Newspaper readers always have lots of questions.
They want to know why something happened, or did not happen.
They want to know what can be done about it.
The curiosity about newspapers, and journalism in general, is pervasive, persistent and — when civil — usually appreciated.
What follows is a cross-section of questions readers have asked within the past few weeks, starting with the most-frequently mentioned.
Question: Why do so many Bee pages seem to have ink smears or blotches? (Some readers think this has gotten worse in recent months, particularly in areas served by the early edition.) “Just what is the problem?” asked Mrs. N.A. Rothenberg of Grass Valley.
Answer: Production Director Ken Duffield explains often that The Sacramento Bee uses oil-based inks, as do most large American newspapers, and those inks dry slower than the water-based inks used at some newspapers (including Modesto and Fresno). Because the Sacramento region does not meet air quality standards set by law, The Bee cannot add adequate chemical drying agents (which contain volatile organic compounds) into the ink to speed up the drying process. That’s the law. The ink rub-off problem is aggravated sometimes by the gripping devices along the edge of the conveyors that handle the newspaper during the packaging process.
Q. “Can you get The Bee to fix whatever causes this?” asked Maggie McAnaney of Sacramento.
A. I wish I could, but a fix won’t happen quickly. The press and packaging crews are aware of the problem, and constantly try to get the best performance from the equipment. The poor air quality is a problem generated primarily by thousands of gas-burning vehicles here and in the Bay Area, which shares its dirty air with us. Replacing the Bee’s presses with those which could use water-based inks would require tens of millions of dollars, unlikely anytime soon, Duffield says.
Q. Please explain, a Jackson reader asked, how Californians’ “average wage” reported in The Bee’s Business page’s graphic was $83,103, and the “average private sector wage” was shown as $37,311?
A. Business Editor Stuart Drown figured out that two key words were missing: “high tech.” In other words, the folks in high tech industries make a lot more money than the average person, something we all knew but couldn’t guess in this instance.
Q. “What happened to the weekly insert in my Sunday Bee of Access Magazine which covered computer-related news and websites?” asked Diane Mahoney.
A. Access went out of business in mid-June, and The Bee editors ran a short story on page one of the Sunday paper to explain the reasons. We’re still getting calls asking what happened. For those of you who missed the explanation: In its notice to The Bee, Access Media wrote that it has struggled with “the current condition of the capital markets. Magazine founder Mike Veitch is in discussions with potential new investors in hopes he can bring the magazine back someday.”
Q. Why doesn’t The Bee still publish columns by (choose one) Molly Ivins, Dave Barry, Ellen Goodman or Arianna Huffington?
A. The Bee does, but not always with the frequency readers prefer. Barry moved back to Sundays in April, and a few readers did not notice that change. The three opinion page columnists run irregularly, as editors try to run only the best of their columns.
Q. What happened to the simple and easy-to-understand “back page” designation? Reader Mark Lydell points out that The Bee’s front page articles used to consistently continue on the back page of the main news section, and, “rather than a page number it said ‘BACK PAGE’ so you knew instantly where to go. Now it just gives a page number… When you turn it over, then you have to go diving into the middle of the section to find the article. Why was the change made?”
A. Two things happened. When the Bee’s computer system was changed months ago, the software to create the “back page” designation was missed in the planning, and the page number instead of the page name is now generated automatically by the new software. The editor in charge of design said recently the “back page” designation will return in a few months, when an updated version of the software is installed. That hasn’t happened yet.
Second, it appears to this reader, and to me, that more page one stories are being continued on inside pages than once was the practice at The Bee. You no longer can expect to automatically find the continuation of a page one story on the back page of the main news section. (Wednesday’s newspaper had stories continuing in three different locations.)
More words about words
More Bee readers this week volunteered clichs and other words they would prefer never appear in their newspaper.
Norman Haynes of Sutter suggested “now-defunct” is unnecessary. Something is defunct, or it isn’t.
Bill Dedman believes adding “based” to a location “is a bit of PR puffery” and “means nothing.” He is, he said to prove his point, “a fan of the Chicago-based Cubs.”
Richard Andrew Kowaleski, of Orangevale, pointed out another strange word-use which appears often in The Bee: degrees of uniqueness. The Bee used “truly unique,” “most unique,” and “very unique” a total of 173 times.
Ken Costa of San Francisco suggested “sea change” and “win win,” but his favorite irritant is the way newspapers misuse the word “community.” He recalls reading about the “venture capital community,” the “A-10 (warplane) community” and, “gender communities,” which he suspects means “men” and “women.”
Lisa Chamberlain of Cleveland said her pet peeve is “he/she is not alone” when “transitioning … to the evidence that one person’s situation is not just anecdotal.”
Mary Jane Mee expected “staffer” and “bureaucrat” to be high on any list of over-used words. Normal people don’t talk that way, she said.
Reader Ross Corbett of Sacramento expressed compassion for Bee writers and editors if they were forced to abandon clichs.
“Clichs become clichs because they are easily understood,” he said in defending the journalists. “Don’t worry staffers,” he wrote, unaware of Mee’s dislike of that word, “this too shall pass as editors become tired of reading awkward phrases that could be handled so much better with a clich.”
And reader Norman Barth disputed my suggestion that the word “paradigm” originated with a Michigan professor. “Actually, it comes from a song popular in the Depression: ‘Brother, can you par a digm?’”
The shame game
Words have a way of becoming trendy, but not just in the newspaper. A small group of Bee readers who call or write to complain — frequently regarding subjects on the opinion pages — have taken to scolding with almost identical words.
This past week an angry reader said a reporter “should be ashamed of herself!” Her sin? She did not repeat the reader’s preferred historical facts about the energy crisis, facts which had been reported numerous times in The Bee.
Two other readers of strong political conviction react almost weekly to any political cartoons depicting President Bush negatively with the same words: “SHAME! SHAME! SHAME!” Usually in capital letters, repeated three times, with exclamation points.
Readers who truly want writers and editors to listen to suggestions or criticisms need to explain the specific problems or disputes, and ask for or suggest solutions. Most do, and that approach sometimes works.
Verbal assaults don’t help, any more than shouting obscenities when a driver cuts you off in traffic.
It may be good scream therapy, but is a bad tactic for resolving a conflict.
When journalists make mistakes, they often do feel shame. But it is a difficult feeling to assign to someone else, and differences of opinion seldom rise to the level of being shameful.
