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Tuesday, May 03, 2005

ethical editing & funk

I am part of an editing list-serv through The Association of Alternative Newsweeklies and recently asked the other editors an "ethical editing" question. As a general rule, SFR edits its letters to the editors, mostly for length, but we also fix writers' spelling and grammar, as we would for any other copy in the paper. Recently we received two letters from people at Ortiz Middle School who were angry about a recent article in the paper. I felt, strongly, that they had completely miconstrued the story and had decided it was "negative" (a word people like to bandy about regarding the media). In fact, the story looked at the differences between Ortiz and a local private school, Desert Academy, and was hardly "negative" about Ortiz. Santa Fe schools lose quite a few kids from their middle schools and the writer had spent time there to try to get a sense of how public and private school environments differ. Anyway, the letters both contained grammatical and spelling errors and I, feeling a bit fed up with our readers' apparent lack of critical thinking skills (am still aggro over Fred Phelps fallout, apparently, but that's another story), was inclined to leave their spelling and grammatical errors in. After all, if they feel OK about representing their school by sending errors in their letters to the paper, why should I fix their letters so they sound more coherent as they erroneously attack us?
Most of the editors convinced me that I couldn't change our policy simply to make this point (although a few of the more understanding ones) came up with inventive ways to leave the errors. I chose to fix them. That's today's ethical editing lesson.
OK, Fred Phelps. I met with a few members of the gay community recently in an informal meeting wholly unrelated to the Phelps fallout and explained to them why I believed the reaction to our choosing to write a cover on Phelps was inappropriate (or, not inappropriate exactly; people can react however they want to). Rather, I defended my choice and they said I should write something about it. I'm not going to start using up pages in SFR to defend the paper, but I will put those reasons down here.

1. It was newsworthy that Phelps et. al chose Santa Fe to come to. They did so based on several high-profile events concerning the gay community. We are a newspaper.
2. While the government et. al may have decided silence was the best response to Phelps (and, perhaps, in the context of potentially dangerous demonstrations they are right), newspapers do not choose to write about things or not based on the government's decision about how those things should be handled. I would imagine this is a policy that, at least in theory, all would support.
3. Phelps wanted publicity. Again, this is not our concern. We do not gauge the desires of the people we write about as a factor of whether or not we will write about them. If we did, then no one seeking publicity should get written about? Or, conversely, should people who don't want publicity (politicians w/ DWIs, criminals etc) not be written about because they don't want publicity?
4. Information is power. I know for a fact there were people who read our story and didn't know about Phelps. Now they do, and, I was told, felt motivated to stay involved and informed. That is our job. Many of the people reacting negatively seemed to have forgotten just how insular activist communities can become. It's their job, as the job of a newspaper, to reach as many people as possible.

I guess that's it for now.

Except for THIS. Get your butts to The Paramount Nightclub Wednesday, May 4, where former Friday Funk DJ Rocque Ranaldi will kick off his Hump Funk Wednesday night. No cover. If you haven't heard Rocque spin, you are in for some fun. He's a super great DJ (you may have caught him at SFR's Valentine's Party). See you there!