Many people love 'their newspaper'
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
A caller left a calm but critical message on the Reader Representative phone line Sunday. The message ended with a bit of a twist -- "but I guess I still love you."
Some people might say the caller got confused about who he was calling. My choice is to assume that the caller actually does love us in spite of his criticisms.
That preference is based on other calls that come from our readers.
They frequently begin with criticisms -- of headlines, story choices, mistakes in the paper or our recent subscription rate increase. Just as frequently, those calls include the fact that they love their newspaper.
Many people feel an affinity for and ownership of "their newspaper." The Enterprise is the newspa- per that published their wedding announcement, their children's birth announcements and their parents' obituaries. They are emotionally invested in the content of the paper and feel completely justified in telling us how to run it.
We're glad they care and certainly listen to what they have to say. But we hope they realize that while they do have a voice, ultimately they don't get to make the tough decisions. We have legitimate business reasons for every decision we make. We recognize that sometimes those decisions are unpopular, but we still reserve the right to make them.
*
Another item that sometimes comes into question is the publication of opinions in our newspaper. We publish readers' comments in two formats -- letters to the editor and selected comments posted on our Web site,
BeaumontEnterprise.comLetters must follow specific guidelines, among them inclusion of the writer's name. Comments posted on our Web site can, in contrast, be anonymous.
That apparent contradiction has not escaped our readers.
Reasons include the fact that published comments are generally substantially more limited than the 200- word cap imposed on letter writers.
Letters also tend to carry a bit more weight than the brief comments we publish and are much more likely to be published.
We print close to 90 percent of the letters we receive as compared to posting about 10 percent of the comments.
Comments are more immediate than letters and allow our readers to follow multiple points of view in the form of a discussion about a topic.
Although we, in theory, allow anonymous comments online, those commenters do have to be registered.
So, even if we don't publish the true origin of the comments, we are aware of that origin.
We also screen and sometimes, though rarely, delete comments that we deem particularly inappropriate from our Web site and would not include those in published comments.
As journalists, we are rabid about the First Amendment and freedom of speech. In that interest we strive, as much as possible, to allow both comments and letters that might criticize The Enterprise or be offensive to us or to some readers.
Conversely, we've had some callers say we make it too difficult to post comments on some material on BeaumontEnterprise.com
That difficulty is based on the fact that, in most cases, only registered users can comment.
That registration not only allows us to be aware of the source of the comments, but also prevents spam comments that would both bog down our site and irritate our readers.
The way we allow readers to speak their mind is just one of many things that has experienced dramatic changes in this ever-changing world of journalism.
A caller left a calm but critical message on the Reader Representative phone line Sunday. The message ended with a bit of a twist -- "but I guess I still love you."
Some people might say the caller got confused about who he was calling. My choice is to assume that the caller actually does love us in spite of his criticisms.
That preference is based on other calls that come from our readers.
They frequently begin with criticisms -- of headlines, story choices, mistakes in the paper or our recent subscription rate increase. Just as frequently, those calls include the fact that they love their newspaper.
Many people feel an affinity for and ownership of "their newspaper." The Enterprise is the newspa- per that published their wedding announcement, their children's birth announcements and their parents' obituaries. They are emotionally invested in the content of the paper and feel completely justified in telling us how to run it.
We're glad they care and certainly listen to what they have to say. But we hope they realize that while they do have a voice, ultimately they don't get to make the tough decisions. We have legitimate business reasons for every decision we make. We recognize that sometimes those decisions are unpopular, but we still reserve the right to make them.
*
Another item that sometimes comes into question is the publication of opinions in our newspaper. We publish readers' comments in two formats -- letters to the editor and selected comments posted on our Web site,
BeaumontEnterprise.comLetters must follow specific guidelines, among them inclusion of the writer's name. Comments posted on our Web site can, in contrast, be anonymous.
That apparent contradiction has not escaped our readers.
Reasons include the fact that published comments are generally substantially more limited than the 200- word cap imposed on letter writers.
Letters also tend to carry a bit more weight than the brief comments we publish and are much more likely to be published.
We print close to 90 percent of the letters we receive as compared to posting about 10 percent of the comments.
Comments are more immediate than letters and allow our readers to follow multiple points of view in the form of a discussion about a topic.
Although we, in theory, allow anonymous comments online, those commenters do have to be registered.
So, even if we don't publish the true origin of the comments, we are aware of that origin.
We also screen and sometimes, though rarely, delete comments that we deem particularly inappropriate from our Web site and would not include those in published comments.
As journalists, we are rabid about the First Amendment and freedom of speech. In that interest we strive, as much as possible, to allow both comments and letters that might criticize The Enterprise or be offensive to us or to some readers.
Conversely, we've had some callers say we make it too difficult to post comments on some material on BeaumontEnterprise.com
That difficulty is based on the fact that, in most cases, only registered users can comment.
That registration not only allows us to be aware of the source of the comments, but also prevents spam comments that would both bog down our site and irritate our readers.
The way we allow readers to speak their mind is just one of many things that has experienced dramatic changes in this ever-changing world of journalism.
posted by Sheila Friedeck at 11:37 AM
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