Madness Continues

Originally posted Nov. 29, 2005

I kid you not, almost a week later, we are still being inundated with letters, e-mails and faxes about the penis story. It's ridiculous! Not even the long holiday weekend stamped it out of their memories.

A lot of the correspondence we're getting is from...well...older readers. It's a fact that the age of our average reader is 53. That's the average age. A good portion of our audience is well above that.

To a degree, I understand the complaints. I had no idea the story was going to be as graphic as it was. I thought it was going to be a funny-haha-look-at-the-weird-things-people-do-in-our-community type of story. Tastefully and comedically done, yunno? But in reality, what was turned in was a sensationalized, over-graphic grossfest. Even I said "ew" at a few points while reading it.

Does that mean I don't stand by our decision? Yes and no. Like I said, we thought it was going to be something completely different from what it was. It doesn't help that it was written by a sister paper and turned in after most editors went home. The night crew just rolled with it, thinking we must have known what we were getting into. It slipped through all the cracks. Granted, the night editor at the originating paper should have exercised some better judgment. But we can't all count on the sensibility of one person, especially at crunch time.

However, even though it was graphic, there's a trend in newspapers today to attract younger audiences. Was this a poor choice of story to work towards that goal? Perhaps. But you can bet that young people like me everywhere would say, "Huh! Look at this!" or "Did you hear about the guy who..." The article would get passed around. People would buy papers or go online to our Web site. What I'm saying is, what might be offensive to the older reader is interesting to the younger reader. And we're trying to cater to both. It's hard for newspapers to keep that generational gap in check, especially when getting flooded with correspondence from only one faction of the audience. How do you please everyone?

The answer is, you can't. You just roll with the punches when they come, and expect to get a few phone calls and letters. What I've been saying is, hey, at least we got the opportunity to take the pulse of our audience. They're out there! They're reading us! They're submitting their opinions when something doesn't please them!

Which leads me to another point I'd like to bring up: Everyone always complains newspapers focus too much on the negative. However, I find that to be completely hypocritical, since readers are the first to complain and focus on the negative when the paper does something "wrong," or something they don't like or agree with. It's more rare for us to receive letters of praise. Not that we're sitting around yearning for them...just that they're rare. People just inherently tend to muffle out positive things and hone in on negative things. It's part of human nature. Basically because...well...you don't really have to do anything about something that's positive. It doesn't need "fixing" or "attention."

Bottom line is, lighten up, people! Don't perpetuate something if you can't live by it. Try remembering that we don't run "offensive" stories every day, and that contrary to popular belief, we really do run a lot of local and positive news.

And stop writing us penis letters! Sheesh.

Lacey commented: I am completely offend by the penis blogs.....It is all your fault and I may talk to you again!!! No Kudos for you!!! Unless its the bars and then they are good...do they still make those?

Kim commented: Disturbingly enough, yes!!