A Sacramento Bee reader reacted very strongly to a recent item in USA Weekend magazine in which “celebrity shopper” Allana Baroni advised readers how to deal with a Christmas gift that is “immediately broken” after opening.
The advice was to “call the giver and say the gift got broken in the shipping process.” That way the credit card company would probably replace the gift.
That’s encouraging people to lie, the reader said, and USA Weekend and The Bee were both condoning that behavior by publishing such outrageous advice.
Comment: USA Weekend’s editor did not respond to my e-mail query about this, but I suspect the bad advice simply got past his staff and wasn’t noticed. The Bee does not edit or screen content of USA Weekend, or Parade Magazine for that matter. Both are published elsewhere and inserted into The Bee as supplements.
Does that take The Bee off the hook for what they report? Not really. The newspaper is responsible for whatever it delivers to your doorstep. If any magazine, wire service or syndicate had a habit of making mistakes or giving rotten advice, it certainly would be dumped. That has not been the experience with these magazines in the past, incidentally.
But I can’t share the reader’s idea that allowing a comment to be published is the same as condoning immoral or illegal advice. If that were true, The Bee would be condoning every idea proposed in a letter to the editor or in the horoscopes.
The article did reflect bad judgment on the part of the USA Weekend editor who should have edited the story better.
The reader is correct that encouraging people to lie is bad advice, morally and legally. If readers followed her advice and lied about the breakage, they could run afoul of the laws regarding credit card fraud.
So, be honest.
If you read what you feel is bad advice, use your good judgment and ignore it.
More on the arts
Several members of the regional arts community took the opportunity last week to provide feedback in response to last Sunday’s exchange over how well, or poorly, The Bee covers the arts.
Their complete responses will be passed along to the editors, but here is a sample of opinions from individuals who took time to write or call:
- The original complaint was correct about local painters and galleries. The Bee doesn’t do enough to report, critique or boost local artists. It should add more people and space to deal with it.
- The Bee has done a good job reporting on and supporting theater in the area, and it is appreciated.
- The Bee has done a good job overall with arts coverage, but it is never enough to meet the demand from people within the arts community who have very high expectations regarding events close to their primary interests. The burden rests on members of the arts community to get the word out and work with all the media.
- And one booster of a local group called to say the musical organization he supports can’t get coverage it deserves. In the files I discovered the group’s efforts had been reported eight times in the past three months, and a major feature on the group was done two years ago. The caller seemed unaware what other organization supporters had done to generate publicity, or how he could effectively contact anyone at the paper.
Several of these readers pointed out the need for community art groups, like other community organizations, to make sure they let The Bee know well ahead of time (in writing) about major events, and not to expect much coverage of minor or frequently scheduled events.
Comment: The people happiest with The Bee’s arts coverage seemed to be those that understood how to deal with the newspaper. They knew how to get information to the right editors in a timely manner. These successful organizations always find out the name of the editor in charge of their area of interest, and establish personal contact, usually by e-mail.
Some of these volunteers do a terrific job of community outreach and public relations, and could be a model for those who are less successful. One local artist suggested that he had decided, instead of whining about what did not happen, to become proactive in making sure the entire community, including the media, know what is going on. Information on contacts at The Bee, and how to submit information on events and performances, is published daily and weekly in our pages, but some volunteers have missed that information.
Maybe it is time for The Bee to offer a training session for people from community organizations, including the arts, to help them be more effective for their groups.
Irritating ads?
The reader acknowledged that any advertisements appearing online on sacbee.com irritate him. Then he added: “I find it wildly ironic that the online version of Diana Griego Erwin’s latest column ‘No Room At The Inn,’ which deals with the problems of homelessness in our area, is topped by a large banner that reads ‘TAKE A DREAM HOME TOUR.’ ” It certainly is unfortunate that the serious message inherent in the column was undermined for this reader by the adjacent advertising.
To maintain the separation of advertiser influence from news columns, the editors and advertising managers do not normally exchange plans for content, except in broad categories such as travel or sports. Neither the columnist nor the advertising department knew what the other was doing.
And, the fact remains that advertising pays most of the newspaper’s bills, and that allows readers to buy the paper at a heavy discount, and to receive the news online at sacbee.com for free.
Singularity and e-mail
The reader pointed out, correctly, that CHP, the abbreviation for California Highway Patrol, “is not plural, it is singular,” and should have appeared that way in the Metro section headline recently. He acknowledged that such use appears often these days, but “I don’t expect to see it in the headline of a reputable major city news daily.”
The e-mail traffic to and from The Bee was interrupted for a full day this past week by a computer virus that invaded the newspaper’s computers. One result of that disruption was that hundreds of items of mail to the newspaper from readers, including those to the ombudsman’s office, were lost or delayed.
We’re still catching up, so bear with us.
