Editor’s Note
Back in the old days — that’s less than a decade and before there were such things as blogs and interactive conversations with readers — editors used to respond to their newspaper readers with an “editor’s note.” Sometimes it clarified a point made in a letter to the editor. Sometimes it offered a correction. Sometimes it was just a simple explanation. An editor’s note was a handful of sentences; maybe a four or five paragraphs. It was always a personal link between the editor and the reader. Only difference between it and today’s blog is the immediacy and the platform. Welcome to Editor’s Note.

Archive for April 4th, 2009

Don’t gamble with gun threats

3 comments April 4th, 2009

Three police officers dead in Pittsburgh today because the shooter had lost his job and was convinced the Obama administration was going to take his guns. Thirteen, plus the suicide-shooter, dead in Binghamton, N.Y. yesterday. Yeah, I hear you Second Amendment folks: Guns don’t kill people.

Angry, unbalanced people with guns kill people.

We get our share of nasty phone calls at the News Tower. Earlier this week one of our staffers took a particularly threatening one from a man who said he’d get his gun and shoot anyone who messed with him or dared come near his property — and he meant our newspaper people.

We filed a police report. In my almost 40 years of handling  out-of-control callers and visitors, I personally can remember filing less than a dozen. This time we did.

In today’s angry, armed world, when someone threatens to use a gun, it is a fool who doesn’t take it seriously. As I said the day we filed the report: I don’t want to be the one to write the headline: Register Star had early warning of shooter’s intent, but failed to alert authorities.

Of cops, whistle blowers, journalists and the First Amendment

1 comment April 4th, 2009

Not everyone is rooting for the death of newspapers and the journalists who fill their news pages. Though their voices are whispers compared to the shouts of the rabble clamoring for a world in which no one can or will hold them accountable, those whispers are steadily increasing.

Tom Wartowski shared this Wall Street Journal link with me on Friday evening. Take a few minutes to read the opinion from a Maryland judge as he wrote about the case of a police officer-turned-whistle blower.

Then, come back here. You’ll understand the rest of this post a little better:

Anyone can be a secretary for the city council meeting. For the high school musical. For the criminal trial. For the school board. Anyone can fill the newspaper pages and the Web posts with information the recorder records and the secretary transcribes. Anyone can spout an opinion around that information. And it’s that information that fills our pages so successfully every day.

Only a journalist protected by the First Amendment and fortified with an obsession to keep asking “who, what when why and how” can make a difference. Maybe that happens once a day on the micro scale, once a career on the macro. But it happens. And it matters. We will only know how much when it is gone.