Comments on all things journalism and answers to questions from readers about news coverage and operations at the Tracy Press.

Thursday, February 22, 2007

Anonymous Postcards from Tracy, California

Someone just gave me a link to PostSecret, a blog that describes itself as an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets on one side of a homemade postcard. Some of the cards are funny or touching, while others are just silly. But the site — and the concept — is interesting.


We have our own experience with postcards here at the Tracy Press. We've gotten handmade postcards from the same person almost every week for probably 10 years. The postcards are handwritten, sometimes with words and graphics clipped out of the paper and glued to the postcard. Then the whole thing is carefully covered with wide tape, so it looks laminated.


We’ve never used the postcards as letters to the editor, because they're never signed. But we know something about the writer, who is a faithful reader of our editorial page. He/she finds many of our writers to be too conservative and isn't a fan of President Bush or the former Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy.


A few months ago, someone else in town got one of the mystery postcards at home and called the police, reporting it as hate mail. We’ve never called it hate mail, even though the writer doesn’t seem to like us much and calls us conservative yuppies. (By the way, postcard-writer, we've endorsed Gore and Kerry for president, never Bush.) We look forward to the next installment, carefully crafted from a Tracy Press reader.


Here's one of the recent postcards:





7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I got one of those postcards and it called me a conservative apologist. I apprecaited it because I've only been called "conservative" after writing a column about three times in my life. It truly made my day.

OK... I should be designing a POP page.

Anonymous said...

Obviously someone has way too much time on their hands!

Anonymous said...

I always thought and was led to believe the the media (including newspapers) were supposed to be non-bias and just report the facts. Now that you admit the Tracy Press has endorsed some of this countries most liberal and left-wing "politicians", I will just read the comics. No wonder the Tracy Press is getting thinner.
from a deployed Airman

Brian W. Barringer said...

interesting post. Thats true he is not harming anyone. You should publish the good ones, the writer would get a kick out of that I bet.

Anonymous said...

Jon a conservative? hehe good one! The secret postcard site is really neat, I thought it was dead, have not been there in a while, I used to get a big lump in my throat reading those...

Jon Mendelson said...

Cheri, you should blog again!

Also, to the deployed Airman, the Press' editorial endorsements have nothing to do with its political news coverage. As with all major newspapers (SF Chronicle, LA Times, NY Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, etc.) the editorial section and its endorsements/viewpoints are isolated from its news department, thereby giving both opinion and straight analysis.
Welcome to the nuances of news.

Cheri said...

To the deployed, anonymous airman: Good newspapers try to remain unbiased in their news coverage -- and they keep their editorial endorsements on the editorial pages (as we do).