Temperatures hit record highs

For the first time in my adult life, the recent headlines have held little luster for me. Meaningful news has been delivered only by doctors in a rural hospital in Montana, where my mom is very sick. I guess you could say I'm out of the loop, and I'm thankful for the reporters, editors and photographers I have working for me.

Meanwhile, I'm getting angry e-mails about the photo of the dead calf we have on today's home page and newspaper cover. I'm collecting all opinions, and I'd like to write a column.

Posted by cmatthews at July 25, 2006 02:44 PM

First of all, Best wishes for a full and speedy recovery for your Mom.

My first thought at reading the complaint letter in today's edition of the TP was, “Oh, boohoo”, I think some people are a bit too sensitive to be reading a newspaper, where they may learn about some of the harsh things going on in the world around us. The photo was not gruesome in any way, beyond the fact that it depicted a dead cow.

Posted by: Jim Freeman at July 27, 2006 10:12 AM

Glad to have you back and sympathize with you regarding your trip to Montana. I hope things turned out well in that respect.

With respect to the dead cow on the front page. I wouldn't worry about it. People complain about anything for no apparent good reason.

It amazes me that people will shell out as much as $15 per head to go and see the latest blood and meyham at the theater, pay huge sums of money to watch what amounts to pornography on television and yet a picture of a dead cow on the front page of the paper turns their stomach?

Give me a break please! Has this world suddenly gone completely insane or have I simply not been paying attention to what has been going on?

It's kind of like the article I wrote regarding the gutters and drains in the subdivision that contains Zanussi Park.

One person complains about me lurking around and learing through fences, even though I was driving my car. Another complains of the gutter in another side of town, which I was not addressing at all. Then one of our local writers impunes I am a lord from Austria and insults all of the people involved by accusing them of pimping.

So don't worry about the nonsence that people come up with. I have become use to it.

Take care.

Dave

The great newspaper consolidation of '06

The Associated Press reports that Clinton Reilly, a millionaire real estate investor, is suing to prevent McClatchy Inc. from completing a $737 million deal to sell three of the Bay Area newspapers it picked up in its recent acquisition of Knight Ridder Inc.

The proposed deal "will result in the defendants' control of every major newspaper in the greater Bay Area," Reilly's attorney, Joe Alioto, said in a statement. That will result in higher rates for subscriptions and advertising, more-limited news and editorial coverage and decreased newspaper quality, he said.

For some food for thought, check out John McManus at Grade the News.

Posted by cmatthews at July 15, 2006 03:47 PM

Kudo's to one of the only "family owned" papers left in this state...
Interesting the priority of concerns started with higher rates for subscriptions, then concern over advertising rates, and then finally limited news and editorial coverage. That would have been my first concern....

Mum no more

I'm still scratching my head over writer Robert Novak's column Thursday, in which he breaks his silence -- sort of -- about the sources for his July 2003 column that identified CIA officer Valerie Plame.

Up until now, Novak, whose syndicated columns run in the Tracy Press, would never say whether he'd appeared before a grand jury or ever revealed his sources. I assumed he had and debated canceling our contract for running his column. While other reporters were either jailed or threatened with jail time for refusing to give up the sources who had leaked classified information to them, Novak, who had been the first to write about Plame, appeared to sit comfortably.

This week, Novak wrote that he'd testified before a grand jury in February 2004, that the special prosecutor by that time already knew the names of his sources, and that his sources (including White House adviser Karl Rove) had granted him legal waivers to testify. He names only two of those sources; his super-secret source remains shielded out of journalistic obligation, he wrote.

One last tidbit is that Novak said he'd figured out the identity of Ambassador Wilson's wife all on his own. He'd gotten Plame's name from an entry in "Who's Who in America."

Of course, the "leak" wasn't her name at all; it was the fact that Joe Wilson's wife was a CIA operative.

Meanwhile, Plame has sued Rove along with Vice President Dick Cheney, accusing them and other White House officials of conspiring to destroy her career.

More meltdown in Santa Barbara

Reporters at the Santa Barbara News-Press are silently protesting today following the resignation of a sixth editor at the paper. Owner Wendy McCaw published a front-page note to readers Thursday that characterized the paper's turmoil as a disagreement about local coverage.

The Tracy Press has an Associated Pres story today that reports that some of the departed insist ethics are at the heart of the matter, while the newspaper's ownership say a focus on local news led to the exits.

R-rated Annie?

I just got this letter and wonder if other readers agree. What do you think?

"I am finally disgusted enough to write about the layout of the Tracy
Press. In the Wednesday morning edition, I found the disgusting letter to 'Annie's Mailbox' amid the comics. The content of that letter was R-rated at best. This column contains sexual innuendo at least three times a week. I find this trend disturbing and distracting when reading the comics with my children.

"Moreover, you run advertisements encouraging parents and children to read the paper together. However, I don't take my children to PG-13 movies, and I shouldn't have to come across that sort of material while reading the paper with them. My son, who is nearly 11, often reads this column before I can get to the paper and rip out that section. He doesn't need to be curious about this type of material at his age!

"Please put this column on some other page or delete it."

Posted by cmatthews at July 10, 2006 07:47 AM

The reader is more than within his or her rights to edit the paper for his or her own children, or even cancel a subscription. In fact, last time I checked, that's exactly the kind of role a parent should be playing in the life of a child — establishing boundaries, instilling moral values and determining what is and is not appropriate.
However, that is not the job of a newspaper, its editors or its writers. Bowing to the most-sensitive readers in any community would lead to a blank newspaper. Let the parents be parents and the newspaper be a newspaper.
On a personal note, I wouldn't be opposed to taking out the Mailbox and putting in a couple of other comic strips, but mostly because I find many of the people needing advice simply lack common sense.
Thanks for the posting...

Posted by: J. Mendelson at July 10, 2006 06:32 PM

Glad to have you blogging again, Cheri.

Posted by: Ed Gable at July 11, 2006 10:09 AM

Have I been missing something? PG? R? Must read it again. My opinion of "Annie's Mailbox" is much like Jon Mendelson's. The writers lack commmon sense. I'm glad parents read the paper, especially the comics, with their children. But what do you do with Garfrield's oversexed but underfulfilled owner? How do you --or does anyone-- explain "Bizarro"? What about Bucky's bad attitude in "Get Fuzzy?" I wonder if the letter writer thinks positively about the horoscopes? I am most offended by the daily body count in the news from Iraq. What do you say to a child about that?

Posted by: Mike McLellan at July 11, 2006 10:25 AM

I learned to read via the newspaper and supermarket tabloids. I can remember being 6 years old and sounding out Nos-tra-damus in a "Weekly World News" story about his predictions that "marked the end of the world was near." Newspaper stories taught me about "adultery," "sodomy," "homosexual," and others words I'm sure my mother wasn't ready to define for me at that age but did.
But, it was the Bible that gave me the rudest awakening as a child.
At 8 years old, it taught me that no matter how good I was, I could never go to heaven. The family Bible was quite old, printed long before Vatican II, and it had a glossary section that served as a quick reference guide for the curious Catholic. Reading it, I came across a challenging word I'd never seen before: illegitimate. The Bible defined the word as a child who is the product of unmarried parents. The entry went on to say that such children, borne of sin, were not eligible for entry into heaven.
The next day, I discussed heaven with my mom and who in our family was there. I matter-of-factly told her that I was sad not to meet those relatives. She assured me that I would get my chance when I got there.
Imagine the look on a mother's face when her 8-year-old says, "No, I don't get to go to heaven because I'm illegitimate." I could see her blood boil. "Who told you that?" she demanded to know. "I read it last night in the Bible. The Bible says that illegitimate children can't go to heaven, and I know I'm illegitimate because you've never been married."
She said something under her breath, told me that the Bible was really old and that I should pay it no attention. When I went to bed that night, I noticed it was gone from my bedside table.
Up to that point, the Bible had been my best source for salacious reading (it full of tales of sex, murder and subterfuge) -- stuff children who, like me, weren't allowed to watch movies rated higher than PG or TV shows that aired after 8 p.m., never were exposed to. After that, the sanitized facts of newspapers dulled by comparison.

Posted by: Tonya at July 12, 2006 10:51 AM

5 editors, 1 veteran columnist quit

I checked the Rough & Tumble site first thing today for the latest in coverage of California politics and public policy, and I saw the Los Angeles Times item about the walkout at the Santa Barbara News-Press.

My first thought was: Wow. What would it take to get all those people to leave a newspaper? My next one was: Wow. How stupid is that newspaper's owner.

According to the Times, the six resigned in protest after being told to kill a short article about a drunk-driving sentence given to the then-editorial page editor (now publisher). Another dispute involved the owner's reprimand of a reporter and three editors for publishing the address where actor Rob Lowe planned to build his "dream home." The final straw was when the new publisher announced that he'd also directly oversee some news coverage.

Could that happen here?
No.
1. We've always said that we will print the names of all felony drunk-driving arrests in Tracy, which includes even our own children, who are now of legal age — and, I might add, have managed to stay out of trouble!

2. We'd print the address of anyone, even a friend who begged for privacy, who had convinced our planning commission to build a 10,000-plus-square-foot home despite a neighbor's protests. Hello. It's public record and probably pretty good copy.

3. Our publisher doesn't oversee news coverage. I do. I'm part of the family that owns this paper. But I'm the editor.