Last week someone called in complaining that a press release had not gotten in the paper. Because the subject of this release is African-American, we were accused on being a bunch of racists. They, whoever they were, were going to come picket our office.
Well, first of all, the press release was in the paper. Apparently it did not get in another weekly newspaper, which we have no control over.
The funny thing is - right before the election we had several calls complaining about the front page photo of Barack Obama with Fred Cook and his mom Phyllis. I spoke to one of the gentlemen who called. He was very polite but questioned whether we were surreptitiously endorsing Mr. Obama. Well if we decide to endorse someone, it will be very clear that we are doing so.
But in this case there was no politics involved. We don't typically cover national news or national elections. If you want that - watch CNN. But in this case the presidential candidates came close enough to the area for us to request press credentials. And, we have a free-lancer who thinks getting to the venue hours ahead of time and then waiting for the candidate to appear is a fun thing, so we covered rallies by Obama, Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin.
In this case however, it was a photo of someone from King George personally meeting with the candidate and that's news as far as I am concerned.
That's basically what I told this caller.
So which is? Are we a bunch of racists or closet Obama supporters?
Well we were split in the office between McCain and Obama supporters but we managed to work together with no more than our usual level of bickering and complaining.
As far as not getting something in the paper ... instead of going immediately for the worst explanation, how about giving us the benefit of the doubt. We forgot, we misplaced it, we're incompetent, we didn't have room. Any of those are good explanations and have the benefit of sometime being true.
But racist. No, that is not the reason!
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