My wife cringes when I sit down each evening to read The Facts, our little community newspaper here in Redlands.
She cringes because she knows that on any given night, I will find something that will turn me into a raging, vein-popping, bug-eyed, up-close-and-personal local version of Lewis Black.
It's not that there's no news in The Facts. I'm accustomed to that; I resigned myself to the new realities of community journalism a long time ago. What stirs me up like a turbocharged Oster blender set on warp drive are the typos, pagination errors, style absurdities, and just plain amateurism I find on a routine basis.
When it really gets to me, I grab the paper and head for the computer. My wife will go "uh-oh" and ask to see what I write to Facts editor Jennifer Dobbs. I suspect she wants to know if she should be dialing the phone for a defense attorney.
I felt compelled to fire off one of my famous Nastygrams again just a few hours ago. It seems that they have hired a reporter who, I suspect, never finished middle school, much less journalism school. I have never seen an article printed in any newspaper (even The Facts!) with such poor sentence structure, misspelled words, or bad grammar. I'd give you examples, but I'm trying hard to keep my blood pressure below flash point.
I practically demanded that editor Dobbs email a reply, and she did. Here's what it said:
I looked at the piece after receiving your e-mail and agree it should not have run and it wasn't scheduled to run. I need to talk to staff and find out why that happened.
Thank you for bringing it to my attention.
I'm glad that the article should not have run, but it begs the question: Why was Ms. Dobbs not aware of the story until I alerted her to it?
I just don't have it in me to ask.
Small steps, David. Small steps...
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