intimidating those first huge, awkward, mainframe computers were and how afraid I was that I was going to punch the wrong button and break one and have to pay the company back the multi-thousand dollar cost of the sophisticated machinery.

My mother, who also worked at a small weekly newspaper for years, retired more than 20 years ago, before fax machines became a regular (and now almost outdated) part of business activity. She’s mystified that documents can move over telephone lines and doesn’t like the concept because she doesn’t want anybody to know “her business.”

The moral of this somewhat circuitous tale is, times change, and we have to as well, in order to keep up with our world and what is going on in it.

In recent weeks, I’ve had multiple telephone conversations with, primarily older, readers who are upset about changes in our reporting on stock market activity and our failure to include their one particular, frequently obscure, stock in our daily printed listings.

The majority of the callers share three characteristics: they are mostly 75 or older, they don’t have a computer and they don’t want to get a computer or learn how to work one.

I’ve told more than one of those readers that they don’t know what they are missing. Computers, and Internet access, basically put the world at your fingertips. They are tools that open whole new worlds to explore. What a shame that lack of access, lack of knowledge and out-and-out fear deprive these people of all they could learn and do and know . . . even at their age.

So, even though it’s after Christmas, think about spending some one-on-one time with Grandma or Grandpa next time you can find a moment. Drag your laptop along and/or drive them to the nearest WiFi location and show them what they are missing. And remember, whether they admit it or not, they will be resistant and afraid. Be patient, and persistent.

I may never learn what tasks all the buttons on the universal television remote perform, but I’d hate to die knowing I’d never had the chance to Google.