{"id":14091,"date":"2015-07-17T22:56:51","date_gmt":"2015-07-18T03:56:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=14091"},"modified":"2017-02-23T06:10:52","modified_gmt":"2017-02-23T11:10:52","slug":"letter-to-the-editorial-page-editor-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=14091","title":{"rendered":"Letter to the Editorial Page Editor &#8211; Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><strong>Notes to Readers:<\/p>\n<p>This is the 2,699 word long letter\/email I sent to the Duluth News Tribune\u2019s Editorial Page Editor, Chuck Frederick, on 7-15-2015. I\u2019ve broken it into five sections for my blog and put them in order 1-5 which is backwards from how Blog items are usually uploaded. I&#8217;ve done this for readers who are not used to the backward in time layout of blogs.<\/p>\n<p>I have taken names out to obscure people who don\u2019t need to be thrust into my blog and for those district employees whose identification might embolden the current school board to remove me from the School Board. It is apparent to me that the District is more inclined to cover up the bad behavior of its employees than to absolve Art Johnston. <\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Part 1<\/p>\n<p>Chuck,<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve got more on my mind than the letter Mxx  Xxxxxxxx told me about but I\u2019ll dispose of that first. Your email the other day jogged my memory. I\u2019d  forgotten that [he\/she] sent the DNT an email [he\/she] had sent to the Board  with the idea of it being an &#8220;open letter&#8221; to the School Board for republication in the Trib. I told [him\/her]  I have seen many such letters before in newspapers and that I didn\u2019t know of any reason that an emailed letter should be regarded by the Trib as though it had already been published in another newspaper or tabloid. Hell, no one sees the email sent to the Board. An admission here. I had noticed Mxx  Xxxxxxxx email but hadn\u2019t opened it yet.  I\u2019m sure it contained questionable facts because most everyone pontificating about the Board gets stuff wrong. But you have confirmed what [he\/she]  told me in one regard. You were treating [his\/her] email to us as though it had already been published elsewhere. I agreed with [him\/her]. That seems silly. <\/p>\n<p>[He\/She]  did not tell me that [he\/she]  refused to let you edit or alter [his\/her] prose. In fact, I got the impression [he\/she]  was surprised that you wouldn\u2019t be more flexible. I told [him\/her] what you told me. Letters to the editor can be negotiated to a mutual satisfaction grudging though it may be. <\/p>\n<p>I thought long and hard before mentioning your name in my blog post about your putting a thumb on the scale. I had asked Mxx  Xxxxxxxx to send me the email but [he\/she]  didn\u2019t get around to it. I decided to put my little cheap shot in the blog anyway. I\u2019d make some corrections now in it except I gather from your email you simply don\u2019t want me to write about you or your editorial process at all in my blog. Please let me know if I\u2019ve got that wrong because I too make corrections. I certainly don\u2019t see why you should be provided unmentionability in my blog when no citizen caught up in the news can expect it from a newspaper. What you do have a right to expect is that when you are being written about what is published is fair and accurate. I apologize to you for not working a little harder to get the facts absolutely straight. In my defense, which I\u2019ll grant is a crumby thing to add next to an apology, I put a question mark at the end of my blog title to suggest that there might be more to the story. That question mark was a riff on the question mark you headlined in the Trib\u2019s endorsement of me two years ago &#8220;and who?&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>Generally when I take the Tribune to task for its coverage of the School District I stick to needling the larger entity, &#8220;the Trib,&#8221; rather than its constituent human writers. In the old days I did mention Sarah Horner and took her to task a few times. I often mention Jana but I sure don\u2019t have a Nixonian &#8220;enemies list.&#8221; I have liked every reporter and editor I\u2019ve ever met. Back in my BB days (Before Blog) I might give a reporter a call and talk over my reservations about how a story was shaded. I never started a war with a reporter. I understand that those I\u2019ve dealt with were committed to good honest journalism. You and I both know that it is rare for any reporter to dive into a story with the detail of an historian. If I\u2019m fussy about reportage where I am concerned it\u2019s because I take seriously a newpaper\u2019s claim of being the* &#8220;first draft of history.&#8221; I want that first draft to be as free from* errors as you want it to be.<\/p>\n<p>continued ><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Notes to Readers: This is the 2,699 word long letter\/email I sent to the Duluth News Tribune\u2019s Editorial Page Editor, Chuck Frederick, on 7-15-2015&#8230;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[119,62],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14091"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14091"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14091\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19644,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14091\/revisions\/19644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}