When longtime reader Catharine Rambeau calls, I listen. Actually, I invariably listen when readers call, but when she’s on the phone I immediately tend not to wonder where the newspaper’s all-too-human staff may have slipped.
This time, we had differing takes on “Madrid attack suspects receive long sentences,” the Nov. 1 New York Times article she cited. She considered disastrously unclear the lead sentences which stated:
“Spain’s National Court on Wednesday handed down sentences stretching to tens of thousands of years to three men for killing 191 people and wounding more than 1,800 in a 2004 bombing of Madrid commuter trains. In practice, the three will serve 40-year terms, the maximum that Spain allows.”
Exactly how, wondered our reader, could three men get sentences stretching tens of thousands of years? We went back and forth on the issue, as I had understood the “tens of thousands” to reflect the totality of charges and counts in the crimes affecting nearly 2,000 people.
The question necessitated a check of what originally had been reported by the Times. That story, “Convictions and Key Acquittals End Madrid Bomb Trial,” said in part:
“The National Court on Wednesday convicted three men of murdering 191 people and wounding more than 1,800 in the 2004 Madrid bombings … The sentences ranged from three to almost 43,000 years, although under Spanish law, the maximum anyone is forced to serve is 40 consecutive years.”
Unlike Ms. Rambeau, readers sometimes are surprised to learn that every item in the newspaper, from articles to columns to letters, is edited for brevity, clarity and/or space. Although I don’t always agree when readers say that something in the paper wasn’t clear, I do agree that every item should be. I think she had a point that some of the clarity was lost in editing for Post readers what the Times stated more clearly.
# Similarly, Phyllis Herman had called, questioning changes in “U.N. panel shares honor for climate crusade” (Oct. 13), also from the Times. For example, she contrasted the original lead, which said former Vice President Al Gore, “who emerged from his loss in the muddled 2000 presidential election,” with “who came out of his loss,” as Post editors made it. “The words floored me,” she said, in another reminder of how closely some are reading their newspaper.
# The editor’s note that appeared with her Oct. 29 letter to the editor (“Most homeowners support Scouts’ plan for rifle range”), mistakenly said Linda K. Smith of Tequesta is a board member of the North Passage Homeowners Association. As her original letter stated, she is one of four past association presidents who, along with the current president, support the Boy Scouts’ plan.
The reader who brought it up, Ivan Wolfe, added that Ms. Smith’s husband “is an official of the local Boy Scout Council. That should have been noted in an editor’s note,” he said, “rather than incorrect information.”
Mike Smith confirmed that he is a volunteer on the board of the Gulf Stream Council of the Boy Scouts of America, which owns the 640-acre camp. Had editors known it, was that info significant enough for it to have been noted? Although I didn’t ask them about it, the couple may have opposing views on the matter. So, contrary to my initial thought on the matter, I think not.
# Also, Robert “not Burt” Pagano cited that misspelling by the clerk who entered his letter which ran in last Sunday’s “Back Talk.” “This was obviously an oversight,” he said, “but no hard feelings, as in the past 20 years, over 50 of my letters have been printed with the correct name.” Editors would have changed his over to the grammatically correct more than had he written that sentence for one of his letters.
# The issue Michael Kerwin raises about a local official has come up before. The West Palm Beach reader writes:
“I would like to know why every time I see the mayor of Riviera Beach, ‘Bishop’ Thomas Masters, in the press he is always in his cleric garb while on official city business? If children can’t pray in schools due to separation of church and state, why is he able to flaunt religion as mayor?”
Whether the bishop should wear his clerical garb on city business might be a topic for the Opinion pages. But it isn’t a topic for the news pages unless it becomes an issue in the news.
The fact is that the bishop now is the city’s mayor. Before that, he was in the news as a minister and an activist. Anyone who has followed him knew that, if elected, he would be unlikely to change his dress. And most readers surely recognize that, in reporting on him, the paper has no control over the dress in which he appears, nor should it.
I don’t expect to resolve Mr. Kerwin’s church-state separation complaint. But the subject of titles came up while I was speaking with the mayor/bishop back in July. I told him I expected that the paper would identify him as mayor in stories on city business, and as bishop in his role as pastor.
Aside from an Aug. 27 mention of “Riviera Beach Mayor/Bishop Thomas Masters,” in a column that referenced local Democrats who are backing Hillary Clinton for president, that generally has been the case.
