Revisiting
some catty comments
She’s been gone for an entire year, but I still can hear my mother’s voice as clearly as I did when she was defending press freedom in videos of her final day at last summer’s police raid.
“This is a week when you need a cat editorial, Eric,” she would have told me, gently leaning against her walker instead of pounding it against the floor to protest illegal intrusion.
As with any keeper of a kitten soon to turn a year old, I dutifully and agreeably could accede to her advice and devote most of this page — except for the portion my cat would chew up if I left it within his reach — to fabulous feline feats.
Zenger’s recent efforts to cat around like Sir Edmund Hillary and become the first to scale his world’s highest peak — the top of my refrigerator — would suffice.
Rather than plant a flag at the summit, Zenger playfully bats at whatever already is there and then watches with a special intensity known only to members of the felis catus species as items do a gentle tarantella on the floor below.
“Cat editorials” was shorthand my mom and I shared for less serious content. Others in our newsroom have other names for such things: brighteners, features, feel-good pieces, what-have-you. Everyone in the business knows them, and everyone except a few Fox “news” anchors value them.
Believe it or not, we journalists grow just as weary as readers do of hearing gloom and doom. We make efforts every week to carve out time to pursue stories that aren’t in the “eat your vegetables” category. But when we’re short-staffed, as we have been since the raid and will be for a couple more weeks, we sometimes have to focus on the serious over the sublime.
That’s evident this week in our coverage of the bizarre twists involving Peabody’s missing interim city clerk and of our attempt to explain why promised reforms of Marion’s budgeting haven’t yet come to fruition.
During an all-too-heated exchange after Monday’s city council meeting in Marion, one of the council members hurled what he thought was an insult at us.
“All you do is ask questions,” he said, anger welling up as his face reddened.
Truth is, that is what we do. Journalism’s sole purpose is to ask the questions that readers have a need or right to know the answers to.
Sometimes the answers are pleasant and encouraging. Sometimes they aren’t. Most of the time, they’re a little of both. Asking them allows everyone involved to see what might be missing or problematic in the answers and possibly do better next time.
That, at least, is always our goal — giving people the information they need to turn what might be bad news into good.
We realize perhaps more than anyone knows how hard it is to be constantly criticized. Much as some people we cover think we pick on them, it’s open season every week on everything we do. A good example happened a few weeks ago when we tried to do an outsider’s view of the joys of participating in county fair judging. Some liked the piece. Others took to anti-social media to condemn it in no uncertain terms.
We imagine there are people in Peabody this week who are perturbed that we exposed problems there. There also are others thankful that someone finally dug around long enough to begin to unearth those difficulties.
We don’t have to imagine the animus of some Marion City Council members for us daring to ask questions about a budget process that seems just as troubled as last year’s. We imagine there are others who were afraid to ask or didn’t realize it was happening.
For every question we ask, there tends to be one person or group who dreads the question while there are others who are thankful we had insight, fortitude, or dumb luck to ask it.
That’s the way it is in this business, and nearly every decent practitioner knows it.
Just this week, an editor from Missouri posted on an email list for weekly editors how chagrined she was that she could point out violations of law and commonsense, but no one would do anything about them. Dozens of editors responded that she should keep the faith. Eventually, truth will prevail.
The violations she noted coincidentally involved government budgeting, which over the years has become increasingly left to appointed staff rather than elected representatives. Some call it a local swamp that must be drained. Others say it represents that government has become so complicated only bureaucrats or career public employees can understand it.
Whatever the case, I could litter this page with yet more cat-astrophes involving my feline friend Zenger, who still thinks attacking every movement is an appropriate way to show affection.
We seriously doubt that attacks we endure during such things as Monday night’s after-council shouting match in Marion are signs of affection.
But honestly, they should be. The only way to solve problems is to get them out in the open where they can be seen and worked on. In the end, despite what our attackers might think, we all want the same thing — a vibrant future for the community we’ve chosen as our home.
Personally, I helped finance purchase of this newspaper a quarter of a century ago expecting no financial reward and seeking only to prevent it from becoming owned by the type of chains that have gutted most other papers in the state.
I knew, as did Marion’s founding fathers, who essentially bribed our founding editor to come here from Dickinson County, that progress requires debate and discussion, and newspapers are the medium that provides this.
Yes, it’s discouraging to be yelled at and accused of hating a hometown I actually love and am willing to work for, as I do, without pay. But I have thick skin, and I would hope those who volunteer to serve in leadership roles might, too.
There’s an old saying in the newspaper business: “Show me a beloved editor and I’ll show you a sh--ty newspaper.” Truth is, the saying probably applies to anyone who tries to take on any sort of responsibility of leadership. Goals shouldn’t be to be beloved but to be effective and moving things forward. Only those willing to break a few eggs will ever be able to make an omelet.
— ERIC MEYER