LETTER: Poor choice, editorial board
Published: October 20, 2009
Call me cynical, but I recall last week that Alex Granados, your editorial page editor, lectured your readers about the unsuitability of anonymous letter writers and the need for full disclosure. Let me
suggest that you follow your own guidelines.
As you have decided to endorse the Republican candidate Bob McDonnell for governor, it is probably wise to reveal that the News & Messenger, as well as your mothership, the Richmond Times-
Dispatch, are owned by Media General. Interestingly, one of the 10 members of the Media General Board of Directors is Diana Cantor who happens to be married to Eric Cantor, the Republican Whip in
the U.S. House of Representatives from Virginia’s 7th District.
How can you possibly lend your endorsement of McDonnell, a far right-wing candidate, with any credibility given this “disclosure?”
Your endorsement has nothing to do with facts and more to do with mere political expediency.
If you had bothered to analyze the candidate’s positions with any depth, you might have come to the conclusion that Creigh Deeds is actually best for Virginia.
I guess asking journalists to look at facts, however, would be too challenging for Mr. Granados and his staff.
PAMELA KINCHELOE
Manassas
EDITOR’S NOTE:
Our editorials and endorsements are not anonymous; they reflect the joint opinion of the five members of our editorial board, whose names are published every day at the top of this page. The Richmond
Times-Dispatch is a sister paper that happens to be owned by the same corporation as the News & Messenger, Media General Inc. Ms. Kincheloe is correct that Diana Cantor is a member of the Media
General board of directors, but that board has no involvement with the editorial department of this newspaper.
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Reader Reactions
Ms. Kincheloe:
The endorsement by the News and Messenger is actually no big deal, for several reasons.
If we review the paper’s history in the past 6 months, it has not fared well under the recession Obama inherited from the Bush administration. The paper has gone through layoffs, moving the printing, selling assets, downsizing the paper, and it made a terrible mistake to concentrate on local news - so unappetizing and boring. The paper was hemorrhaging subscribers and ad revenue, the latter saved from utter collapse by home foreclosure listings in PWC.
These “misfortunes” have caused unhappiness for the editors and staff. What reporter likes to concentrate and spend efforts on reporting on potholes, light malfunctions, police blotters, fresh road kill, etc. The Sunday edition is a real disaster—just Chamber of Commerce crap and military stuff. (The paper once published a military paper, a freebe, but combined the money loser into the regular paper, where subscribers could pay for pages of info not interested in).
The editors are selective in printing outside the area news stories. When the paper printed an editorial on Obama’s winning the Nobel Peace prize, I sensed that the paper had gone Republican, that the paper was anti-Obama, and had joined the “just say no” Republican crowd, and make him fail. The paper wasn’t the least bit interested in what the prize gave as recogniton to the country.
Thus it came as no surprise that the paper endorsed McDonnell, Bolling, and Cuccinelli. After all, the 5 editors who voted on the matter proved to be merely “nattering nabobs of negativism”.
But don’t fear, the paper has sunk so low that its influence can hardly be more than a 1 watt AM radio station. The paper is hurting and the employees are angry.
The endorsement editorials are mostly “we think”, “we believe”, etc.—nothing of substance. For example, missing all those meetings did not hinder Bollings endorsement, meaning attendance on the job is not important. The paper is out of touch with reality.
Well, things are going to get worse. Wall Street and its casinos and ponzi schemes may be up and running, but someone is going to have the huge task of jobs and unemployment. Time will tell if the paper survives.
But don’t worry about its influencing the populace—it has little if any influence.
Ms.Kincheloe:
Sounds like you have sour grapes. When the
Potomac News supported Democrats in the last two elections, we did not hear a peep from you.
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