Since 1985 I have written roughly three
to six letters per year, plus a handful of guest commentaries, to the Monterey Herald. All but
one or two have been published. I've
also had letters published in the Carmel Pine Cone, Monterey County
Weekly, USA Today, and the Christian Science Monitor, so I have a
pretty good idea of what I'm doing. In many cases editors have
changed a word or phrase here and there, but for the most part my
letters have been published pretty much intact, until now. I have
never before had a letter so thoroughly butchered in print as the one
published in the Herald last Tuesday, July 8th.
I've
been hesitant to submit a letter to the Herald for a few months now.
From the day former editor Royal Calkins disappeared I noticed that
our local daily had been printing fewer letters than ever before, and
much shorter ones, too. I suspected the new editor Don Miller was
doing a hatchet job on reader submissions, and I was right.
Here's
the letter I wrote last week:
In the July 4th article
about illegal fireworks a Seaside fire official described the problem
as “overwhelming.” Every peace-loving Seaside resident would
agree. The annual barrage of house-shaking KABOOMS starts around
Memorial Day, peaks around Independence Day, then gradually tapers
off the rest of the summer. Seaside sounds so much like a war zone
that I've dubbed it “Baghdad-By-The-Bay.”
This year has been particularly bad.
Every night for the past two weeks rockets approximating professional
fireworks have been launched from three locations within a block of
our home anywhere from 8:00 PM to 2:00 AM. They BANG so loud it makes
us jump out of our skins. Complaining to the police is useless.
They've told me that unless they see it happen, there's nothing they
can do. But the chances of an officer facing the right property
during the 3 seconds it takes to launch and explode a rocket is close
to zero.
One
officer told me that the city council receives numerous complaints
every year, and every year the council does nothing. Their inaction
has fostered an environment of tolerance for an illegal activity that
disrupts what should be pleasant summer evenings.
Sincerely,
-James
B. Toy
I've
always been mindful of staying within the Herald's 200 word limit*
and this one squeaked in at 199. That's never been a problem before.
But for the Hatchet Man it was 75 words too much. This is what he
printed, with my name on it:
In the July 4 illegal fireworks article, a Seaside fire official
described the problem as "overwhelming." Seaside residents
would agree. The annual barrage of house-shaking noise starts around
Memorial Day, peaks around Independence Day, then tapers off the rest
of summer.
This year has been particularly bad. Every night for the past two
weeks fireworks have been launched from three locations within a
block of our home between 8 p.m. and 2 a.m. Complaining to the police
is useless. They told me that unless they see it happen, there's
nothing they can do. One officer said the city council receives
numerous complaints every year and the council does nothing. Their
inaction has fostered an environment for an illegal activity that
disrupts pleasant summer evenings.
James
B. Toy, Seaside
In
three decades I haven't had 75 words cut from all of my letters
combined! So this came as quite a shock. Not only did Miller cut out
entire sentences, he changed the meaning of two of them.
I
did not write the line "Seaside residents would agree." Don
Miller did. It's wrong because it implies that EVERY Seaside resident
would agree with me. But I couldn't say that because the Seaside
residents who set off these rockets would not agree, right? That's
why I qualified it by saying "Every peace-loving Seaside
resident would agree." I chose those words carefully to be
precise. The Herald made it look like I made a blanket statement I
can't substantiate, which reflects on my credibility. No previous
Herald editor (including some truly awful ones) ever did that to me.
Miller's
version of “my” letter ended with "Their inaction has
fostered an environment for an illegal activity that disrupts
pleasant summer evenings." But I wrote: "...an environment
of tolerance for an illegal activity...." My intent was to
emphasize official tolerance of illegal activity - basically the
council looks the other way. But the Herald took that meaning away
and changed the emphasis. If Miller had changed it to "fostered
tolerance for an illegal activity" I would have been OK with
that because it would have retained my original intent.
I
was also dismayed that he sucked the humor out of my letter by
removing the sentence where I labeled Seaside as
“Baghdad-By-The-Bay.” That was not just meant to be a joke, but
also to publicly put city leaders on notice that the nightly
noisemakers were damaging Seaside's image.
So
what I intended to convey and what actually appeared in print were
not exactly the same, yet my name accompanied the mangled message
anyway. I have informed the editor, who is actually the editor of the
Santa Cruz paper now doing double-duty, that I will not be
contributing any further letters to the Herald until he has been
replaced by a truly local editor who knows the Herald's readership,
the Herald's letter writers, and the Herald's territory. I added that
I will have trouble taking seriously any letters he publishes,
knowing first hand that what gets written and what gets printed can
be entirely different things. As of Friday he had not responded.
A friend of mine who saw both the
original and edited letters aptly described the problem on Facebook
saying "I
like the original MUCH better than the edited one. Your original
piece lets us feel the pain your community suffers, and that is the
point. Edited, you just sound whiny. I can see why you wont be
contributing until there is a change at the Herald."
She's
right.
This
is just the latest frustration I've had with the Herald in the past
four or five months since Digital First Media started consolidating
its operations, taking much of the “local” out of the local
paper. I'll get into the rest of my complaints another day.
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*In
the 1980s the limit was a more generous 250 words, and during the
brief period of Reg Henry's stewardship he allowed letters up to 300
words.