Your answers to survey questions asked on May 13 illustrate perfectly the treacherous path editors walk in deciding matters of taste.
Readers have criticized some recent decisions, so I offered five published examples and asked for your opinions.
More than 800 people responded and many offered comments. The survey is not scientific, and most who commented were critical, but the results spoke to two inseparable questions:
How should the Star speak to its readers and what assumptions does the paper make about them?
The Star reaches a broad audience. This requires that content fall within boundaries of taste and tone acceptable to most readers, most of the time.
The paper is also a citizen of contemporary society and must evolve as the world evolves.
The Pimp My Garden contest sat at that junction.
We must be part of the culture and we want to engage readers “because we’re engaged in the world,” said Sunday editor Alison Uncles.
Pimp My Garden was intended to be a joke of juxtaposition that contrasted the genteel stereotypes of gardening with the chromed excesses of television’s Pimp My Ride.
All but one of the 800 who submitted garden entries “totally played along and got into the spirit of it,” she said.
Nearly 70 per cent of those who responded to this survey were not convinced. But views were roughly split on three of the five questions:
Question 1: Eight members or associates of the Bandidos motorcycle club were slain in the largest mass murder in Ontario’s history. Would you publish a picture of victim John “Boxer” Muscedere and a friend, giving a photographer the finger?
A. 55 per cent said publish
Martin Zibauer would have cropped out the friend, but “the hairstyle, the badges on the leather vest and the extended finger combine to paint a picture of this man’s character and lifestyle. The finger may offend a few, but it is enough of a potent signal that, to lose it, would be to lose some insight into the victim.”
Question 2: Sunday editors are excited about a gardening contest. They’ve called it “PIMP MY GARDEN.”
B. 69 per cent said rename it.
“The `pimp’ name hijacks gardens and their beauty and serenity into an increasingly mono-value world intent on buzz, edge and the money they might garner,” wrote Sue Chenette.
“We all know that the English language is constantly changing but we do have choices,” wrote Ellen Manney of Toronto. “We don’t have to succumb to the lowest common denominator.”
Question 3: “Off the Rack” features brief synopses of magazines each week. In a recent review of three celebrity magazines, three of the snippets read:
“A is for: Oprah’s ass, which is growing wider by the minute.”
“Cover: Katie’s parents hate Tom and his silent-birth, Thetan-hating ways. They want their girl away from the Scientology hocus-pocus and back to the blood-drinking, saint-filled, men-in-dresses normalcy of the Catholic Church.”
“S is for: The also very short romance of Nick and the teenaged reality slut …”
B. 80 per cent said rewrite.
“Why cheapen the Star with vulgarities?” asked David Reeve.
“During the Danish cartoon controversy, the Star justified its decision not to reprint the cartoons on the basis that religion was off-limits for ridicule. But ridiculing a cherished Christian sacrament isn’t a matter of policy, but a question of taste? Why the double standard?” asked David Clarke.
Question 4: On Easter weekend, the Arts and Entertainment front featured an “A to Z guide to going out, putting the boot to boredom.” The main headline read: “Spring Loaded, ALPHABET CITY/ 26 ways to have a kick-ass time around town this season.”
B. 57 per cent put the boot to it.
“Civility matters no less than the Atkinson principles,” wrote Peter Pellier. “The Star can be hip without being crude. Language matters. So does taste.”
Question 5: Two days after Page 1 announced the Bandido deaths, an editorial cartoon was set in a funeral home. A car with the trunk open was surrounded by flowers. Two bikers gazed into the trunk and one said to the other: “He looks so natural.”
A. 49 said publish the cartoon.
B. 51 said let it perish.
“Cartoons are cartoons and should be granted more leeway,” wrote Lossie Murray.
On the other hand: “While I find the description hilarious, why go out of the way to hurt the deceased’s remaining family? Every one of those men has a mother,” wrote Brian Gould.
“I am really tired of the daily barrage of vulgarity around me,” said Pat Noble, a view expressed by many.
“Why not honour the reader by assuming that he or she would like to live on a higher level, emotionally and intellectually, if just given a chance?” asked Joy Dell.
Newspaper readers are an educated and intelligent lot. Difficult, controversial, challenging, even vulgar content is not an issue if publishing it contributes to our understanding, forces us to think, enhances our civic conversation and perhaps even results in change for the better.
Gratuitous vulgarity will diminish us every time.
