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Dec
11
Was this column by Dick Feagler, published today.
And I thought I should tell a few people just how I feel (following letter sent to Brent Larkin, Doug Clifton, letters editor, Dick Feagler and Ted Diadiun):
Dear Sirs,
I’m an award-winning freelance writer, columnist and contributing editor for Cleveland Family, Storyteller for the KnowledgeWorks Foundation (I follow the Euclid small schools effort), 43 year old mother of three children, wife to one husband, Marcus Leadership Fellow at my synagogue and I have a joint degree in law and social work (which I used for eight years at Bellefaire JCB). As you might suspect, I do things in my kids’ schools and try to stay active in local civic endeavors as well.
I can even tell you that in May 2002, Mr. Larkin actually accepted on spec and then published an op-ed, written by me, that resulted from the very first pitch I ever made to anyone. It analogized mental health professionals’ duty to warn to the federal government’s duty to warn. (I’m also grateful to The Plain Dealer for publishing a few other pieces of my work, all essays or op-eds, since that time, including one that had me blushing last May because of its prominence. I’ve had nothing but excellent experiences with the PD editors and staff I know personally and professional.)
But, gentlemen, I’m also a blogger. You can verify this by visiting my blog at http://www.writeslikeshetalks.blogspot.com/, and you can also ask Henry Gomez and John Campanelli about the blog. (Mr. Campanelli even included something written by me as the very first entry in today’s PDQ). I thank them both for repeatedly referencing me and certain portions of my work.
I’m writing this letter to you because Mr. Feagler’s column today is the most unnecessarily mean-spirited piece of writing I’ve read in your paper, ever.
Now, I know that some of the mean-spiritedness might be due to Mr. Feagler’s lack of an editor on the piece (as he says in the column). I don’t have a good guess on that.
But here are some of the reasons why, in my opinion, the column is mean just for the sake of being mean:
1. Mr. Feagler generalizes to the point of excluding all meritorious work in the blogosphere, of which there is an abundance.
For example, maybe you are familiar with New Voices, a project of J-Lab, The Institute for Interactive Journalism, located at the University of Maryland and “supported with grants from John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation. Some New Voice projects involve community-oriented blogs.
At October’s SPJ conference (the same at which Judy Miller received her First Amendment award amid controversy), I attended two sessions presented by J-Lab’s director. Both dealt with citizen journalism and blogs, among other topics.
But you do not need to go past Meet the Bloggers, an endeavor which seemed so foreign even to me that I finally decided to attend the most recent interview conducted under its auspices. (I’ve written this and this about my experience there.) Then there are blogs associated with The Plain Dealer such as Chas Rich’s award-winning NEOBabble, that demonstrate the quality in local examples.
2. Mr. Feagler’s tone implies that he does not trust readers to be able to discern truth from fiction. Again, such an assertion is just plain mean, in addition to wrong. For example, parents are often counseled to give their kids responsibility in order to make them be responsible. Why isn’t this the same with someone who gathers information from a variety of sources? Why does Mr. Feagler have so little trust in those who read not only blogs or newspapers, but his column?
3. Mr. Feagler’s column fails to use a balanced approach to make his point. He makes no reference or concession to the Jayson Blair – Stephen Glass or even Doris Kearns Goodwin-type errors that have plagued mainstream media. He never mentions how many and how often corrections are published in newspapers. He picks on one medium’s agreed to weaknesses, but fails to discuss the weaknesses in his preferred medium. That’s unfair and bullying.
4. Mr. Feagler equates his “worry about how little some of you value that morning newspaper out on the driveway in the snow” with the existence and proliferation of blogs, but provides no evidence of any causal relationship between the two. I’m not very familiar with the newspaper publishing industry (as much as I loved Katherine Graham’s autobiography). But my understanding is that the decline in readers referring to that morning paper began long before the birth of blogs.
Again, I view this allusion of Mr. Feagler’s to be an unnecessarily mean implication.
5. Columns written in the manner of this column by Mr. Feagler spread ill-will. You read it and you come away with a nasty feeling, no matter who you are. Where is the value and justification in that? There’s so much ugliness in so many other places we read about or observe humankind. What good could possibly come – for the PD, the media or the readers – from being so unkind?
6. Finally, Mr. Feagler calls the newspaper “still your best bet when it comes to trying to tell the truth in print.” That seems like an awfully low threshold itself. My “best bet”? When it comes to “trying to tell the truth in print”?
If Mr. Feagler would like to assert opinions about the causes of the decline in newspaper readership, he should do that. If he wants to assert opinions about how blogs contribute to that decline, then he should do that. If he wants to expose the potential for misuse of blogs as an exciting but unedited way for people to be engaged in what’s happening around them, then he should do that.
But to completely, without exception, malign blogs and bloggers – especially given the vibrancy of the NEO blogosphere, and the support (thank you) that the PD has given to several of those in the NEO blogosphere – well, that sounds to me, as someone who has had a subscription to the PD for years and has often told others how shocked she is that they don’t get the main local paper, just plain mean.
Thank you very much for reading my letter, and for your support of my writing over the years. I hope that perhaps Mr. Feagler’s column, as mean as I feel it sounds, could at least be an opportunity to blow the cover off of the relationship between different media modes and find a way that all modes can enhance how the news readers read is provided.
Period.
Very truly yours,
Jill Miller Zimon, JD, MSSA
By Jill Miller Zimon at 7:37 pm December 11th, 2005 in Politics
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14 Responses to “The meanest thing I’ve ever read in the PD”
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You go girl!
Thanks, Ron. Might not even represent anyone else’s opinion. But that letter reflects only a portion of how Mr. Feagler’s column made me feel.
Shalom Jill,
Great job.
Did Dick make my point?
B’shalom,
Jeff
As my husband would say, “Hard.”
Wikipedia isn’t a blog. It’s a Wiki. And blogs aren’t Wikis – they can have wiki componants – Daily Kos does (something I discovered today). But what does Wikipedia have to do with blogging?
Did he even bother to find out the difference?? If he did then why is he bashing bloggers when his beef is with Wikipedia?
I was just surprised that someone who earned his income from free speech would actually speak against free speech! Evidently he someone connects Blogging with the decline of the newspaper industry — something that started long before Gore started the Internet.
John Ryan, Cleveland AFL-CIO
It’s become totally apparent that the MSM just don’t get it, and not only in Cleveland. Here is a blogger’s commentary (published today, December 11) about a story on the LA blogosphere that appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
Well, Mr. Feagler and Mr. Seigenthaler have their culprit now. I read in Slashdot (http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/11/1536222&from=rss) about this report in the Seattle Times (http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002677060_wiki11.html)where the author of the false entry has been outed.
The prankster felt compelled to resign as he posted his article from work and the cybersleuth tracking him queried the company about the posting. Seigenthaler is said to have urged the prankster’s boss to rehire him although this had not happened by the time of the article.
“Seigenthaler, founder of the First Amendment Center, said that as a longtime advocate of free speech, he found it awkward to be tracking down someone who had exercised that right. “I still believe in free expression,” he said. “What I want is accountability.”
Jill,
This represents the opinion of many people. I’m grateful that you took the time to write such a thoughtfull and factual letter. It’s great to see the responses that have come forth.
Daniella
Thanks to each of you for reading and commenting.
I do understand Mr. Feagler’s status and have read what others have written about his background. I’ve read his column and have been familiar with his work since I moved to Cleveland in 1988 (and, as I always like to emphasize, chose to stay and raise a family, a decision I’ve never regretted; I love Cleveland).
I’ve found more of his columns worthwhile than not worthwhile. I know I’ve written to him or the PD editors at least once or twice over the last few years about one of his columns, here and there.
I don’t watch much tv so I haven’t seen even a glimpse of Feagler and Friends in a long time.
What just completely angers and saddens me is the unequivocal, devoid of humility, taking advantage of his position tone and appearance of this particular column. Not to mention what others have pointed out – hello? First Amendment? Hello? A Wiki isn’t a blog. Hello? It happened to Siegenthaler, not Mr. Feagler, and Mr. Siegenthaler is capable of handling the situation.
So what gives? Was there really nothing else to write about?
How about how, as unpopular as it might sound, what law enforcement calls a “cage” isn’t the same as what a social worker might call a “cage” or the parents trying to manage 11 children (I’m not endorsing the use of cages with kids, I’m just saying that clearly this difference in definitions is causing angst in the case).
Why not write about Pearl Harbor? Why not write about the holiday season?
Why is no one writing about the end of the PD Sunday Magazine??
I don’t know – there seem to be so many more important, relevant, critical issues to discuss than blogs bad, MSM the “best bet.”
Those who’ve met me or read this blog for a while know how sincere I am when I go on a tear like this.
I just want to know why – what really motivated Mr. Feagler to spew such vitriol? (my new least favorite word that I use only when I have to)
I just want to know why – what really motivated Mr. Feagler to spew such vitriol?
he is seeing himself and his job become increasingly irrelevant…
there is a saying: “follow, lead, or get out of the way” – feagler is a ego-ridden dinosaur who can’t do any of those
frankly i am not sure why anyone even cares what he writes…
nice blog!
I just want to know why – what really motivated Mr. Feagler to spew such vitriol?
I’m starting to think that someone told him or he read that ‘bloggers are journalists’, and he immediately thought ‘reporter.’ Yeah, all of those bloggers are out there pounding the pavement in their fedoras, with reporter notebooks and the press pass stuck in the hat, just like when he was starting out at the Press. And then some editor told him what he did wrong in his story.
If you start with this as your basic premise, his column makes perfect sense — we’re all trying to be beat reporters, and we can’t be trusted because no one is editing or checking up on what we write.
Jack’s recent post on this at BFD nails it on the head. Blogging is no different than a group of people sitting at the bar/coffee/cafe talking. He sets up the strawman and then blows it away with a cannon.
(and by ‘he’ above, I mean Dick Feagler, not Jack!)
[...] other than saying that Dick Feagler’s December 2005 column about blogs was the meanest thing I’d ever read (he eventually had me on his television show twice so I think that’s kind of a retrenchment [...]