Not-so elevated discourse

Posted by Matt Zencey, editorial page editor

Posted: April 28, 2008 - 4:20 pm

This would-be letter writer's complaint is a good complement to the following post from Mary Hattie, letters editor. She remarked on the relatively elevated tone that ADN letter writers displayed in commenting on the Woody & Wilcox controversy.

In this email exchange, the would-be writer complained that we wouldn't publish in the print edition his letter saying that the two snowmachiners who died at Turnagain Pass this winter deserved to die because they were stupid. He also delighted at the prospect that more snowmachiners might meet a similar fate -- it's Darwin's evolution at work, he said.

Here's what I wrote back to him, followed by the prior correspondence. His original letter to the editor submission is at the very bottom of this post.

-- Matt Zencey, editorial page editor

Dear Dave,
I'm the mysteriously elusive editor who wouldn't OK your letter for print.
Here's why - saying the snowmachiners deserved to die from their own stupidity, and cheering on the prospect that more of them might die as well, just strikes me as too mean to put into print. It's the kind of ascerbic comment people make in conversation and it disappears into thin air, where it doesn’t really do any harm.
Think of it this way - would you walk up to the victims' families and say this to their faces? That's essentially what publishing it in the paper does.
I'm not saying we'd never publish a letter saying something that a grieving person might find offensive, but there has to be a pretty good reason for doing so - other than indulging the person who wrote it.
So why do we offer a chance to put the thought on the web portion of our site, but not in print?
Because the culture of the web is more free-wheeling and we consciously step back from our role as gate-keeper of comments and let people say what they want to, "unfiltered," as the feature says. Also, it's a lot easier for the object of criticism or ridicule to ignore or dismiss something in a web feature like "unfiltered letters." The print edition has a much higher readership and more emotional impact.
Your argument about the belligerent rhetoric and behavior of snowmachiners in other contexts is irrelevant. We’re applying a consistent standard here - we won't let them do that kind of bullying in print (and we occasionally get letters like that - you don't see them because we don't print them).
If setting this kind of standard for debate in our published letters makes us "pussies," as your acquaintance put it, so be it.

Matt Zencey

-----Original Message-----
From: iclaude@alaska.net [mailto:iclaude@alaska.net]
Sent: Wednesday, April 23, 2008 10:49 AM
To: Hattie, Mary
Subject: Unprinted Letter to the Editor (Reply)
Dear Mary,

Who is your editor so that you do not have to continue to act as interlocutor? To use his or her logic, the ADN would have blackballed the majority of your readers who wanted to bomb Iraq back to the Stone Age. Nor would it print letters advocating the Death Penalty, abortion, doing away with Bin Laden, and for that matter quoting from Slovenly Peter and the Bible. Evolution itself appears to be off the table. The ADN will print Paula Easley's ecocidal diatribe but not an Letter from me about evolution and stupidity. Bill Maher would be similarily out of luck. Does it matter that half of your paid advertising is for products and services that kill people not to mention a lot of other things? If the ADN will allow me to post my letter on your resurrected website, then why not in print? (My recollection was that the ADN got rid of it because it got out of hand begging the question of why you brought it back.)

I circulated our previous exchange among some of my acquaintances and the following are some of their responses:
"That's really funny. But she's got it all wrong. It sounds to me like you're simply pro-choice, not pro-life/pro-death."

"There should be an open-season on snowmachiners."

"... the ADN is being run by a bunch of pussies and they no doubt are afraid of your letter might offend a bunch of their motorhead readers."

"What do you expect from a rag like the Daily News?"

"No wonder we don't see your letters anymore."

Your editor's response reminds me of the "Emperor's New Clothes" because my transgresswion was to express what a lot of people think but are afraid to say. The yahoos, represented by your own Craig Medred, have taken over just about every nook and cranny while the talking heads among you pretend that they do not exist. Has your editor or for that matter most of the people who write at the ADN ever been in adversarial situations involving some of these people because civil discourse is not characteristically a part of their communicative medium. I was a lot kinder to the snowmachiners in my letter than they often are in public forums and more importantly to the natural world that that drive around in. Did it occur, for example, to your reporter who did the story on the Butte hearing about the Knik River Management Plan that the reason why the four-wheelers dominated the meeting was because they were pretty much of a lynch mob? When do intimidation, bullying, and threats ever make it into the press except when maybe it is a commentary on Don Young in the Ear? In this era of chicken journalism and political correctness, what is being said is at the price of what is not. It's too late to mincing words. It would be interesting to read your editor's opinion piece if he/she got orthopedic ally rearranged by a snowmachiner going eighty miles an hour (which has happened). When we have wiped ourselves and just about everything else from the face of the planet after an Apocalyptic finale, it will not be because we have been smart (There, I said it again!).

David McCargo

Hattie, Mary wrote:

Dear David McCargo,
I sent your note to my editor and we discussed again why your letter was not chosen for print. Your letter advocates the death of people, and we do not print letters like that -- even if you do advocate the death of people who make poor choices.

Mary Hattie
Copy Editor/Letters to the Editor | Anchorage Daily News
Direct: 907-257-4547 | Fax: 907-258-2157
MHattie@adn.com | 1001 Northway Drive | Anchorage, AK 99508

Anchorage Daily News products reach more than 300,000 Alaskans every week.
Visit us at adn.com and Alaska.com

-----Original Message-----
From: iclaude@alaska.net [mailto:iclaude@alaska.net]
Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2008 9:08 AM
To: Hattie, Mary
Subject:

Dear Mary,

Your automated reply begs the question of why Ms. Anderson can get her letter
printed and not me. More to the point, how does one know whether ones letter will
printed or not. If I wanted to post a blog comment I would have. If one wants a
letter printed, how does one go about it? Does one send you a hard copy like the
good old days or is it ADN's new policy not to print rebuttals? Has the ADN
updated it's published guidelines in this regard?

Dave McCargo

Dear Letter Writer,

We appreciate your interest in the Daily News Letters to the Editor. The Daily News
would like to publish every letter we receive. However, we are unable to publish
all of the letters due to lack of space.

There is good news in spite of that space constraint. Our Web site allows you to
post your letter online.

We encourage you to visit www.adn.com/opinion/unfiltered and post your own letter
for readers to see. You must be a registered user of the Daily News Web site to use
this feature. In addition, you can respond directly to other online letter writers.

We hope you look into this new opportunity to share your views with our Web
readers.

Sincerely,

Mary Hattie
Copy Editor/Letters to the Editor | Anchorage Daily News
Direct: 907-257-4547 | Fax: 907-258-2157
MHattie@adn.com | 1001 Northway Drive | Anchorage, AK 99508

Anchorage Daily News products reach more than 300,000 Alaskans every week.
Visit us at adn.com and Alaska.com

-----Original Message-----
From: iclaude@alaska.net [mailto:iclaude@alaska.net]
Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2008 1:33 PM
To: Hattie, Mary
Subject:

No Ms. Anderson (Letter to the Editor 3/06/08), the reason why the two motorheads
got themselves killed on Turnigain Pass was they were stupid and no amount of
taxpayer money is going to make fundamentally stupid people smarter. Their
self-proclaimed "elite" status may have made them even more stupid. Perhaps we
need more hazards like avalanche zones, utility poles, sharp curves, old well
heads, and stumps to allow evolution to do its work. Unfortunately, these people
are reproducing faster rate than natural selection can weed them out. Generation Y
has not been called the "Dumbest Generation" for nothing.

David McCargo
P.O. Box 100767
Anchorage, AK 99510
907-563-6450
Matt Zencey
Editorial Page Editor | Anchorage Daily News
Direct: 907-257-4346 | Fax: 907-258-2157
MZencey@adn.com | 1001 Northway Drive | Anchorage, AK 99508

Anchorage Daily News products reach more than 300,000 Alaskans every week.
Visit us at adn.com and Alaska.com

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